Anyone else feel their lineup is extremely.. non-Apple-y now?
It used to make a lot of sense - to me anyway - how they arranged their iPods from cheap(ish)/only basic features to the luxury-versions with more features.
I.e., shuffle -> play music;
nano -> all of shuffle's features + view album covers, song texts, song titles to the music, calendar;
iTouch -> all of nano's features + the whole smartphone without phone thing
But now, ever since the introduction of the iPhone 3G, this doesn't hold true any more.
The iTouch is supposed to have all the features of the nano plus more - but now it doesn't have a camera?
The only reason to give the nano a camera and not the iTouch would be to distinguish it from the iPhone and market it as a gaming device. But then it doesn't make sense how the basic model of the iTouch has a slower processor and GPU than the iPhone.
I don't know, but from these oddities in the lineup I'd almost go as far and predict more changes to come very shortly. Either push the iTouch more in the gaming niche and make the nano the new multimedia device (as opposed to just audio in the first two generations of it), or push the iTouch more into the all-in-one direction - which would mean there ought to be a new iPhone as well in order to keep the two apart.
Not sure if I'm making sense here, but right now the nano, iTouch, iPhone lineup is quite counter-intuitive and almost non-transparent (yes, choice is not always a good thing).
I don't know whether I'd like to think this was done with Jobs' approval or not. Jobs' approval means that the guy made a major oopsie. Without Jobs' approval would imply that the guy really is the one holding Apple together.
You're right. The way to tell is how much difficulty you are having in explaining how the whole line-up/hierarchy works.
I think it goes against one of the Apple-y things that I quite like. Make something people like enough to pay for. Don't build a product based on cross subsidies, non-transparent pricing, customer lock-in (not sure about this one), etc. That concept (I think) keeps Apple grounded. If they can make something that users are willing to pay enough for to make Apple a profit, they make money. If they can't they don't.
I think you're overcomplicating things a bit. They all play music and that's still what most people buy iPods for. You still have basically three categories of device: small size, mid-sized, large. The amount of storage space included mostly matches the physical size of the device. The extra features on different models isn't really that important. Seems like they just need to give owners of older models some reason to upgrade and it doesn't really matter that much what those features are.
one of the problems apple had about the time jobs came back was a confusing product line. nobody had the discipline to say "no," so there were a bunch of nearly identical competing products. novices had trouble picking one.
this current situation isn't nearly as bad as that one was, but it's definitely headed in that direction.
It used to make a lot of sense - to me anyway - how they arranged their iPods from cheap(ish)/only basic features to the luxury-versions with more features.
I.e., shuffle -> play music; nano -> all of shuffle's features + view album covers, song texts, song titles to the music, calendar; iTouch -> all of nano's features + the whole smartphone without phone thing
But now, ever since the introduction of the iPhone 3G, this doesn't hold true any more. The iTouch is supposed to have all the features of the nano plus more - but now it doesn't have a camera?
The only reason to give the nano a camera and not the iTouch would be to distinguish it from the iPhone and market it as a gaming device. But then it doesn't make sense how the basic model of the iTouch has a slower processor and GPU than the iPhone.
I don't know, but from these oddities in the lineup I'd almost go as far and predict more changes to come very shortly. Either push the iTouch more in the gaming niche and make the nano the new multimedia device (as opposed to just audio in the first two generations of it), or push the iTouch more into the all-in-one direction - which would mean there ought to be a new iPhone as well in order to keep the two apart.
Not sure if I'm making sense here, but right now the nano, iTouch, iPhone lineup is quite counter-intuitive and almost non-transparent (yes, choice is not always a good thing).