Apple’s Yerba Buena Gardens Theater, SF, music event has finally taken place and only one of the iPods got a camera. That is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that a lot of people are really annoyed by the fact that the iPod Touch did not get a camera. The sentiment here is very understandable. The iPod Touch is the perfect device for replacing an iPhone and it was even mentioned in the event itself that the Touch is the most affordable way to get to the App Store. It has the same great touchscreen and the same great iPhone OS. So why not do it?
It ain’t good business, that’s why. Letting your top product’s market share get cannibalized by another product is not a good idea. The popular demand here is that the iPod Touch 3G becomes an iPhone 3GS minus the phone, GPS, etc. But that would mean lower sales for the iPhone. Plus, have you forgotten that the iPhone is also a great iPod? So going by the good business rule, you should have to buy something more expensive to get everything that you want plus certain things that you don’t want. For example, not everyone might want a compass or better gaming but the fantastic camera and speed upgrades gave you enough reason to buy the iPhone 3GS. Also, some of you bought the 3G for the dirt cheap price of $99.
Lesson to learn here is this – you always make sure that only the top product has the all best features. But when it comes to Apple, there’s something else as well. Apple chooses to tempt you with things that are either too expensive at the moment or not found in Apple products. Later, they let the goodies trickle down to the lower-end products and bring in new features that people have been fantasizing about to make people feel that NOW is the right time to buy.
Case in point – the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Everybody lusted after the aluminum casing. Everybody wanted the backlit keyboard. The list goes on. Apple gave them what they wanted and made sure that the old stock sold out fast by reducing it to a never-before type price.
The iPhone’s camera gives you a different kind of example. When the iPhone finally got a camera, everyone breathed heavily and then started complaining all over again. This time about the lack of controls like white balance. The other mobile companies offered you tons of camera control features and Apple had nothing. How does Apple respond? Instead of giving you a bunch of controls like everybody else, they provided you with a more elegant and user-friendly solution. Touch the picture where you want the focus to be and everything will be done for you. The result? Great looking snaps and happy customers. Apple has their own way of working and the ‘just works’ principle always heavily influences their decisions.
Apple has been noted for not jumping on the bandwagon. In most cases it sets new trends that others should follow. The iPhone being the biggest example. Touch phones would still be trickling in ones or twos barely every quarter had the iPhone not upped the ante so much.
Whenever Apple has chosen to deliver a new product, it has been world-class and usually class leading/creating. It may give you fewer things but they will be high-quality things that will always work the way you expect them to. Other companies bring out half-baked products just because it is technically possible to cram a radio, camera, touchscreen, et cetera et cetera in to a tiny handheld device. When Apple chooses to do it, you know you can whine about the position of the camera because everything else works smoothly and without a hitch. As for those other products, well, let’s not go there in this post.
So the way I see it is this – till the iPhone gets another upgrade or closes in on an upgrade, no camera for the Touch.
