Apple today introduced the new iPod touch with enhancements to power, capability and communication at a remarkable price. The Apple-designed A10 Fusion chip brings improved performance in games, and for the first time on iPod, immersive augmented reality (AR) experiences and Group FaceTime, making it easy to chat with family members, friends or colleagues simultaneously. The new iPod touch is available to order on apple.com and in the Apple Store app starting today and in stores later this week.
“We’re making the most affordable iOS device even better with performance that is twice as fast as before, Group FaceTime and augmented reality starting at just $199,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of Product Marketing, in a statement. “The ultra-thin and lightweight design of iPod touch has always made it ideal for enjoying games, music and so much more wherever you go.”
iPod touch comes in a new 256GB capacity, giving plenty of space to download music for offline listening through Apple Music or the iTunes Store. With Apple Music, subscribers can access a catalog of over 50 million songs, thousands of playlists, Beats 1 Radio and daily editorial selections from the world’s best music experts. Subscribers can create their own playlists, watch music videos, listen to exclusive Beats 1 shows from their favorite artists on demand and share music with their friends. Now available in over 100 countries, Apple Music offers the most comprehensive music experience ever.
iOS is the world’s largest gaming platform, and with three times faster graphics, games on the new iPod touch run even smoother and look even more beautiful. This fall gamers can look forward to Apple Arcade, a game subscription service with over 100 new and exclusive games with no ads or additional purchases, and the ability to download games for offline play. Apple Arcade is the perfect complement to the already enormously popular catalog of free games on the App Store.
The new iPod touch also provides fun and productive AR experiences across gaming, education and web browsing. AR is even more engaging and immersive with the new capabilities of shared AR, persistent AR, which is tied to a specific location, and image detection, making it possible for the new iPod touch to magically bring to life 3D objects like toys and sculptures.
Pricing and Availability
• The new iPod touch starts at $199 (US) for the 32GB model, $299 (US) for the 128GB model and $399 (US) for the 256GB model from apple.com, in the Apple Store app and Apple Stores, and is also available through Apple Authorized Resellers and select carriers (prices may vary). iPod touch is available in six finishes; space gray, white, gold, blue, pink and (PRODUCT)RED.
• The new iPod touch models are available to order starting today from apple.com and in the Apple Store app in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the UAE, UK and US.
MacDailyNews Take: Not X-class, but still way cool enough for the price and perfect for kids!
Kids? $200 is a pretty pricey yo-yo.
3.5 mm headphone jack is a little ‘retro’, isn’t it?
(nice move apple)
Throw SKYPE on it and it’s a phone. No need for monthly bills.
Just needs a $140 cellular option.
add two Home Pods, and you have a perfect home audio system even without Apple Music or iPhone.
are you kidding me?
fire tim now!
Fire yourself. You don’t have to buy it.
WON’T…
and neither will you.
nor hundreds of million others.
Apple unveils new “BOB” test for approving products. Only products that BOB will buy will be produced. There will be a New Years day phone call to BOB and once he announces what product he needs for the year, Apple will go into production to produce dozens of them to meet demand. MDN comments section is filled with people who insist that BOB is no Steve Jobs.
paul, are you going to buy one?
No, but the point is that it doesn’t matter if I do. I also won’t buy an iMac Pro, or AirPods, or an iPhone Xs Max. I think all those products are ridiculous. But the fact that I think they are ridiculous doesn’t mean the market for them doesn’t exist. There quite clearly is a huge market for AirPods even if I wouldn’t be caught dead walking down the street with those things sticking out of my ears. It doesn’t appear they spent a lot of money on R&D on this so they probably don’t have to sell a lot of them to make money and their market is the world, 7.53 billion people. The iPod is not a new product but an update of an existing one. So they understand the market for it. This hardly seems like a reason for firing Tim Cook.
This is gonna be great on eBay in 6 months when you can find it for ~$100
Crap!!! I just bought a 128Gb red iPod two months ago. Should have waited but how would I have known….
Clearing the decks for WWDC next week.
It’s a niche product but still has it’s uses.
Because they didn’t change it’s form factor it feels overpriced by $30-40 despite it having a much more powerful chip.
Would feel completely differently about if it looked like an iPhone 8 with a 4.7″ screen. That would make it a great gaming machine for kids/teens and an excellent product for enterprise/business/retail that just need a WiFi capable iOS device.
Looks like Apple is sort of making the A10 Fusion the baseline chip for their product lines. That’s great for developers as that chip is still pretty powerful and has great features, especially when compared to Android silicon.
Just buy a refurb iPhone 8 and problem solved
I was wondering when Apple was going to do something with the iPod Touch. On Amazon, there’s seems to be a music player niche that the Chinese manufacturers are taking huge advantage of. There are all sorts of hand-held music players from low- to high-priced and they all use micro-SD cards for expandability. There is one music player that can even use a 1TB micro-SD card. It is foolish for Apple to simply let the Chinese manufacturers have the whole music player market to themselves. Although I have two working iPods, I had purchased a couple of cheap AGPTEK music players that actually sync with my iTunes library playlists using drag and drop or wireless transfer with doubleTwist on my Macs. I don’t care if I break them or lose them. They seem relatively indestructible as they are made of tough plastic. I still baby my older iPods (a 30GB model I converted to solid-state memory and the last 120GB Classic Apple offered).
I don’t think Apple should give up on music players if there is still a market for them. Apple is already getting beaten up by the Chinese smartphone manufacturers and that’s more than enough.
The music players on Amazon have both BT and headphone jacks and I happily use one or the other as I have no real preference. They both work well for me.
Anyway, I’m glad Apple is doing something fresh with the iPod Touch. It seems like a fine product to be refreshed. It will be one of the few Apple products almost anyone can afford to own. There may be some other reasons to fire Tim Cook but this isn’t one of them.
Not sure this is “fresh” as it’s an iPhone 7 minus the phone. You can buy a better used iPhone 8 for that money and if need be, have a cell phone too. Maybe you’re right, but I don’t see people using iPods much these days…not even kids.
Kudos to Apple for including a headphone jack in a music player, but $200-$300-$400 is WAY overpriced, especially without a rear facing camera.
It has a 8mp rear facing camera and a 1.2mp Face Time camera (front facing).
If it didn’t have a headphone jack, I wouldn’t be getting one, but I think I will get one.
hmm keeping the A10 chips going.
A 2019 product launch with a 2016 chip. This doesn’t bode well for possibility of a new 9.7″ iPad. But I guess the new Air didn’t help either. Timmy’s gonna milk that chip dry!