iPod Nano 5G
Today Apple announced the 5th generation Nano, including features not available on any other iPod models: video camera & microphone, speaker, and FM receiver. (I think the other features are 90% software, i.e. the pedometer uses the existing accelerometer.) Okay, so the iPhone has the camera and microphone, but the iPod Touch and Classic don't. (And both the Touch & iPhone have a speaker)My question is why the Nano got the goodies instead of the Touch. Maybe it's the price point. Apple wants to bring down the price of the Touch to drive AppStore sales. (Although I find it funny. Apple trumpets they've sold 20M Touches, and Wikipedia says they've sold a similar number of iPhones; for a total of 40M. But (again, from Wikipedia) Sony has sold 56M PSPs and Nintendo has sold over 100M DSs. So the Touch/iPhone has a good slice of the portable gaming market but they are still third.)Where was I. Oh right, price. So the price of the Touch dips under that magic US$200 line, putting it awfully close to the Nano. Why buy a Nano instead of a Touch (given that size isn't an issue)? Rather than drop the price of the Nano, Apple gives it some unique features. Also, the smaller Nano screen also won't show how bad the camera is.I also predict the Classic will be phased out, maybe as soon as next year. The sticking point is physical size of the hard drive. But I bet if Apple asks Toshiba, they can some up with a thin single platter hard drive for the iTouch.I really hope Apple updates the 4G Nano firmware to support some of the new features.
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