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  • modulusshift - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Your pricing is wrong. Four models, starting at $199, 249, 300, 400. Not sure what you're talking about.
  • Brandon Chester - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Apple.com redirected me to the Canadian site. My bad.
  • tipoo - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    The Canadian dollar is really hampering any electronics purchasing plans for me right now :(

    Spec out a budging gaming build under 800? Whoops, clicked the wrong flag, welcome to your 1000 dollar rig, plus my provinces ridiculous 15% sales tax.
  • WinterCharm - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Yikes :(
  • Brandon Chester - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Looks like it just took another dive today too. RIP.
  • iWatchHogwash - Friday, July 17, 2015 - link

    Other Apple news not mentioned here:

    Apple Watch sales fall by 90 per cent

    Apple has another lemon

    It is turning out exactly as we said – sales of Apple's latest cure for cancer have slumped to a shadow of their initial "glory."

    While the Tame Apple Press and a big chunk of analysts sung praises for the iWatch, claiming it would sell 70 million in its first year. We pointed out that the gizmo was nearly two years out of date and lacked most of the software which would make it moderately useful and if it succeed it was a triumph of user stupidity and marketing.

    Lately analysts have been slowly withdrawing the enthusiastic sales figures they gave the watch, and now a new survey has shown that sales have fallen by 90 per cent.

    Apple is selling fewer than 20,000 watches a day in the US since the initial surge in April, and on some days fewer than 10,000. This is not too bad, but it does suggest that most people who wanted an iWatch have one, and existing users are not managing to win many converts amongst their friends to make it take off. For the record to make the 70 million figure apple would have to sell 195,000 a day.

    Data collected by Slice Intelligence show that Two-thirds of the watches sold so far have been the lower-profit "Sport" version, whose price starts at $349, according to Slice, rather than the costlier and more advanced models that start at $549. Apple's gold "Edition" model priced at $10,000 or more has only sold 2,000 of them have been sold in the US.

    The figures are based on the electronic receipts sent to millions of email addresses following purchases. The company conducts market research on behalf of consumer-goods companies, among others, many of them in the Fortune 500.

    All up though these figures are not bad, but they are not the sort of numbers which Apple needs to convince its investors that it can make mega sales any more. With sales drying up in China, Jobs mob will not have a good bottom line this year.

    Source:
    http://www.fudzilla.com/news/wearables/38173-apple...
  • iWatchHogwash - Friday, July 17, 2015 - link

    And regarding the yearly recurring iCrap (TM) spill:

    A9 chip production starts

    Delayed by Apple

    Samsung and TSMC have started production of the chip which is supposed to be under the bonnet of the iPhone 6s.

    Dubbed the A9, the chip's production was delayed by Jobs' Mob who insisted on last minute layer changes which mean that both chipmakers to rework wafers.

    The rumours said that the modifications are not expected to impact the release schedule of the next-generation iPhone so unfortunately it will be still ready in time.

    Apple's iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and new iPod touch are powered by the A8 chip, but the A9 uses TSMC 16nm process.

    TMSC is also expected to manufacture fingerprint sensors and audio chips on a contract basis for future iPhones.

    At the moment it is not clear what Samsung is doing, it seems the eastern leakers of the reports come from TSMC. A9 chip production in July is considered reasonable if the next iPhone is expected to launch in two months.

    The Tame Apple press is gearing up to claim that Apple order "a record-breaking" 85-90 million "iPhone 6s" units from suppliers by the end of 2015. If it does, it is ignoring the downturn in the smartphone industry generally and the fact that its crucial Chinese market is moving away from Apple products. So if the Tame Apple Press is telling the truth then Apple is going to have a lot of iPhones in its warehouse gathering dust.

    Other than the A9 the "iPhone 6s" and "iPhone 6s Plus" are expected to be announced in September. They will be pretty much the same as the iPhone 6 with the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screen sizes 2GB of RAM, Force Touch, a faster Qualcomm LTE chip, an improved 12-megapixel rear-facing camera and 7000 Series aluminium.

    The overall design of the smartphones will likely be nearly identical to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus so it will be super flexible. Most users will not be able to notice any difference at all.

    Source
    http://www.fudzilla.com/news/38264-a9-chip-product...
  • Chidoro - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link

    It's funny to go back and read comments like this just to see how wrong they are. Especially when their is so much piss and vinegar in its tone.
  • psychobriggsy - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    15% is pretty good, if you look at sales taxes over most first world countries.

    And sales tax is one way to get past the issue of corporations not paying their due corporate taxes due to tax avoidance schemes.
  • Vanditz - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    Or 50% of Americans paying no income tax. I'm part of the 1% that pay 70% of our contrey's taxes, but you keep on blaming those bad corporations that create jobs to hire you......
  • erple2 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    You should leave self entitled political ridiculousness out of these articles.
  • praktik - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    Can someone please get Vanditz a medal for paying his taxes??
  • Cakefish - Sunday, July 19, 2015 - link

    Yup, 20% here in Britain! :(
  • Cakefish - Sunday, July 19, 2015 - link

    20% sales tax in Britain. It's common to have products priced extremely close to the US RRP despite the exchange rate being at 1.5:1 in the £'s favour. Vicious. I share your pain.
  • fokka - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    and they made it more expensive than before. god that pricing is apalling.
  • Brandon Chester - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    I was incorrect as to the pricing. Since I'm Canadian Apple's website tries very hard to direct you to the Canadian store where everything is way more expensive.
  • notposting - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Argh. Figures.

    Finally caved and got the wife a new Touch back in March from Costco...Apple obviously waited until the 90 day return policy was up.

    Eh, she got the turquoise color she likes and it runs a lot better than the 8gb Touch 4 she had previously. :P
  • V900 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    Sell it on Craigslist or your local buy and sell!

    Apple products keep their value really well, and you should be able to get well over half your money back.

    Throw in an extra 80$ or so, and that should be enough for the 2015 iPod touch.

    Heck, even at 300$ it's a steal considering you're getting iPhone 6 performance and a 5s/6 camera!
  • Brandon Chester - Saturday, July 18, 2015 - link

    It's definitely not a 5s/6 camera. Most likely 1.1 micron.
  • tipoo - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    A 199 dollar way into an A8 based iOS device is pretty appealing...For someone who sticks with Android phones it could be a possible way to get the best of both.

    Wish they updated the Nano to 32GB too though.
  • jimjamjamie - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Wow, seems like a nice and fairly inexpensive way to get into the apple ecosystem. I might end up getting one of these.
  • Spectrophobic - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    I'm surprised they haven't plastered that stupid Hi-Res Audio sticker on these yet, though they might be missing a criteria for that certification (I'm guessing software bottleneck).

    Kinda disappointed they're still marketing the iPod Touch as a tiny kids tablet instead of a DAP that can also stream music, play video, and use the occasional iOS apps. All they had to do is allow 24/96 FLAC support (for the silly Hi-Res sticker), ditch the speakers (and perhaps the camera?), and add a line-out port.

    But that'll probably never happen...
  • GC2:CS - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    I expected something like an A7, maybe shrunken down to 20nm to help with smaller battery.
    Yes A8 is a lot more efficient than A7 so the battery will be spared even more, but it's definitely costly to put in such state of the art chip.

    Why ?
    Maybe they aren't planning another update for three years ?
    And yet A8 is definitely more power hungry under load than A5...

    And those numbers ?
    6x the CPU and 10x the graphics ?
    Like that implies that it is actually faster than A8 in iPone 6 ?
    According to official numbers:
    iPhone 4S = iPod touch 5 in perf
    iPhone 5 = 2xCPU/GPU of 4S
    iPhone 5S = 4x CPU/GPU of 4S
    iPhone 6 = 5x CPU and 6x faster graphics than the iPhone 4S.

    Something doesn't add up here.
    The A8 makes quite a lot of heat in iPhone 6 already, yet they put it into an much cheaper, smaller iPod touch, despite their strict thermal targets and it is supposedly faster than the one in iPhone 6 ?

    This is just... Wrong.... Unless there is something interesting hidden within.
  • Jon Tseng - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    @GC2:CS Remember the iPhone 6 also saw a resolution bump so GPU hardware was pushing more pixels to get to the 6x faster graphics. Maybe if you normalise for lower res screen used in the iTouch that helps bridge the gap between 6x and 10x...
  • WinterCharm - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    It's not running wit the overhead of cellular stuff, I think?
  • name99 - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    The A8 is there because they want to switch to h.265 as cleanly as possible as soon as practical.

    And A8 does not, in my experience, "generate a lot heat in the iPhone 6". Are you are talking about constant 3D gaming?
  • tipoo - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    I think he meant how the clocks dip in games, as showed by Anandtech a while back. It's nowhere near as bad as most SoCs though with their more ridiculous clock speeds, but it's there. I didn't know of any heat issues though. I think a further refinement of the A8 would do just fine in the Touch chassis.
  • GC2:CS - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    I meant that if the A8 in iPhone 6 outputs x (eg. "a lot of") amount of heat, if the chip in the iPod touch is the same, it's going to be much hotter (eg. "Too much heat") because of smaller chasis... And I don't think Apple would do that in such way.

    So well I suppose that A8 in the touch may have lower TDP or put another way, it may be better in some ways compared to the "regular" A8.

    Then the touch is dirt cheap for an iProduct. Why whould it have a better chip than an iPhone ?
    On the other hand after iPhone 5 introduction the iPod touch 5 got much better A5 than iPhone 4S, shrunken down to 32nm.

    So what Apple had done actually ?
  • tipoo - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Sometimes simple and regular refinements to a manufacturing process produce less heat and wasted energy by the end of a generation of chips than at the start. That and some minor architectural tweaks could bring the heat output of A8 down significantly.

    Remember the start of 45nm vs it hitting maturity? By the end it was so mature it could be more efficient than the next process down!
  • tipoo - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Oh, it's also underclocked, so there that is

    http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/07/new-ipod-touc...
  • ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    If Anandtech's chart is accurate then the iPod Touch's A8 has been downclocked to 1.3 GHz from 1.4 GHz in the iPhone 6 which will help. The battery is probably denser and bigger now that they removed the post for the hand loop. But yes, while light usage battery life is probably the same or better than the old iPod Touch, full load battery life is probably worse.
  • Brandon Chester - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    It turns out it's even lower than that at 1.1GHz, at least according to Geekbench anyway.
  • ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Hopefully someone runs a GPU test too. With the ~25% resolution drop and apparent 25% CPU clock-speed drop, a 25% GPU clock speed drop from the iPhone 6 would be about right.
  • psychobriggsy - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    This makes sense - can't have a game running smoother on the iPod Touch than on the iPhone 6!

    In addition, 25% slower clock speeds could mean significantly lower power consumption at those clock speeds, which means longer periods of gaming.

    All in all, a very compelling portable games console (when coupled with a controller shell), music player, video streamer and general application device. And it shows just how expensive the phone components are in an iPhone 6...
  • ltcommanderdata - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx30&a...

    If these benchmarks are accurate then it looks like the A8's GPU was not downclocked in the new iPod Touch vs the iPhone 6. The new iPod Touch looks like it has the fastest onscreen at native resolution performance of any iDevice.
  • Jon Tseng - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Awesome... A tethering-only iPhone 6C for a quarter of the price! :-) :-)

    iPod Touch has always been great for keeping an oar in the Apple ecosystem. I think of it more as an "iPad Nano".,,
  • cfenton - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    My speculative answer to the question about who is still buying these things is that it's mostly parents for their children. $200 is a fairly cheap price for a device that can play games, stream from just about every service, browse the web, and play music. Considering it's about the same price as a Vita or 3DS, it's a good value, especially when you factor in the cost of software (obviously there are still big software quality differences, but it's hard to beat iOS gaming when it comes to value).

    I also would't be surprised if that 128GB model finally gets some of the iPod Classic holdouts to upgrade.
  • kmmatney - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    I think you are better off buying a used iPad - they are around $200 for a used iPad 3 (64GB versions are $250 on Swappa right now, in excellent condition). The touch is obviously more portable, the the iPad is just better overall. It nice to see an iPod Touch update, but its really a niche product now.
  • supra2jz - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    I don't really agree. Young people are trying to have an iPhone but not pay a $30 per month data plan. They want to have all the features an iPhone is used for, such as iPod functionality, alarm, etc The iPad serves as a good home device, but is not as good for young people who would probably want to be texting, listening to music, etc all the time.
  • cfenton - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    I think the iPad 3 is a bit too old at this point if you want to play games. I replaced mine with an Air 2 last year because it was getting too sluggish even for normal tasks. I am admittedly very sensitive to slow devices, but the iPad 3 really seemed to be on its last legs to me. Even if you don't mind the sluggishness, the A8 in the new iPod will run circles around the A5X in the iPad 3, especially on the lower resolution screen.
  • tipoo - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    This new touch would be around the iPad Mini 2/3 in performance though. It's 25% lower in Cpu performance than the 6, so it's around the A7/5S/Mini 2-3 performance.
  • tipoo - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    Never mind me, thought you meant the Mini 3.
  • casteve - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Nope. The old Classic is still working fine. No need to replace it as my car's music and podcast server.
  • tipoo - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    I'd still like a Classic update, even though it's dead :(

    Yeah, there are 128GB flash devices now, but they're exorbitantly priced, and none of Apples have MicroSD.
  • melgross - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Developers buy these devices in fairly large numbers.
  • Daniel Egger - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    I'm very excited... time to hand over my old iPod Touch to my son. :-D
  • freeskier93 - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Mac Rumors just posted an article with GeekBench showing the A8 is under clocked to 1.1Ghz.
  • angrypatm - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Can you use it without using iTunes? iTunes truly blows.
  • pliablemoosethebanned - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    You haven't needed iTunes for years now.
  • frostyfiredude - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    Not if you want to do management via a computer, doesn't support any sort of MTP-like protocols to do manual file moving.
  • Glaurung - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    There are several alternatives to Itunes for managing content on the iphone, apps like Ifunbox, Copytrans, and so on allow you to bypass itunes completely for nearly everything (they may still require Itunes to be installed, but you don't ever have to actually use it).
  • iwod - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    The iPod touch design is still the best and I was hoping one day Apple could make a similar design with iPhone ( No antenna Line ).

    Looks like by the end of this year we may see whole range of iOS moving to 64 bit.
  • V900 - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    Hot dignity! $199 for an iPhone 6-level performance and iPhone 5s/6 camera!

    That is an amazing deal! Basically Apple is charging 200 dollars for class leading CPU and GPU performance, and (still) one of the best mobile cameras on the market!

    It's also perfect for someone like me, who is looking for an upgrade from my iPhone 5s, but can't stand the screen size of the iPhone 6...

    A iPhone 5s/A8 iPod Touch combo should be an excellent, and inexpensive upgrade!
  • aliasfox - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    I hope this means there's an iPhone 6c with a 4" screen this fall. Give it a cellular radio and NFC for ApplePay, and I'll pay attention. And money. I hate large phones, and my iPhone 4 is pretty much on its last legs...
  • metayoshi - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link

    I actually still have my 4th gen iPod Touch and it's what I use to listen to music in my car. For some reason, every Android phone I've used has had compatibility problems with my car's bluetooth audio system (skipping, speeding up/slowing down songs, etc.). My iPod Touch only has the skipping every once in a blue moon. I know I could just use an iPhone, but I've gotten used to so many of Android's conveniences that I prefer it over iOS for my phone. I'm glad they finally updated the iPod Touch as that means when my iPod finally dies, I don't have to buy a generations old 5th gen iPod Touch.
  • djvita - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    im specially interested in the 299 version, in my country's apple website, they are sold out!
  • patronsurvey - Saturday, April 10, 2021 - link

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