iPod dead? Nope, says Apple: New Touch has iPhone 6 brains Apple has whipped out a new iPod Touch model with an eight-megapixel camera, a new processor, and more case colors. The iPhone-without-the-phone gizmo – which many assumed would be killed off by Apple – will now come in space gray, silver, gold, pink, or blue. It will also use Apple's A8 ARM-compatible CPU, which first …
Agreed, an iPod Touch with a shitload of of storage for music would be a good thing. According to Anandtech, Apple use particularly fast flash memory in iPhones to reduce the loading time of apps - but a music-based device would be just fine with slower memory... just give us more of it (unlikely given Apple's focus on their new music streaming service)
>Has it got especially better battery life?
Most dedicated MP3 players have very good battery life.
>Is it suitable for small children you don't want to give a phone to?
Well, the sprogs can't call Thailand on it, delete your phone book or look at your naughty pictures. Beyond that, it was Microsoft who first implemented the obvious idea of a 'Kid's Mode' on a mobile OS.
>Now which pocket did I put my earbuds for my Sony Z1?
Can't help you. Are you talking about propriety Sony models with the stereo mics that use the Z-series phone's DSP for noise cancelling duties?
(Whooah, I've just given credit to Apple, MS and an Android vendor. Cool cool cool. )
"Well, the sprogs can't call Thailand on it, delete your phone book or look at your naughty pictures"
Well they can still use the browser to look at other people's naughty pics..
"(Whooah, I've just given credit to Apple, MS and an Android vendor. Cool cool cool. )"
Uh-oh, downvotes from all kinds of haters now!! El Reg might need to change the vote counter to int long :-D
"With big advancements like the A8 chip and the 8 megapixel iSight camera, customers can experience next-level gameplay, take even more beautiful photos, and enjoy their favorite music, TV shows and movies."
So basically it can do less than a current phone but it is still expected to excite... I need poked with the big clue stick because I just don't see it..
It's also a lot cheaper than a phone - 16gb iPhone 6 is £539, 16gb iPod Touch is £159.
Interestingly that's what work just paid to replace my iPhone 5 with a Microsoft Lumia 735. It's only got 8GB of storage, but since it has a memory card slot, it can go up to 256GB for less than the price of the 64GB iPod Touch. While also doing the phone stuff - and probably having a longer battery life, comparing to the previous iPhone or my colleague's iPhone 6.
It's got a surprisingly decent camera - and does better as a phone - in that I get a signal and can make calls at home, which the iPhone could only manage by the windows.
The price of both of these and the iPads, show just how overpriced iPhones, and top of the range Androids, are nowadays.
Interesting to have the downvotes, but no counter-argument. I could also have mentioned the Motorola G, which is only £150. And comes with I believe 16 or 32 GB.
My old hard disk iPod is on its last legs. After many years excellent service. The battery and storage on my iPhone 5 wasn't sufficient to replace it. Apple stopped the 80GB iPod, and the Touch doesn't have enough storage. I've got over 30GB of music now - and more than that in podcasts. That is laziness, in that I could keep unloading and loading podcasts on to keep the storage use down, but I can't be arsed. I want to have all my unlistened ones on the device, so it only needs synching with the computer when it's charged each weekend.
The conclusion I came to was to get a cheap phone with memory card slot as a replacement. But the battery on mine seems to be up to it, and memory cards are cheap. Just got to try Microsoft's software now. At least they've killed the frankly awful Zune - which made iTunes look like a work of elegant genius.
"Interesting to have the downvotes, but no counter-argument."
Not really, you made two fatal mistakes - you praised a Microsoft product, and implied it had any advantage over an Apple product. Frankly, it's amazing you only had 2 downvotes; you'll have pissed off the fanbois by saying something bad about iPhones, angered the Penguin God by implying Microsoft have done anything good ever, and you've probably infuriated samsung fans by suggesting anything other than a sammy has decent battery life.
Salmon Rushdie went into hiding for lesser thought crimes.
>So basically it can do less than a current phone but it is still expected to excite... I need poked with the big clue stick because I just don't see it..
Look to the right:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/09/smartphones_are_ludicrously_underused_so_steal_their_brains/ (but first remove the phone, as it's superfluous to needs).
"the iPod has fallen out of favor these days as users moved from dedicated media players to smartphones. Apple's last quarterly report relegated iPod to an "other products" category that brought in just $1.68bn of revenue"
Let's say that's roughly $6 billion annual iPod revenue.
In comparison, it's ca.
1.5x Adobe's 2014 annual revenues (https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/1953/8974/2h/wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/investor-relations/PDFs/AdobeQ4FY14EarningsRelease.pdf)
1/2 of Nokia's 2014 annual revenue (https://secure.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/NOK/financials)
1/3 of Microsoft's 2014 Devices & Consumer segment's annual revenue (http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar14/index.html)
Not too shabby for a 'relegated' product!
Play/pause/skip/volume are all on most peoples headphone cords.
If you don't have that, you can get ones that do have it, both cheap (http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MD827ZM/B/apple-earpods-with-remote-and-mic?fnode=75) and decent (http://pro.ultimateears.com/products/custom-monitors/for-audiophiles/ue-900s), or of course bluetooth ones have them on-board.
Click wheel? I prefer the Shuffle's control pad myself. Wish they'd done work with that; 2GB in 2015 FFS, and crazy prices.
But I'm warmed by this new Touch. MIA is Touch ID, surprisingly, but otherwise it's very sweet. Nice to see Apple taking it a bit more seriously than previous models. Lasts forever with "Airplane mode" turned on; put all your stuff on and enter paradise. Really the soul of iOS, compared to the much bulkier iPhone.
"Play/pause/skip/volume are all on most peoples headphone cords."
Nope, not on mine, nor those of the tech savvy teenagers in my house. Not on my cheap earbuds nor on my high end cans. It's not that I'm a luddite, it is just that my headphones need to be able to work with many different devices such as TVs, the household stereos, my personal DAB radio, my old cassette walkman , android devices , several different laptops of different vintages and OSes and I don't want to spend money on several sets of almost identical things... sheesh, I'm begining to feel like Mel Smith in a hifi shop asking about his old 78s.
Apple, you want to sell me another iDevice, bring back a proper tactile interface - you know - one with buttons or similar that I can operate by touch in the dark or when I'm wearing gloves , or when the device is in my pocket. Of course the cynic in my thinks that the main reason you dumped the classic is because it might mean you sell less apps or Apple music subscriptions.
XP left mainstream support 6 years ago, and Microsoft washed their hands of it completely last year. Apple have a notoriously harsh approach to legacy systems support - and even they only just stopped supporting it. What part of you thinks that, reasonably, Apple or indeed Microsoft, should support your cheapness/laziness further. FFS man upgrade your OS! I bet you're still connected to the internet with that thing. The mind boggles.
Well I never ! Learn something new every day after 66 years.
Before I blow the monthly morale budget on a £329 128GB touch I thought I'd check the small print.
Others might not.
Sad to say my main iTunes DB is on a swimmingly fast, reliable & secure XP system.
Weighing up the migration strategy. Use one of my several Macs or other non XP PCs.
Or get off my lazy butt & go buy a new Mac mini just for the hell of it.
Decisions, decisions.....
It's only time & money.
So all you have to put with is the lousy Lightening connector (as in it will regularly lighten your pockets as they break very easily and the iDevice wont even let you use a cheap copy) the rubbish iTunes software, the iCloud stealing away all of your diligently ripped music library, the lack of open extensible storage on the iPod itself ...
Well, there is a 128Gb option, whereas there was a 64Gb maximum for the old one. So there is more storage if you are willing to pay for it.
People like to play games on these things: the A8 means it will run all the latest ones, whereas the A5 in the old model is not going to be up to running a lot of things.
Software is what this upgrade is all about really. The old iPod touch was getting to the point where it was hard work for Apple to keep supporting it with current software, and it wasn't going to provide good performance for third party apps. Apple either had to discontinue it or update it. Having decided to update, they gave it a good upgrade, so they can continue to sell it for another three years without having to think about it much.
Once a primary source of Apple's income, the iPod has fallen out of favor these days as users moved from dedicated media players to smartphones.
Not true at all. I'd love to pickup an actual iPod with a decent amount of music storage (say on the order of 100G) and maybe a bluetooth connection for the car. No need for a camera or wifi, just the usb to my Windows PC to synch my music collection. But Apple don't make/market those anymore.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
