Wish List and Predictions for 2010 iPods
2010-08-11 14:29:46
The new iPods should be announced soon. I've been way wrong about them every time, always expecting them to be iPhone minus the voice calling feature.
Once again, I'm going to suggest my wish list, and probably be disappointed again.
Prices
All prices across the line will be the same, with the current iPod touch demoted to the $199/8GB price point.
iPod Touch
'Retina Display' 90% certain: I mean, how could they not do this one, given the economies of scale of having the same display for iPhone 4?
Still + video camera. 75% certain: I was shocked when they didn't launch this last year. The biggest problem, IMO, is that they insisted on making the iPod case thinner than the iPhone. Which they may still want to do, which I think would kill the camera.
Front-facing camera. 90% certain: it's actually more likely than the back camera. I think Apple wants Facetime across a wide range of devices. This is the make or break for me: if the iPod touch has this feature, I will buy one. If not, I won't.
3G & GPS option: 25% certain: since Apple went through all the trouble to negotiate a simple pay-as-you-go 3G deal with AT&T for iPad, why wouldn't they extend this to iPod? It just makes huge sense for location services and itunes stores. And ibookstore. The big sticking point is that 3G+GPS is a $130 option for iPad, and it seems like too big a premium on a $300-400 device. And AT&T might (rightly) view an iPod with 3G data only as a trojan horse for Skype.
physical dimensions: same as iPhone 4: 10% certain. I'd personally much rather have an iPod with huge battery life and 64GB storage that is the same thickness as an iPhone 4, than one that is arbitrarily 20% thinner or whatever. But I think Apple likes to make iPhone and iPod visually distinct.
no stainless steel band: 60% certain. A clean way to make the iPod look different and keep the same dimension would be use a different materal for the superstructure: aluminum; chromed steel; or maybe a metal with a bonded color surface like the last generation of nano. Then you could order your iPod touch in different colors: silver, pink, purple, blue.
iPod Nano
- tiny touch screen. Wild speculation: the nano will shrink to be just the size of the screen on the current nano, or maybe just that size + a border on one side for your fingers to grip. Still metal unibody, but not rounded off like current nano. More of a pancake form, like the iPhone 4.
iPod shuffle
- unchanged
iPod Classic
- dropped. RIP iPod Classic.