Today through September 15th, Apple is offering a special promotion for college students and their parents, as well as faculty and staff. Purchase a new Apple Mac and get an iPod Touch or iPod Nano free (after rebate). You can purchase a MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, or Mac Pro, then select an 8GB iPod Touch or 8GB iPod Nano, and receive up to $299 back after rebate. And that’s on top of the up to $200 Mac educational discount that is always available. You’re also eligible for up to $100 back on certain models of printer, which can net you a free printer as well. And free shipping.

As iTunes, and the iPod, continue to dominate the music market, and satellite radio is growing, terrestrial radio is looking for ways to remain relevant and maintain their audience - and revenue. A major push as been to ‘HD Radio’, which is the inaccurate (and, to me, annoying) name for digital radio. (There really isn’t anything ‘HD’ about it, that’s just marketing playing off the brand awareness of HDTV. HD means ‘better’ to consumers.) And the next step for HD Radio is trying to become part of the iTunes ecosystem by embedding tags in the broadcasts that will allow users with HD Radios to make note of songs they like, save the tag, and then later buy the song via iTunes. And Clear Channel is the first major radio chain to deploy this:

Clear Channel plans to announce today (April 7) that it will become the first radio chain to feature iTunes tagging across 345 stations broadcasting in HD.

The feature allows listeners to press a button on their HD radio to tag a song, store the information in an Apple iPod, then purchase and download songs via Apple iTunes when the iPod is synched with a computer.

Polk Audio’s I-Sonic Entertainment System 2 is the first HD radio receiver which includes this capability, but more receivers with the feature will be coming to market. There isn’t really a direct benefit for the radio stations but it is a ‘value add’ for the listener which the stations hope will add more value to HD radio and encourage more receiver sales, and most listeners.

I’m not much of an Apple fanboy, but I am something of an iPod fanboy - I highly recommend them in general, based on my personal use. And Apple today dropped their pricing on the 1GB iPod Shuffle to only $49 - with free shipping! They’ll also be launching a 2GB iPod Shuffle for only $69 soon.

And if you’re interested in the MacBook Air - it is now shipping. But if that’s too rick for your blood (it is for mine!), they do have refurbished Macs.

I was happy to see Apple announce today that they’re boosting the iPhone’s capacity from 8GB to 16GB, and the iPod Touch from 16GB to 32GB. I’m not really much of an Apple fanboy, in fact, the only Apple product I really use is my iPod and iTunes. I do think OS X is a great operating system, and if they’d sell it for use on generic hardware I’d probably use it, but I haven’t been willing to pay the Apple Tax on their laptops. (Yes, I know about Darwin.)

But I really do like the iPod, and, having tried a number of alternative portable digital music players, it is still the only one I really recommend. However, I’m still using a 60GB iPod with color, initially known as the iPod Photo. The first generation of video iPods just wasn’t enough to make me jump - the screen is too small. And I have almost no interest in the iPhone. I’ve played with them, I know people who own them - and I still prefer my Treo 680 to the iPhone for my needs. I really use my ‘phone’ more for email and such - text applications - and I just didn’t like typing on the iPhone. It is shiny and sexy, but that’s not enough for a serious relationship.

But I do love the screen and the interface for other things, including the browser. So when the iPhone was announced I was excited, not because of the iPhone, but because I knew it was only a matter of time until an iPod popped up with the same design. And it did, the iPod Touch. But when it was announced I was very disappointed. What I wanted was a high-capacity unit with the UI of the iPhone. I was thinking 80GB, or even 160GB, with the same screen and UI, not 8GB or 16GB! I’m getting close to filling my 60GB iPod, and I like having all my music on tap. I started with a 20GB iPod and quickly dumped it for the 60GB model because I couldn’t stand picking and choosing which songs to load, invariably not having the song I wanted to listen to on there, of course. So there was no way I was going back to even 16GB.

So I’m happy to see the 32GB model announced, not so much for what it is, but because the next logical step is 64GB. I just have to wait and the price/performance curve will bring Flash memory prices down far enough for Apple to kick up the capacity again. And when they finally launch the 64GB model, I expect to finally upgrade. I think it’ll happen in the second half of this year.

I can wait.