New Apple iPods Part 1: Meet The iPod Touch September 7, 2007
Read more Apple , Gizmodo UK , MP3 , Music , iPhone , iPod
I’m sure very little of this is a surprise considering Apple’s big event had more leaks than a Russian nuclear power plant, but Apple has introduced a new kind of iPod, called the iPod Touch.
The most noticeable features are the big 3.5in display, with touchscreen controls - a la iPhone – and, for the first time on an iPod, in-built Wi-Fi which can be used with the new iTunes Wi-Fi store for browsing and purchasing tunes on the move. It’s 8mm thin and Flash-based, with an 8GB and 16GB model.
Features like Cover Flow will allow you to browse your music collection by album cover using your finger to scroll. It sports the Safari Web browser onboard, as well as Google Search, Yahoo oneSearch and Apple’s YouTube application.
The 8GB and 16GB models are due in a few weeks and cost £199 and £269, respectively. More on the other new products in a while.-Martin Lynch
Editor | Martin Lynch
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OK, so most of the population of the planet have an iPod today and a large chunk of that will be of the 60GB + variety. People will be thinking of upgrading their iPods when newer/better features come out (like touch screen, wi-fi, bigger screen etc). So Apple release all the features we want but with a tiny storage capacity.
I fail to see the logic here. Why isnt this in at least an 80GB variety? I'm not going to buy something that I cant replace my existing 60GB iPod with ! This should give Apple's competition a good window of opportunity to steal the market.
The way the memory is made on the touch is solid state I think (from what I remember from something else I read) so the maximum capacity of this is quite small as of yet.
My only quibble about the ipod touch is that it is in essence an iphone, just without voice calls... So basically the ipod touch seems just like a sort of internet tablet, only smaller and it plays music etc etc.
The only reason this would be bought I think is probably because it just looks quite nice, and iphone fetishists who can't afford one might want a touch just to pretend :p
The reasoning is simple really, the average joe user does not that masses of music on their PC and the majority of ipod owners 'do not' have a 60GB+ version.
8GB and 16GB are the market sweet spots for the majority of iPod consumers.
The other side of the decision is that driving a large screen like that with touch technology uses much more power than the standard video screen hence conserving power by using solid state storage.
The web browser in my opinion is possibly a very very cool thing - Google Maps anyone? the trick is finding a Wifi signal in the middle of the street.
Having a hard drive based ipod touch would have needed to be three times as 'fat' as it it now. Apple hates fat over functionality. A 160GB version, it would have been hard to cost differentiate the miserly 8GB Flash version. It may have competed too much with upcoming iphones. I guess apple would like the audio/videophiles to buy a classic AND an iphone. The ipod touch won't be for the people who MUST carry all their files around at once. To be honest, the Classic controls look much easier to use for just playing music. I think it's a shame the ipod touch doesn't have radio, or a SD slot for your cameras photos to be added to it. It would have been great if apple had made it easy to replace batteries and add new storage (but they couldn't fleece you with the next upgrade then).
The 16GB one doesn't make much sense to me, it's far too costly. I can see people who'd have bought an 8GB nano, thinking £70 isn't too much extra for the cool extras. If you're a person who only needs 8GB, 16GB is meaningless, anyone with a large collection they must carry with them will want the 80GB at least. 16GB is neither tiny nor big and at another £70 extra is seems very unattractive. Also, the UK seem to be paying about £20 on top of what Americans would expect to pay for an ipod. £179/£249 would still differentiate the ipod range and it 'sounds' far more cheaper than just '£20' off. £269 for a 16GB MP3 players sounds ridiculous. Whereas £249 only seems crazy.
i would buy one if it was 30gb, but 4gb and 8gb? give me a break.
Er, there's a mistake in the article. They are 8Gb and 16Gb at the prices stated, not 4Gb and 8Gb...
the iPod touch is the best thing apple has ever come put with