While everyone's busy trying to figure out which particular shade of brushed metal Apple's new iMacs are going to show up in, a few major online retailers have quietly trimmed 5.5G iPod prices. Apple, who usually keeps a pretty tight rein on its product prices throughout various retail channels, hasn't matched the cuts on the Apple Store, but you can currently score a 30GB or 80GB iPod (with video) for about $20 off at Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City and J&R online stores. Notable exceptions include Target's online store, and Wal-mart, which doesn't sell iPods online. It's anyone's guess as to what actually sparked these price drops. It could be a way for traditional retailers to compete with Apple's aggressive back to school promotions, an attempt by Apple to clear away excess stock in preparation for a brand new iPod, or perhaps just a good old-fashioned price cut. Perhaps we'll know more on August 7th?

[Thanks, Matthew]

We've alway known of Apple's hopes to wean the masses off of their Windows peecees through the elegance of the iPod, but we're afraid they've taken things a bit too far this time. According to Apple, less than one percent of their 5.5G iPod shipments made after September 12th have a little present in the form of the RavMonE.exe virus, which propagates via mass storage devices, and purportedly had infected a PC at the manufacturer where the iPods were produced. Apple has received 25 or so reports of the problem, which they learned of a week ago, and they've "been working around the clock to identify the problem and discover its root cause." Apple has instructions for removal of the virus on their site, but there's no need for full-blown panic because RavMonE.exe is "technically a worm, not a virus," meaning it lowers the security of your PC, but doesn't actual mess with your data itself. Of course, Apple is "upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses," but they're "even more upset with ourselves for not catching it." As they should be.

Despite the minor revisions that went into this new "Johnny Depp" edition iPod, it's still getting plenty of love in reviews. The 5.5G version boasts of enough little tweaks that have gone right, like a brighter, sharper screen, useful search feature, improved video playback time, tweaked headphones, good looking games and a welcome price drop, that the minor setbacks such as quirky game controls, odd video aspect ratios and the strange lack of an iTunes install CD don't seem to detract a whole lot from the lovefest. Of course, the notable omission of a larger screen to truly enjoy the full-length flicks, and our standard iPod gripes like lacking format support still keep this iPod from going all the way in our books, but it seems like most of the iPod faithful will be too busy yucking it up with the Pirates of the Caribbean crew to notice this time around.

Read - iLounge (A-)
Read - CNET (8.3, Editor's Choice)
Read - Time

Obviously we're all a little underwhelmed that the 5.5G iPod isn't the true video iPod we thought would be debuted with the movie store, but the screen is definitely brighter, those hard drives are definitely bigger, and you really just can't argue with a $50 drop in price. Or games, which cost a small chunk of change. But at least it's nice to know what you're getting yourself into here, and that's a 5G iPod with a 60% brighter screen.