Apple Updates iPod Touch With A10 Fusion Chip (and Nothing Else) (thenextweb.com) 60
Apple today released a new iPod Touch with A10 fusion chip that supports group FaceTime chats and improved augmented reality capabilities. From a report: The rest of the device is unchanged, compared to the previous generation iPod Touch, but it's still nice to see it receive updates. The new, more powerful chip will let people play the latest games and use the newest iOS features. It starts at $199. This is the first time Apple's updated the iPod Touch since 2015, and yet, there's no FaceID or TouchID; maybe just to save costs or to avoid cannibalizing its more lucrative iPad lineup.
What does Rob Malda think of it? (Score:1)
What does Rob Malda think of it? Where can we find his review of it?
Re:What does Rob Malda think of it? (Score:5, Funny)
He likes it because it has wifi and more space than a Nomad.
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He pans it because its exactly the same thing they released 5 years ago.
This time he's right:
Lame.
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Lame? I've always wanted enhanced augmented reality features in my MP3 player!
Enjoy your vanilla reality, suckers.
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Meh, the counter argument is the iPod is a device which does what it is built to do, and does it very well. And it still has a headphone jack.
I have several generations of iPod (from the big 160GB classic to an older Touch) ... they still work, they're still compatible with iTunes, and they do what they've always done -- play music, sync with my library, and in the case of the iPod Touch, connect to wifi if I
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The counter-counter-argument is that in 5 years the capacity hasn't changed and the price of ssd/flash storage has dropped massively.
$200 for 32GB and $400 for 256GB is $200 for 234GB at a time when $65 will get you a brand name SSD with 480GB storage... at retail.
The thing is just stupidly overpriced... which is par for the course for apple. The base model... 32GB in 2019? Give me a break.
Pathetic.
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OnePlus charges $40 for an extra 128GB of flash memory and 2GB of RAM on their phones.
That's how much of a rip off everyone else is.
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New iPT vs. used iPhone (Score:4, Interesting)
An iPhone owner seeking a non-phone device for their child might choose between keeping an iPhone and buying an iPod touch on the one hand and buying a new iPhone, moving the SIM, and giving the used iPhone to the child on the other.
Re: New iPT vs. used iPhone (Score:2)
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How is that avoiding “cannibalizing”? If I am getting a new iPhone, what do I do with my old one: 1) sell it, 2) convert it to an iPod Touch, or 3) other. How does this new iPod Touch avoid cannabilizing the iPhone in this case?
If I don’t have an old iPhone, I can either purchase an old iPhone (which sometimes is cheaper than an iPod Touch) or an iPod Touch. The only thing this new model does is that it has the A10 Fusion whereas the old model did not. For example I can get a used iPhone 7
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If I am getting a new iPhone, what do I do with my old one: 1) sell it, 2) convert it to an iPod Touch, or 3) other. How does this new iPod Touch avoid cannabilizing the iPhone in this case?
If the iPod touch is attractive enough, it might persuade you not to get a new iPhone in the first place.
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The two choices I had in mind were as follows:
- Get a new iPhone and give your old iPhone without SIM to a child
- Keep your existing iPhone and give a new iPod touch to a child
iPod touch cannibalizes iPhone sales by making the "Keep your existing iPhone" choice more practical.
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Let's do the math... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong (Score:2)
You can get a brand new iPod Touch for $199 or a pre-owned iPhone 7 for $250 (Sprint). Both have similar hardware specs
Would you also claim two laptops, one with a three year older Intel chip and three year older GPU, had similar specs? No.
Apple has made pretty large improvements years to year in chip performance. The newer Fusion chip would mean for example the newer iPod touch could handle augmented reality way better than the 7, as well as 3D graphics performance for games.
"Useful" varies. If you don'
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Just off the top of my head, I see iPod Touches in use at:
- Most obviously, Apple retail stores. They rely on iPods for checkout, since they don't have cash registers. The small town I live in doesn't have anything I'm aware of that follows that pattern, but it's apparently becoming a thing in some trendier locations.
- Various restaurants around town. Waiters use them to take orders and will even swipe your card with them, right at the table.
- The service center at a local car dealership. They have an emplo
MFA recovery device? (Score:2)
There is one useful place an iPod Touch is handy, and that is a place to store MFA codes that are synced with something like Authy, LastPass, 1Password or others. For some random reason Authy completely obliterated its MFA seeds, and synced the corrupted data, but I was still able to get into my accounts and redo everything thanks to an iPod Touch which is kept offline.
Having an offline recovery device can save you from a world of hurt. Yes, in theory, one should have recovery codes, but having a device t
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Apple has made pretty large improvements years to year in chip performance.
They have indeed. None of those improvements made it into this iPod Touch, however, since it's using the same A10 Fusion chip as the iPhone 7 (which, to be clear, still works great; my wife has an iPhone 7 and has no plans to upgrade in the next few years since it's still running like a champ; hell, I'm still back on an iPhone 5s and have been debating about replacing its battery to see if I can stretch it another year, just because, battery life excluded, it's still running like a champ and is only just st
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Aha, my bad then - I thought it was talking about the latest one. I agree with your point generally then, that buying an iPhone 7 instead of this is fairly compelling (though $50 is $50...)...
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You can get a brand new iPod Touch for $199 or a pre-owned iPhone 7 for $250 (Sprint). Both have similar hardware specs
Would you also claim two laptops, one with a three year older Intel chip and three year older GPU, had similar specs?
So an iPhone 7 cannot act as a music player? It does not have the capability to serve music?
In this case, they are similar specs because both are overkill for what you're doing with them. A 3 year old Macbook and a modern, top-of-the-line Lenovo workstation are both overkill - and thus, effectively similar specs - if all you're doing is Facebook and Youtube streaming. A Chromebook would be similar specs because it does more than enough to accomplish your goals.
And it's really, REALLY handy to have a cel
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Personally, I don't see the reason for an iPod at all - it adds nothing that a smartphone doesn't already have
It's physically smaller.
It's cheaper.
It has a headphone jack. (I know, I know.)
I do agree that the market for iPods has gone down lately -- most people just use their phone -- the iPods do still have a few advantages over buying an iPhone to play music. The advantages aren't huge, but they're not non-existent either.
Re:Let's do the math... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what you're saying is that I can buy a device, brand new, today, in full for $50 less than a nearly identical, used device with three years of wear and tear on it, and you're advocating for the latter? Oh, and the latter choice is also saddled with a minimum of a $30/mo. contract that carries additional, undisclosed surcharges, taxes, and fees.
If cellular matters to you, sure, that compromise may be worth it, but most of the people in the market for iPod Touches aren't interested in cellular. They're buying them for kids, they're buying them as dedicated pocket entertainment devices, or they're software companies like the one I work at buying them because they're cheaper than having to outfit everyone with multiple iPhones. Pointing out that you can get a better-on-paper device for $50 more doesn't mean much when the reason it's "better" is something that these people have no interest in.
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There is no contract if you pay Sprint $250 for an iPhone 7. The one with the contract is, of course, $0.
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There is no contract if you pay Sprint $250 for an iPhone 7.
I beg to differ. Try going through the checkout process on Sprint's site and let me know how well that works for you. I tried doing so before I made my previous comment and was unable to get through it without attaching a plan. Granted, as a month-to-month contract I'd assume you could cancel it immediately after the purchase, but I wouldn't be surprised if you'd then be on the hook for the $30 activation fee that they mention they're waiving (via a credit applied to the account within the first three month
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You can actually buy a brand-new iPhone 6S completely contract free for $150 from Walmart [walmart.com]. Caveats are that it's locked to Straight Talk (TracFone/America Movil), and the CPU is one generation older than the newly released iPod Touch (but you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference, Apple kind of phoned it in with the upgrade to the iPhone 7).
Funny thing is, that's not even the best deal on a new iPhone 6S. I bought one from Boost last month to use as a display screen with my DJI drone. It was $100 be
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You can get a brand new iPod Touch for $199 or a pre-owned iPhone 7 for $250 (Sprint). Both have similar hardware specs, except one is more useful than other.
Yes, the one with the brand new battery is far more useful than the one with a 3 year old battery that dies after 1-2 hours of use.
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So you can get a cheap iPod touch that plays music for 40 hours continuously or pay more for a used phone that will need recharging twice a day. And you prefer the latter. How awesome!
Really glad to see this (Score:4, Informative)
This is actually excellent news for those of us with enterprise client bases who rely on these devices to power scanners, readers and other peripherals in the workplace. While Apple will be happy to sell these devices to your kids to use as music players, I'd guess they are actually aimed at keeping existing corporate clients -- many of whom have been snapping up refurbished 5th- and 6th gen models for years now -- happy.
Any company that has invested in form-factor-specific IR scanner sleds, credit card readers, etc., can finally breathe a huge sigh of relief, knowing they've still got a long-term supplier of iPod Touches that fit the existing infrastructure they've been building since the 5th-gen model was introduced in 2012. I remember the switch from the 4th-gen to 5th gen, and the thought of trying to coordinate such a migration at our clients' existing scale has been a driving force in deciding how to continue to meet existing needs. This allows us to take a breath for a few months, at least.
Re:Really glad to see this (Score:5, Interesting)
Same thoughts here. I work at a small-ish software company with multinational clients who deploy (tens of?) thousands of iPod Touches running our apps to their employees. It's not something that the general population would ever be aware of, since nothing these clients do is consumer-facing. This is for stuff like inventory management, updating statuses of equipment as it gets serviced by teams of people working off a shared checklist, or attaching photos of potential problems to their daily reports. It's exactly the sorts of basic tasks that used to be done by a person with a clipboard and a disposable camera, but can now be done faster and more reliably by a person with an iPod and a WiFi connection.
I actually didn't know... (Score:2)