Welcoming iPod “Touch”

Apple hosted an iPod event today, revealing a refreshing of it’s iPod line in time for the holiday season.Here are the key takeaways:

  • iPod Shuffle
    • Just new colors. Yawn.
  • iPod Nano
    • New, fatter, round cornered industrial design
    • It can play videos now!
    • A few small UI enhancement
  • iPod
    • Renamed to iPod “Classic
    • New industrial design.. same rounded corners as iPod Nano
    • Bigger hard disks… up to 160gb
  • iPod Touch
    • New iPod based on the iPhone form factor
    • Large multi-touch display with similar OS X interface as the iPhone
    • Integrated wi-fi
    • Safari web browser, as in iPhone.
    • iTunes wi-fi store now allows users to purchase music directly to the iPod itself, later syncing with the host computer.

The shocker, though, was that the 8gb iPhone, previously listed at $599, will now be sold at $399. The official reasons were that they wanted “an iPhone in every stocking this Christmas,” but I have my own ideas:

  1. The iPhone was overpriced to begin with, targeted at early adopters who would pay any price for the much-hyped system.
  2. The iPhone must come down at some point so new, higher-end iPhones can be introduced at the premium price.
  3. Sales for September and October were likely to slump since all the early adopters had already purchased their iPhone, and all the wait-and-see people were likely to wait for a iPhone v2.0
  4. The number one barrier to most people buying an iPhone was that it’s too expensive. This will start to solve that problem.

Things that weren’t announced that have been in the rumor mill for a long time:

  1. iPhone nano: this one might be a reality, might not. Wait for the next iPhone event in January or February.
  2. Beatles albums now on iTunes. Nope. Not yet. Go buy the CDs if you like the Beatles that much.

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