It's a fine comparison. The iPhone and iPod Touch are nearly exactly alike. I just lack the phone and the camera. As far as functionality, I do very similar things with the two of them, the only two things the ipod can't do being... camera and phone (and I guess GPS.) But these are all software things, and I'm talking about smoothness and speed. The ipod is a much older piece of hardware but it runs apps fast, doesn't lag things out switching to landscape, and pandora doesn't stutter. I'm even being nice here and avoiding the issue of no multi-touch.
Speaking of early adopters, I bought the touch the day they were released. So I was an early adopter of that too. Although it has had several firmware updates it didn't start out as bad as my moment. I'm not an apple fan, i'm just trying to point out how ridiculous the issues are that this new and shiny system is having problems non-existent in a much older and slower device.