Apple to kill off iPod classic in favor of iPod touch future?
By Dave Parrack
It’s fair to say the iPod changed the world. Mostly for the better, unless you own a record company and really don’t appreciate the move from physical media to digital media. But it looks as though the iPod classic, until recently known simply as the iPod, is on its way out.
Apple is holding an event on Sept. 9 at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. It was long rumored that the Apple Tablet would be making an appearance but that now seems highly unlikely. Instead, this will be an even focusing on iTunes and the many different iterations of iPod. Steve Jobs may also make an appearance and there is speculation over whether The Beatles back catalog will be announced for iTunes as well.
But bigger than all of this, for me at least, is the rumor that this Apple event will see the end of the iPod classic for good. Marco Arment blogs about what changes he thinks this event will bring. And Silicon Alley Insider compiles his findings.
He suggests that the iPod shuffle will get a price cut, and the iPod nano may get a camera but a reduction to just one model. Apple could also announce the end of the iPod classic, with all efforts going forward instead focused on making the iPod touch the leading line of Apple PMPs. To achieve this, the iPod touch could also get a camera, storage capacity could be doubled, and price cuts on the whole line could be brought in.
There are obviously lots of coulds and maybes included in that blog post, but it all makes sense and would seem to be the logical decisions to make at this time. While there are still people buying the iPod classic, Apple clearly feels the need to move on and get everyone switching to the iPod touch instead.
The main reason for this being the App Store, where both iPhone and iPod touch users can purchase apps for their device. Which means more money for Apple. This is also the time when the smartphone platform war is hotting up, especially with the new range of Windows phones being released next month along with the Windows Mobile Marketplace.
If this does prove to be the big announcement at the Apple event this week then I’ll be sorry to see the iPod classic killed off. The iPod touch is clearly the future for Apple but the iPod classic remains an icon of this age. The day when they are no longer available to buy will be a sad one indeed.
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September 7th, 2009
They will have to come up with a much larger iPod Touch, then, because I have an 80G Classic that is maxed out and am going to have to buy the 120 soon. I like the idea of the Touch, but really, I’m not all that interested in the apps, I just want something to play my gargantuan music library!
September 7th, 2009
So the Ipod Touch Mic rumor died a death did it? Voip anyone? Apple? Hmmm… may have to turn to a psp if not!
September 9th, 2009
@ tera: If Apple kill off the classic I’m sure they’ll upgrade the drive space on the touch to compensate.
Although to be fair, 120GB would get you just shy of a months worth of music (around 20 days, give or take file size etc, based on 3mb files) and that’s borderline excessive, imo.
But you’ve already got your Ipod, so it’s really a non-issue isn’t it?
November 12th, 2009
Not really. I have an 80GB, I would upgrade to the 160GB, but I have 207GB on my iTunes. I would really like to fit it all on there, and I will buy more CDs in the future, and want to import them in to iTunes. I use AIFF uncompressed because I want quality. I know Apple wants me to buy the iTunes version, but I never will. If Apple doesn’t continue to support large Hard drive iPods and importing own CDs, I promise I will NOT buy the Nano or anything smaller. I will NOT use compression for my music and I will NOT buy compressed music. I will also NOT buy digital music with DRM. If Apple releases a 300-500GB iPod Classic, I will buy it :-)