A few weeks ago, just a bit before WWDC, there was a small Apple announcement which caught me by surprise — an update to the iPod Touch product line! I know, I’m late as hell to write about this but whatever.
I’m going to be completely honest here. As the title suggests, I thought Apple had killed the whole damned iPod line back in 2017! Considering that most people had long ago switch to listening to music on their phones, both locally stored and via streaming services, I honestly thought Apple had just let it go in favor of the iPhone.
Clearly I was mistaken — I had mixed up the end of the iPod Shuffle and Nano product lines, somehow, to include the iPod Touch. This is ignoring, of course, when Apple killed off the iPod Classic back in 2014 which, to me, pretty much was the death of the “true” iPod product line.
Whatever case, it looks like the iPod Touch isn’t dead yet, which again surprises me at this stage — I wouldn’t think there would be too much of a market to keep the product around, but it looks like sales are good enough and demand stays strong enough to keep the product around and being upgraded on off years.
Given that an iPod touch is, in effect, an iPhone without the phone features (in the most simple description, anyway) it has its own benefit of being a small iOS device that isn’t actually a phone but can run most any application that an equivalent iPhone could run. Naturally you think “great for kids” which it is, but how many kids don’t already have phones?
Then again, seeing that 128 and 256GB models are available and the prices are reasonable, the idea of me buying one as a dedicated music player for all the Eurobeat and Korean / Japanese music I have collected over the years isn’t too crazy a prospect. After all, I do own an iPod Classic (which has been “in the shop” so to speak for years now…) and while I love using it (when it’s not, you know, broken) I wouldn’t mind an updated device to just toss music and videos on that isn’t my phone and has that kind of storage. Sure, I can run random apps on it if I really wanted to, but I’d imagine I’d do better to keep that stuff on my phone, but that’s another story.
That being said this is a minor thing, but I’m sure others out there may have thought the same — that the iPod was dead. Nope, not yet… just very very “typical” for 2019.
Just a quick thought, nothing major here. If you’re curious, here’s the wiki link for the 7th generation iPod Touch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Touch_(7th_generation)
By the way, aren’t you glad everyone stopped calling it “iTouch?” That shit got old fast.