The iPod Touch’s camera: Left out, or just ‘late’?
Sometimes Apple’s surprises are not pleasant. Starting back in March—when Apple made a job posting “looking for a Camera Engineering Project Manager (EPM) to drive the design, development and integration of camera modules across iPhone and iPod”—and lasting up until a few days before Wednesday’s Apple event, it was taken for granted that the 3rd-generation iPod Touches would have an iPhone-style camera. Third-party cases were manufactured with a hole for the camera.
Then, shortly before the event, rumors started circulating that the camera would be a no-show—manufacturing issues pushed it back. And sure enough, when the “rock and roll” had faded, no iPod Touch camera was to be found.
Jobs told the New York Times that the reason for this was Apple wanted to concentrate on lowering the price and pitching the Touch as a handheld game console. “We don’t need to add new stuff. We need to get the price down where everyone can afford it.” (Though strangely enough, only the 32-gig and 64-gig Touch models—not the “affordable” $199 8-gig—support OpenGL, a graphics engine much beloved of gamers and game companies.)
So was the talk of a camera in the Touch just a wild rumor with no basis in fact? Not so fast, says AppleInsider. Citing unnamed sources close to Apple, AppleInsider suggests that leaving the camera out for launch was a last-minute decision forced by a batch of faulty camera parts—and as soon as Apple gets its hands on some good cameras, there might be a 3.5th generation of the two more-expensive Touches with cameras added.
CNN Money tech blogger Philip Elmer-Dewitt compares these two stories, wondering if Steve Jobs “spun” the New York Times. (An earlier version of the headline and URL wondered if Jobs had “lied to” the Times—undoubtedly hastily changed by CNN’s legal department.) I would be willing to bet that yes, indeed he did.
Not that he had much of a choice. If he explained that a model with a camera would be coming out soon, it would chill the sales of the current 3rd-gen Touches as everybody decided to hold off and wait for the camera-equipped version. This way, he gets to launch another one of his trademark “one more things”—a few weeks or months after the fact.
The downside, of course, is that when Apple finally does come out with a camera-equipped model, there will probably be a lot of angry customers who believed Jobs’s “no camera” spin and bought the no-camera version. If this does happen, I would hope Apple will offer an upgrade program through AppleCare for consumers to send in their iPod Touches and get them back with cameras attached.
So if it is important to you that your next iPod Touch have a camera, I would not give up hope just yet—and I would not buy yet, either.
September 11th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Has anyone considered that the touch is (and will remain) camera-less because they don’t want to cut into the iPhone share? Or are they different enough to be different categories.
If they do want to keep the cost down to maintain an entry level device to the app store, that makes sense.
And keeping the camera+touch=iPhone premium-priced model where it is (with a trickle of $$ coming in from ATT makes sense too.
But offering a middle device that would steal from premium-priced sales, while not offering anymore app store cash, would seem a waste of time.
Am I missing a step or would their portfolio really be better by having a touch with camera?
September 11th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Yes, Steve Jobs remarks do leave you wondering what really did happen. Claiming that Apple now intends the touch to be a game machine and no more didn’t endear him with the many people who want it to be an iPhone without a costly AT&T service plan. As an attempt at ’spin,’ it failed miserably.
That said, the dinky little video-only VGA camera they put in Nanos is, for many of us, no better than no camera at all. We need one of the same quality as that in the iPhone or better–one that can focus up close.
The problem may rest in the thinness of the touch. It may be too thin to use the iPhone’s camera. If Apple wasn’t planning to use the camera in the Nano, then it is possible that the higher resolution one they wanted to use wasn’t good enough or reliable enough. The latter is more likely, since the problems seems to have surfaced late in the development cycle.
Apple could have spared themselves these woes by making the touch about the same thickness as the iPhone, using most of the added space for a larger battery. No one complains about the thickness of the iPhone, so they wouldn’t complain about the new touch, especially if it had twice the battery life. And that’d make sharing parts between the two easier.
I was planning on buying one of these new touches, but Apple hasn’t given me any reason to do so. I can get more features in a used 1-g iPhone for less and equivalent features in the 2-g touch, also for less. And the real price of the new low-end touch is $230, since it ships without the remote earphones with mike.
September 11th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I can see a January/February update to the touch happening. But not before Christmas unless a miracle happens. And will the update include a camera or GPS (which is what I want to see in the touch, not a camera.) or jump a memory/hardware upgrade to the low-end one?
Although Apple historically does iPod updates in September, Mac updates in January, laptop updates around June, they will occasionally slip a hardware update into the Apple Store without an announcement.
Or the camera touch could be like the Apple tablet — wishful thinking by the rumour mongers to drive page hits.
And no matter when/if the touch gains a camera SOMEONE is going to be pointlessly angry about it.
September 11th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
isnt it obvious steve jobbs is lying its obvious hes selling the 50+million he made then the ones without the camera selling the ones with the camera later hes not gonna say there was problems then nobody will buy the touch till it has a camera common sense
September 11th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
@trav: I will point out that they have already sold at least twice as many iPod Touches as iPhones. I don’t think cutting into the iPhone’s market share is really an issue.
September 12th, 2009 at 3:03 am
The fact that a teardown of the new touch shows a space for a camera in the circuit board and the fact that the OS update they released for the touch was 3.1.1 but for the iPhone it was 3.1 (last minute removal of camera app and related software for the touch required another point release) shows they intended to put a camera in it until quite recently.
The question is did they decide to remove the camera from the touch for technical reasons (e.g. faulty parts as rumoured) or for marketing reasons? If the former then expect a new camera-equipped touch Dec-Feb, but if it was a marketing decision then it could be years away. Given that marketing input to feature decisions like this would normally have been finalized at least 6+ months ago technical issues would seem more likely.
However, maybe Steve was not involved in the original decision months ago due to his health issues and since coming back to work has had one of his trademark changes of mind and demanded it be “Steve’d”.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
I believe you’re wrong about the low-end iPod Touch not supporting OpenGL. All iPhone OS devices support OpenGL. The new models have a better chipset which supports OpenGL _2.0_ as opposed to the 1.2 in previous models.