New iPod touch | Hacker News Reader

New iPod touch

apple.com

49 pointsjameshk63 comments

Sweet glad to finally see iPod Touch getting some modern love, just wished they came with bigger screens.

Does Android have a comparable device? i.e. Internet/Music sans-phone in your pocket that's great at capturing quality vids/pics?

Edit:

The Samsung Galaxy Camera 2 looks close: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/samsung-galaxy-camera-2

I'm not meaning to sound like a jerk, but comparable Android devices would be actual phones, with sd card slots. Pick one with a camera you like, turn off data/phone, and you can get whatever storage you want for a pittance.

Alright, then do you have examples? Because I don't believe there are many that would be decently powered (comparable to A8), with SD card slots at that price point.

I don't know where you are, but here LG G3, Motorola X2, Sony Xperia Z3 Compact all cost about the same as an iPod Touch, and I'd say all of those are fairly high-end.

I remember looking for a Touch-style Android device a few years ago, and they kind-of existed then. They don't exist now. I think the big reason is that there's nothing like iTunes in the Android universe where you can have a robust desktop app with your own audio files. The non-networked style still has a place for runners, which is why its so nice to have the M8 in the Touch.

I'm sure the Android ecosystem has many equivalents, but they'll never be very high profile. The cellular hardware inside phones doesn't add too much to the cost, so customers are better off just buying a phone and not putting in a SIM card.

I'm pretty sure Apple sells the $200 model of the Touch at a bit of a loss, which they can do because people who buy and iPod Touch rather than an iPhone will probably buy a lot of music, and most of them will buy it through Apple (or subscribe to Apple Music).

The only other smartphone makers that have significant music services are Amazon and Google. A non-phone phone doesn't really make sense in the Nexus line, which is meant to be a demonstration of the core "Android experience". In Amazon's Fire lineup, it doesn't really make sense because it's too similar to their existing products. Actually you could argue that the Kindle Fire is the equivalent to the iPod Touch in Android world.

I very much doubt Apple sells anything at a loss. It's really not their style. Their margins are the envy of the entire industry, and Apple takes home 90% of cell phone profits[0]

The fact that they can create a phone/device with "inferior" tech and sell it at blockbuster margins proves to me that most people aren't interested in specs, but rather the whole experience and ecosystem. This is something Apple understands well and invests heavily in experience.

[0] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/09/dominant-apple-takes-90-of-sm...

Interesting that the landing page describes colours, screen resolution, even the CPU architecture and speed - but not the storage capacity. I have >100GB of music on on old iPod Classic and capacity is the most important factor for me.

http://www.apple.com/ipod/compare-ipod-models/

16 - 128GB in price ranges of $199 to $399

Haa 49$ for a 2GB screenless player. I wonder how large is the profit on this one. And I thought Sandisk were mean to charge 40$ for a 4GB Sansa Clip.

Or the music quality. Same as the iPhone (which is pretty good, admittedly)? Or better?

That depends on which bands you are loading onto it.

I think with the current climate of everything being streamed, CPU and speed are a lot more important than available storage.

This is especially true for the large mobile gaming market, where it's a lot more likely that a parent will buy an iTouch for $199 for their kids to play with vs getting them an iPhone (which wasn't realistic before the refresh due to hardware limitations)

It will be interesting if this refresh will be a one-off or if the iTouch will be kept at parity with the iPhone, surely there should be less concerns about the iTouch cannibalizing the iPhone sales than there were years back when the iPhone was not as ubiquitous.

I prefer to "own" my music rather than streaming it, and I'm aware that I'm not really in the target audience for this device.

Same here. I'm also not in the target demographic, and that's fine.

Steaming services are relatively useless out here unless you've somehow cached everything you want to listen to. Mountainous terrain with spotty coverage, long distances along service deadspots, etc. But, I'm likely not in the age group that "gets" the obsession with streaming. I'd rather have my music on a device that's with me.

Interesting that it has the same design aesthetic as the 6/6+ but has a smaller screen (4"). I bet a lot of people would want an iPhone the same size as this thing.

I wonder if the iPhone 6c will be the same size as an iPhone 6, the same size as an iPhone 5, or the same size as this iPod Touch.

I believe the iPhone 5 and this iPod touch are both 4 inches.

No, it has the same design aesthetic as the iPad Air. The sides are rounded in a "quarter pipe" versus the "half pipe" completely rounded edges of the 6/6+.

This is interesting. I wonder how that decision was made.

Because it's the same design it's basically always had? Apple is far more conservative with iPod Touch redesigns than iPhone. It's generally just updating the back and colors slightly to match it with current aesthetics.

It's just interesting to me that the iPod touch (which many people think of as "an iPhone minus the cellular chip") follows the design cues of the iPad (which many people think of as "a big iPhone, often minus the cellular chip"). There certainly doesn't seem to be any one right answer so I think it'd be interesting to hear how Apple decided on the rounding they use on the various models.

Well, the iPod Touch really is a smaller iPad when you think of it. These two are a lot closer than they are to the iPhone.

I don't know. An iPad with cellular is hardware-wise arguably more similar to an iPhone than to an iPod touch. Software-wise, it doesn't have Phone.app, of course.

So I suppose that's maybe the key: whereas iPads and iPod touches are always meant to be held at arms length, iPhones are additionally expected to be held against your ear and are shaped slightly differently because of that additional use case.

Or maybe it'd be hard to make a "half-pipe" from aluminum on a device as thin as an iPod touch.

Or maybe it's all just arbitrary and everything in life is random and meaningless.

> Or maybe it's all just arbitrary and everything in life is random and meaningless.

The recent evolutions of Apple's design often make me think that.

Is there even still a market for such devices? While $200 dollars may be a lot less than an unlocked iPhone, its certainly not cheap. Plus you can get an iPhone 6 at that price if you are willing to get into a contract.

Kids under 10 that want to play iOS games.

Or Siracusa...

Cheap iOS development device?

Outside the US the costs of wireless contracts are much more obvious and $200 sound very different than $700. I could see parents giving one of these to their kids as a Christmas gift.

>> "if you are willing to get into a contract"

Kids can't get into contracts. People with bad credit can't get into phone contracts. Sure lots of parents buy their kids smartphones now but a lot can't afford to do that. I still think there's a big market for this. Plus developers - much cheaper to buy a lot of these for a team than iPhone's.

these are also used by companies for their mobile POS devices

$400 was in range for a Christmas present for my twins last year. $1,300 definitely wasn't.

Plus, I don't want first graders with cellular access.

'Get into a contract' is a weird euphemism. What you really mean is 'you can get an iPhone 6 for $200 if you ignore the actual cost'.

I'm tempted to sneer at iPods too, but it's actually a pretty good choice for the gym. If you're worried about your $800 iPhone getting crushed, an iPod touch will record your lifts just as well; or an iPod Shuffle will clip on to your shirt for a long run through a bad neighborhood.

Also for kids where parents don't want to buy expensive contracts. Or even frugal adults who can just make all their calls through Hangouts/Skype and don't need a cell plan.

The amount of engineering to create such a device is probably minimal, even if the existing market is small. I know people with Android phones who still use an iPod--partly because they have eclectic music tastes. They do to use streaming audio services, but its not the only way they consume music.

It's weird that they are stuck to the 4" screen size with the iPod Touch. I fully expected them to make one the size of iPhone 6, like every previous iPod Touch.

Reusing LCDs from iPhone 5 stock, perhaps?

Some of us prefer this screen size. I'm actually holding off until the 6s to see if they launch a model with a small screen.

Oh absolutely, I can see that people still prefer that screen size, I'm just surprised that Apple decided not to go with a larger size on the iPod Touch.

The problem with the iPod Touch is that it highlights exactly how hefty the margin is on an iPhone.

64gb iPod = £249. 64gb iPhone 6 = £619.

If the only difference was GPS/Cell and a slightly larger battery it would hard to defend charging £370 for that.

But there are other differences. As with the previous generation iPod Touch, they actually cut a lot of subtle corners. Sure, there is some margin in the iPhone related to the cell plan subsidy, but there are some real cost cutting measures in there too. I think a reasonable way to think about it is that with the iPod Touch there is a strong incentive to compromise on the subtle things that users don't notice; the things Jobs always claimed they never compromised on (total fib).

The iPhone 5 vs. iPod Touch 5 was probably the closest the two ever came, the Touch's processor was still running with the 4S's processor/GPU/RAM and the 4's camera, and the body materials weren't equivalent.

Does this make it a reasonable development device for iOS?

That's what I'd use it for. Apple sells them at WWDC for betas, I believe.

I wonder if they will ever put the GPS in the iPod, or if they consider that a big differentiator for the iPhone.

Perhaps it isn't worth it?

iPod doesn't have 3G, so it's offline outside WiFi range. This means you're either close to WiFi and WiFi-based location works, or you couldn't do much with it anyway.

Download the map to the iPod and use GPS to figure out where you are seems a viable solution to me.

I think the GPS receiver comes "for free" with the phone hardware (the DSP/antenna package).

So, I doubt it, just because it wouldn't add much and would cost significantly more (both in components and battery life).

With this kind of device, you're only online when in wifi, so location-aware services are limited too. i.e. what would you do with the GPS info? Maybe photo tagging?

> what would you do with the GPS info?

Using any offline navigator.

I make Gaia GPS, so I care about people being able to locate themselves on a downloaded map, while offline.

GPS receivers are getting absurdly cheap, and I believe there are GPS/gyro or GPS/accelerometer combos that are even cheaper.

I think it is really all about the batter life.

I feel silly for being excited about this, but I'd love it if they carried over these color options to the new model of iPhone. The blue is very sleek.

I want 160gb classic back!

I totally agree. Mine is still going after 5 years of use so I'm expecting to have to replace it any time now. The 128G option is acceptable but, since I'm touching that now, I'll have to thin my library a bit. Still, its better than the 64G and smaller.

Do you truly need your entire library on your device at any one time? 160GB of songs is roughly 111 days of continuous listening (assuming ~1MB/min, but I do admit that number goes up with higher bitrate content). Nobody truly needs that much music at any one time.

The point is to not have to manage it.

The point is flawed. If you aren't going to listen to 90% of your library, why even waste space for it? For that 0.00000001% chance when you remember you loved Fall Out Boy as a teen and want to relive those memories?

I guess, but the other side of it is that lots of people have the $200 to waste on such a piffling concern.

Right but the alternative is to have to go through and decide what music I might listen to.

I mean, there are smart playlists that can be based on last played date (eta: or ratings, or play count, for that matter. Honestly the iTunes smart playlists are a powerful but hugely underused feature), and iTunes fully supports selective syncing where you can just sync certain playlists you like and the smart playlist, and nothing else. iTunes was built as a music management system. Regardless of the crud that has been added on since, that's still what it is at its core.

To paraphrase what advertisers say...

"I know I don't listen to half my music. The problem is, I don't know which half."

The last thing I want to do is shuffle albums/tracks between lists that keep track of which items I listen to, and which ones I don't. And it changes over time, too. That would probably be several days' worth of work. Far, far, far cheaper just to buy a larger device.

I would prefer a larger one. Currently have the 160GB and it's getting restricting.

We're about at the point where I think a 256GB flash-based iPod would be economical, especially with cheaper/slower flash (doesn't really need to be very fast for this use case). It would provide capacity and still have no moving parts, checking all the boxes for me.

Didn't see that one coming.

Except, there was this: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/10/new-ipod-touch-nano-shuf...

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