I work retail, and we sell far more shuffles than Touches. If people want an iPhone sized touch screen iOS device they just buy an iPhone most of the time. An extremely outdated iPod Touch (the latest one) is the same price as a brand new no-contract iPhone SE that is better in every way and doesn't need to be activated as a phone.
I 100% agree with you that doing an iphone se as music player makes more sense than an ipod touch generally. After all you can get an iphone se 32gb for $199 from providers like tracphone, simple mobile, total wireless. You do not have to sign up for service for this $199 for 32gb.
And with the ipod touch 6th gen (aka current) going for $199 to $249 (the MSRP) it just makes sense to go the iphone se route.
Where I am quibbling is the ipod touch 6th gen is using the same memory and ram as the iphone 6. Sure the iphone se hardware is like an iphone 6s, but the iphone 6 / ipod touch 6th gen hardware is not EXTREMELY OUTDATED. Iphone 6 is still pretty fast with the a8, even though the a9, and a10 cpus are faster.
No the ipod touch 6th gen problem is not the hardware, it is just no reasons to choose this hardware when you can get BETTER hardware for a CHEAPER price. To quote the departed Anand (who now works for Apple and not his website Anandtech) there is almost always no bad hardware, almost always it is instead bad prices.
Partly agree, but also I am talking about the US marketplace. And we have unintentional subsidies some business do on apple products (and this is a good thing for US consumers).
Iphone SE MSRP is $399. Now companies like Verizon, AT&T, but also 3rd party MVNO do not pay $399 but get some lower price due to bulk purchasing. These "phone company providers" may gladly lose move selling you a phone at $199 that may cost them $250 or $300 for they figure if you get 6 months of phone service they will recap their "loss leader" phone price within a few months lets say 3 or so and thus any phone service after 3 months is profit besides maintence / variable costs.
But the US market and Apple rules can't force you to activate a phone with these providers. You do not have to sign a contract. So in other words it is an act of faith, a subsidy that is not 100% always going to work out with ALL customers for there will be some free riders who buy the HIDDEN subsidy in the subsidized price.
But in non US countries a company may not be willing to do this. Thus the old $249 MSRP for the ipod touch, and the new $199 ipod touch MSRP may make sense in some poorer country like in Asia, Africa, South America, etc. You want better hardware and the theoretical ability to use cell phone service at the later date...well then you will have to pay for it.
My point is when you look at price you need to look at Value separate from price and assume different people's point of views. The consumer, the retailer, the seller of the hardware (the phone company), and the original maker and sometimes seller of the hardware direct (which is Apple). Each of them need to extract their value from this, and this dictates price. Note price is also affected by one product competing another substitutional product.
You can already sync a playlist to the Apple Watch, but there's a 1GB limit (the discontinued Shuffle had 2GB). In the next version they'll probably add more local storage and an LTE option so you can listen to music without having a heavy phone in your pocket.
gerz1219, your Apple Watch playlist is limited to 1 GB by default. In the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, you can change this setting to 2 GB (or 500 MB or 100 MB). If you prefer to limit by song number, you can limit your playlist to 15, 50, 125, or 250 songs, which use a lot more space, depending on the bitrate and length of your songs.
@Wolfpup, you do it through the Watch app on an iPhone. It will pull songs from your Music library so I guess you could say it syncs with iTunes since you can sync the iPhone with iTunes.
BT headphones only. There is no 3.5mm or Lightning port on the Watch. A nifty feature is the W1 chip in the (currently) 3 headphones from Apple and Beats that allow for instant BT setup and switching across all your devices with little effort. You don't have to use these, but it does make pairing and switching sources for BT headphones easier.
Once they dropped physical controls (and thus the ability to operate it without removing it from your pocket), the iPod Nano ceased to have a reason to exist. At that point, I switched to a bluetooth headset with on-board AVRCP controls, and just used the phone I already carry.
> ... it may simply make no sense for Apple to keep the cheap and unpopular models in the lineup.
Am I the only one who's rather disturbed by such a statement?
Popularity seems to be very relative, as Apple throws out products left and right which still have a market and make a lot of money just because there've products in their lineup making a magnitude more money. This troubles me quite a bit since I really like Apple products but "mainstream" is in many cases less useful than specialised to me, in some cases that makes them even close to useless even (like the current MBP).
They can afford to take the financial hit and just because someone may still want it they technically "still have a market," but that's not how this works.If the cost for R&D, component sourcing, manufacturing, assembly, etc. is not expected to yield a net profit then they should drop it.
So many iPod models, and yet none are as good as the Sansa Fuze in my car. Requirements: <3.2" tall, a screen, physical buttons, 50GB (or microSD slot).
I have one iPod and getting an error with safari browser is not working, last week I found an iPod Support https://appletechsupportnumber.net/ipod-support/ and they solved Within a day, and its free, I was shocked.
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ozzuneoj86 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
I work retail, and we sell far more shuffles than Touches. If people want an iPhone sized touch screen iOS device they just buy an iPhone most of the time. An extremely outdated iPod Touch (the latest one) is the same price as a brand new no-contract iPhone SE that is better in every way and doesn't need to be activated as a phone.Roland00Address - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
Let me quibble with something you said ozzuneoj86I 100% agree with you that doing an iphone se as music player makes more sense than an ipod touch generally. After all you can get an iphone se 32gb for $199 from providers like tracphone, simple mobile, total wireless. You do not have to sign up for service for this $199 for 32gb.
And with the ipod touch 6th gen (aka current) going for $199 to $249 (the MSRP) it just makes sense to go the iphone se route.
Where I am quibbling is the ipod touch 6th gen is using the same memory and ram as the iphone 6. Sure the iphone se hardware is like an iphone 6s, but the iphone 6 / ipod touch 6th gen hardware is not EXTREMELY OUTDATED. Iphone 6 is still pretty fast with the a8, even though the a9, and a10 cpus are faster.
No the ipod touch 6th gen problem is not the hardware, it is just no reasons to choose this hardware when you can get BETTER hardware for a CHEAPER price. To quote the departed Anand (who now works for Apple and not his website Anandtech) there is almost always no bad hardware, almost always it is instead bad prices.
osxandwindows - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
Keep in mind that the iPod touch is mostly for kids who don't need an iPhone.Roland00Address - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
Partly agree, but also I am talking about the US marketplace. And we have unintentional subsidies some business do on apple products (and this is a good thing for US consumers).Iphone SE MSRP is $399. Now companies like Verizon, AT&T, but also 3rd party MVNO do not pay $399 but get some lower price due to bulk purchasing. These "phone company providers" may gladly lose move selling you a phone at $199 that may cost them $250 or $300 for they figure if you get 6 months of phone service they will recap their "loss leader" phone price within a few months lets say 3 or so and thus any phone service after 3 months is profit besides maintence / variable costs.
But the US market and Apple rules can't force you to activate a phone with these providers. You do not have to sign a contract. So in other words it is an act of faith, a subsidy that is not 100% always going to work out with ALL customers for there will be some free riders who buy the HIDDEN subsidy in the subsidized price.
But in non US countries a company may not be willing to do this. Thus the old $249 MSRP for the ipod touch, and the new $199 ipod touch MSRP may make sense in some poorer country like in Asia, Africa, South America, etc. You want better hardware and the theoretical ability to use cell phone service at the later date...well then you will have to pay for it.
My point is when you look at price you need to look at Value separate from price and assume different people's point of views. The consumer, the retailer, the seller of the hardware (the phone company), and the original maker and sometimes seller of the hardware direct (which is Apple). Each of them need to extract their value from this, and this dictates price. Note price is also affected by one product competing another substitutional product.
Wolfpup - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
Glad you brought that up. And the SE is just one generation out of date (and has additional features) versus the iPod Touch that's 2 gens out of date.alexmckay - Tuesday, December 19, 2017 - link
Sad. I remember loving my shuffle as a kid.beisat - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
So what do people use when doing sports these days? Shuffle was great for that.gerz1219 - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
You can already sync a playlist to the Apple Watch, but there's a 1GB limit (the discontinued Shuffle had 2GB). In the next version they'll probably add more local storage and an LTE option so you can listen to music without having a heavy phone in your pocket.solipsism - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
gerz1219, your Apple Watch playlist is limited to 1 GB by default. In the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, you can change this setting to 2 GB (or 500 MB or 100 MB). If you prefer to limit by song number, you can limit your playlist to 15, 50, 125, or 250 songs, which use a lot more space, depending on the bitrate and length of your songs.Wolfpup - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
How does that work? Like it can sync with iTunes like an iOS device, then play through bluetooth headphones?If so that's cool (though it needs more storage) and would be a sort of plausible iPod replacement for at least some uses.
Hopefully it handles podcasts, which is what I'd need it for...
solipsism - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
@Wolfpup, you do it through the Watch app on an iPhone. It will pull songs from your Music library so I guess you could say it syncs with iTunes since you can sync the iPhone with iTunes.BT headphones only. There is no 3.5mm or Lightning port on the Watch. A nifty feature is the W1 chip in the (currently) 3 headphones from Apple and Beats that allow for instant BT setup and switching across all your devices with little effort. You don't have to use these, but it does make pairing and switching sources for BT headphones easier.
edzieba - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
Once they dropped physical controls (and thus the ability to operate it without removing it from your pocket), the iPod Nano ceased to have a reason to exist. At that point, I switched to a bluetooth headset with on-board AVRCP controls, and just used the phone I already carry.Wolfpup - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
The Nano at least has a play/pause button, I think? I still wish iOS devices and the like did!Daniel Egger - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
> ... it may simply make no sense for Apple to keep the cheap and unpopular models in the lineup.Am I the only one who's rather disturbed by such a statement?
Popularity seems to be very relative, as Apple throws out products left and right which still have a market and make a lot of money just because there've products in their lineup making a magnitude more money. This troubles me quite a bit since I really like Apple products but "mainstream" is in many cases less useful than specialised to me, in some cases that makes them even close to useless even (like the current MBP).
solipsism - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
They can afford to take the financial hit and just because someone may still want it they technically "still have a market," but that's not how this works.If the cost for R&D, component sourcing, manufacturing, assembly, etc. is not expected to yield a net profit then they should drop it.AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
So many iPod models, and yet none are as good as the Sansa Fuze in my car. Requirements: <3.2" tall, a screen, physical buttons, 50GB (or microSD slot).Lord of the Bored - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
I miss my Fuze. It was a fantastic little thing.Briank69 - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
I found this funny IPOD Video on youtube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOBvPdqIvu8
Please don't kill the IPODs.
IllinaCruz - Monday, April 16, 2018 - link
I have one iPod and getting an error with safari browser is not working, last week I found an iPod Support https://appletechsupportnumber.net/ipod-support/ and they solved Within a day, and its free, I was shocked.