The annual refresh for the iPods lineup by Apple brought cheer to iPod nano users for sure, but this killed all rumors for iPod touch with camera. While this disappointed many with a commenter on engadget saying ‘Call it “market-leader” syndrome. Once a company owns the market – innovation goes out the door…’. As I would put it, well adding a mic and camera to the iPod touch would have been a real iPhone killer. Just as I pointed out back in July (and got a thumbs down in response 🙁 ), making the iPod touch a better gaming device is what Apple would prefer, rather than adding a camera and hurting the iPhone business.
Agreed that the YouTube uploads that Steve Jobs spoke about at the event wouldn’t happen with those iPod Nano 5G’s, but giving a camera to the iPod Nano is probably the only major thing we could have expected for the worlds best selling MP3 player. I personally miss the HD on the iPod touch though. This gives the Zune HD some edge for sure. However, the good thing is that Apple has honored us with some price cuts on the iPod touch. The old 8GB shall now cost $199, while the new 3G iPod touch 32GB and 64GB shall cost $299 and $399 respectively.
The new iPod touch are 50% faster and support OpenGL ES 2.0. We suspect Apple must have updated them with the same 800Mhz chipset as seen in iPhone 3GS. Also, the new iPod touch will get the goodness of iPhone OS 3.1.1 with better App Store management via iTunes 9.
The new genius feature on App Store would now recommend you apps that you might like, based on your taste (yeah customized!). With 1.8bln apps downloaded Apple sure has a lot of our account data and app download history to get that right.