I love Reddit, especially for things like this. This image shows the real truth behind the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle. Was it years of careful industrial design an planning? Nope. It was the scissors tool in Photoshop.

If you take a look at the two new music players it gets harder and harder to deny that it just looks like the old iPod Nano has been cut in half, leaving behind a screen (which is now touch sensitive) and a control scheme (welcome back, hardware controls – glad you’re off those headphones).

As good as Reddit is for these little gems, the discussion can be a bit polarized. Continue through those comments at your own risk.

Apple’s media event today brought a lot of big news, the biggest of which was probably the update to AppleTV. The new iPod Nano looks pretty cool, though, and I’m glad to see the return of physical buttons to the iPod Shuffle. If I were on a more reliable connection, I’d dig up one of those stupid VoiceOver ads, just so you could laugh at it with me.

Instead I’m leaving you with this cute little picture, courtesy of Engadget, of the new iPod family. I’ll have more thoughts and impressions on the full lineup of Apple changes tomorrow (yay home internet connection).

Do you remember your reaction when you saw the first iPod Nano commercial? Those two hands fought over something that seemed, at the time, ‘impossibly small.’ By today’s standards, that first Nano would look commonplace – some people might even mistake it for a new iPhone. All signs point to a Nano announcement at this week’s Apple event, and from all the leaked pictures and accessories, we know it’s going to be small.

This picture, which comes from Apple Insider, shows an old Nano up against a render of the new, touchscreen version. There have been some concerns raised about controls – that screen is awfully small to comfortably navigate your music library. Apple could be headed toward an inline control system, similar to that of the iPod Shuffle. Personally, I hate the idea. I want to be able to use my own headphones without worrying about a stupid control dongle.

From the looks of things, I’d say Apple also scrapped the crappy little camera it added to the most recent generation of the Nano. Thank god. That thing was the laughing stock of Flip SD owners everywhere, to say nothing of all the portable HD handcam owners of the world.

Since Apple announced the iPod Nano 5G on Wednesday, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not the included video camera will be enough to kill off Pure Digital’s Flip line of video cameras. The editors at NewTeeVee set out to answer that question, and came up with a pretty clear winner: the Flip.

Now I can’t say I’m surprised. The camera in the new Nano is so bad that Apple doesn’t even want you taking pictures. But words don’t really do the two cameras justice. In order to understand the differences – just how bad the Nano camera looks, and just how good the Flip (which is not an HD model) looks by comparison – you need to see the NewTeeVee video, which I’ve conveniently embedded here.

As you can see, the Nano looks truly terrible. The picture is overexposed most of the time, does not handle any sort of lighting transition very well, and the resolution is terrible. The videos will look decent on the Nano screen, but anything bigger and you will be hugely disappointed. By comparison, the Flip SD looks great – it handles different lighting well for a cheap camera and the picture is crisp and maintains decent color.

I’ll be curious to see Apple’s response to this situation. I think we can safely assume we’ll see more and more of these videos around the web in the near future, with more and more of the same reaction: Apple really dropped the ball on this one.

This here is the official low-down on all the changes to the iPod Nano for its 5th generation. Apple added a whole lot of functionality to what was once a simple, thin MP3 player and its (Apple) grooming the device to a run at the portable video camera market. With Flip in its sights, Apple hopes the Nano will be the world’s new favorite portable cam.

The body of the Nano 5G is pretty similar to the last model. The screen did get a bump from 2 inches to 2.2 inches, and the finish is a much shinier anodized aluminum. Oh yeah, there’s also that little camera on the back, but more on that later. The new Nano comes in two models, an 8GB and a 16GB, at $149 and $179, respectively.

Within the Nano’s slim and trim body, Apple added all sorts of goodies, the most notable of which is a video camera. It’s that itty bitty lens you see on the bottom-left of the device if you’re looking at the back. The camera is capable of shooting video at a 640×480 resolution, which are then stored as .mp4 files with h.264 video compression and AAC audio. Unfortunately, the cam doesn’t take still photos. The tech is definitely not something to write home about, and as much as Apple would like the addition of a camera to kill the Flip, I just don’t see it happening. The tech is just too far behind the Flip for the current price.

The other problem I see with the Nano is camera placement. I don’t know if Apple hired a bunch of lefty industrial designers, but someone should have changed this. Granted, it’s probably a space issue – the camera and the screen can’t coexist at the top of the device – but every right-handed person that touches one of these things will have the same complaint: my hand is always in the frame. There’s just no way around it. It’s the natural place for a righty to grab a device of that size.

The camera brings us to the next addition: the microphone. Again, awesome to be able to record video with audio on such a tiny device. Again, terrible mic placement. The ability to record voice memos is great, but gets quickly diminished by the sound of my index finger rubbing over the mic as I talk. The bottom of the device is the natural place to put your hand – hell, that’s where the controls are – so why put the mic right where my hand will always be? Stupid.

Among the smarter things Apple did in the update was add a radio. Yes, there’s an iPod with an FM tuner. Crazy, no? The tuner does require a headset to work, but it works well and has some cool features. The radio app retrieves RDS info, allows you to pause and rewind, and you can even tag songs. Plugging the Nano into your computer will take you to the iTunes location for songs you’ve tagged.

Last and certainly least, Apple added a pedometer to the Nano. I don’t know if they’re marketing this at soccer moms or the early 90’s, but it seems like a pretty weak addition. In fact, the whole thing operates like a lite version of the Nike+ campaign, which itself strikes me as incredibly lame.

To wrap it all up, I’m unimpressed. This update is a completely underwhelming attempt to take market away from Pure Digital and the Flip, and I think consumers are going to notice. The camera is bad enough that Apple doesn’t even want you to see the pictures it captures. The video isn’t a whole lot better, and the rest of the features have been on other MP3 players for years. I guess this is what happens when you’re on top and no one else is even close. You get complacent. Really, really complacent.