Can Apple Maintain the iPod's Relevance?

CNN - Can Apple Maintain the iPod's Relevance?

I certainly hope so. I realize I'm not the core demographic, but the iPod allows me to carry my entire music collection with me at all times and easily play it almost anywhere. As someone who's music collection nearly fills an 80gb iPod it would be a real pain to have to downgrade to something smaller like my iPhone. Once again, I know I'm in the minority, but the whole reason to own a device that large for me is so I can listen to anything on a whim. What's the point of owning a vast music collection in the digital age if you can't immediately access it in it's entirety when every you want? As it is, I'm getting the point where I need to upgrade to a bigger iPod (if such a thing exists) or start picking and choosing what I carry with me. The problem with that is of course if I'm driving down the road some night and get the urge to listen to Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You" (because who hasn't?) and were I to fill my iPod based on what I'm likely to listen to, this might not be on there simply because I've probably only listened to it three times in the last 10 years.

Culling down to a smaller device just isn't worth it for me and the idea of an Apple run cloud vault of my own music terrifies me. On the the one hand, I'm still sore from the days of Apple's strict adherence to DRM and an Apple run cloud sounds like another way to regulate how I can and can't use the music I own. The other problem is connectivity. I want to access my music on the road, wherever that may be and at the best quality possible. If the future means downloading my music from a cloud server I'm picturing poor streaming quality, drop outs, and (for those who use AT&T) giant gaps in coverage.

I'm a dinosaur, I know. I just hope that myself and people like me are a large enough niche for someone to continue to cater to. Not everyone is satisfied with carrying around only 100 or so tracks at a time. Some of us want more variety and choice than that.