With this crazy new iPod lineup, Apple is giving up something we haven’t really had before with iPods: a really hard decision. The Touch is nice, but 16GB of space sucks. And hey, 160GB on the Classic is awesome, but it’s lacking any other new features. As someone who is currently rocking a 60GB Video iPod, I honestly don’t know what to do. None of these new iPods are really what I’m looking for; Apple went and spread the features I want across multiple devices.
AU: My take? I’ve been holding out on a big iPod for years now, waiting for the ‘true’ video iPod to arrive. I still have a 3rd gen iPod – yeah, with the row of buttons… and, yes, it still runs, thanks very much (*touch wood*) – plus I bought a (product) red nano earlier in the year to use as voice recorder / running buddy. I’ll be grabbing the iPod Touch as soon as I can get my hands on it.
I’d love a touch, as having that Wi-Fi would be awesome. But cutting 44GB out of my portable library? And paying $500 for what amounts to a fancy screen and a Wi-Fi device I’ll realistically only be able to use at home? I don’t know. Then there’s the Classic, which would be able to hold all 120GB+ of my music with plenty of room to breathe. It’s cheaper, would hold everything as well as some videos, but is just, you know, boring. No Wi-Fi, no huge touchscreen, no fun.
Then, of course, there’s the third choice: stick with my perfectly fine 60GB iPod and not blow any more money on something I don’t need. And with strong reservations about both of my iPod choices, that might just be the option I go with. How about you? Will you be grabbing a Touch despite the dinky hard drive? Will you be upgrading to a monster Classic? Maybe getting a fatty nano?
Scuba
Thursday, September 6, 2007 at 9:01 AMYeah, no WiFi on the Classic is a massive hole in the lineup, there’s no reason to upgrade…
I guess they just jammed a bigger Hard Drive into the existing hardware and called it a new model…
To me the classic is an interim model, In 6-9 months time (now that the design team has the touch and fatty nano out the door) I’d expect a new generation Classic with WiFi, perhaps 120 and 200Gb drives (if drives are available) and a new Shuffle lineup, with small price drops on Nano and Touch.
Marat
Thursday, September 6, 2007 at 9:05 AMI currently have the 80Gb video and I am really disappointed with the new iPod touch. I was hoping for a 40, 50, 60 or even 80Gb hard drive.
Making it a flash device with only 8 or 16Gb of memory makes it quite useless for those of us who have a considerable amount of songs/videos.
But like you said, buying the iPod touch for that high price and only getting the screen and Wi-Fi and loosing its actually ability to store music and videos seems pointless to me.
First thing I said when I saw the Apple site this morning was “they just screwed up”.
I’ll be holding onto my 80Gb for the next year or so, and maybe Apple will smarten up and released a HDD iPod Touch.
Thanks,
Marat
Seamus
Thursday, September 6, 2007 at 9:34 AMYeah, fair enough if you have a current 80GB model. As a hold out, and as someone who hasn’t downloaded every song/album in existence, I’m comfortable with 16GB flash. I prefer flash as a format, and I can understand why they maintain this split right now.
This time next year I’m confident the touch will have 32GB, maybe 64GB flash on board and that will make it better for those of you with the big collections.
Me, I’m a user who is happy to sync. 16GB is still plenty of music and probably a season of a TV show. I don’t ever need to go more than a day or two between syncs, so 80GB / 160GB drives are overkill for me. They just become extra portable storage.
David D.
Thursday, September 6, 2007 at 3:58 PMIs Apple doing a Microsoft? They lampooned Microsoft over all the versions of Vista and now they are doing the same to the iPod.
I think scuba is right, that the beefier classic is an interim (hopefully) until they beef up the storage on the touch.
One things for sure, I want a “touch” but anything less than the 40gb on my current ipod photo means I’ll continue to wait. The “classic” is just putting a new set of tyres on old technology.