The iPod Touch got announced. It’s basically an iPhone without the phone bits. It can do all of the media stuff. It has WiFi and Safari and YouTube. But it’s interesting to me the applications that it DOESN’T have, that it easily could:
- No Email
- No Google Maps (this would have been killer)
No Calendar- No Weather
- No Stocks
- No Notes
No Clock app
But for some reason it does include an Address Book, and a Calculator. Those seem like unusual choices for what is essentially a media-rich web tablet.
Which leads to the question “how easy is it going to be for homebrew hackers to copy those apps to the iPod Touch?” My guess is “pretty easy”. From what I’ve seen of the internals of the iPhone OS, it seems to follow pretty standard Mac OS X/UNIX file structures and app packages. No doubt it will be trivial for hackers to copy the missing apps over for people who want them, and aren’t afraid.
But still, for something that basically just redefined the “web tablet” market, it’s interesting to analyze the choices that were made.
Related:
TinyScreenfuls Feed (this blog)
you said that it does not have a calender, yet on the apple site the photo of it shows the iCal icon.
essentially this is apple’s PDA device.
First, does anyone know for sure it has OS X? The same as on the iPhone?
Essentially the apps on the Touch besides Safari are the same as on other iPods: you can sync calendar and contacts to any iPod today.
What I find surprising is a lack of Blueooth. You would expect it there for at least headsets. If they were going to go as far as add Wi-Fi they might as well spent the extra $25 for the Bluetooth.
Finally, given the reported profit margins of the iPhone, and the $200 price drop, I figure the real price for the 8GB Touch should be around $150 tops.
It doesn’t make sense. To release a product like this and not have 3rd party app support? I predict that Apple will have development tools and a API with leopard. This makes me believe it even more.
Yeah i believe that it has been confirmed that the Ipod Touch uses the same operating system as the Iphone, which then will make it easy to use the Iphone apps on your Ipod Touch, such as notes, weather, stocks, etc….