Biz Daily: Why Apple rebooted iPod Touch with A8 chip

[Music] [Applause] [Music] Hello and welcome to Biz Daily. I'm John Jordan. So the surprise news today is that Apple is rebooting its iPod touch range of devices. So um the reason this is a surprise because kind of everyone's assumed that the iPod touch is kind of just fallen out of favor. It's been in decline for a number of years in terms of kind of sales. Um, obviously we've have have a whole range of iPhones now. So there's, you know, the kind of price point differentiation that we used to have with the iPod touch as a gaming device. That's kind of gone away a little bit because you have these cheaper iPhones. Obviously the iPads come in much bigger, but obviously a bit more available for kind of gaming with a bigger screen. Um, but uh, for whatever reason, they've not really given a reason. It's just kind of suddenly been announced that the um the iPod touch has been rebooted. There's different colors um 4 in screen. And the really

interesting thing is effectively the device kind of internals are a iPhone 6. So you got the um A8 chip and the M8 kind of co-processor. The M8 is used for kind of motion kind of fitness stuff, but the A8 chip, as Apple is keen to point out, has 10 times the graphical processing ability of of the older um A7. Um, and that means it's pretty good for gaming. Um, Apple have kind of pointed to to gaming in some of the marketing on this and it's kind of gone back to its old favorite. Uh, Monument Valley is kind of one of the signature kind of games that it's mocked up running or mocked up or has taken photos of running on the on the new um, iPod touch. Um, but I guess it will be interesting now certainly when it comes to gaming is whether that slightly smaller screen whether that kind of cuts it anymore. Um, I think people got very used to playing on phones which are now pretty much bigger. I mean obviously with the iPad iPod um sorry the iPhone 6 Plus very much bigger and iPad equally and if not after the iPad mini as well. So quite a small device now to game on.

I guess the kind of feeling is perhaps um Apple has kind of rebooted the Apple or launched Apple Music um so the Beat streaming service. Um so maybe it's kind of focused a bit more towards kind of the music line of stuff. We have to have to wait and see what happens with iPod touch. But um certainly interesting um just because it's, you know, a very uh powerful bit of hardware and it's much cheaper because obviously there's another phone stuff um in there. So it does kind of just provide another kind of option for people who who are looking to make games for for iOS. Maybe it makes it a bit harder that they've got like another type of hardware to support, which is maybe not technically hard, but perhaps the type of person who would we would be expecting to use the new iPod touch will be a little bit different um to what we'd expect a phone user to be used to to be like what we'd expect a um iPad user to be with. And I guess in terms of kind of Apple's um device family, it does kind of, you know, perhaps undercut a little bit price-wise um where Apple have been

struggling against Android. So Android devices are um some of them are very powerful and certainly price-wise they're pretty cheap. So there's a volume market going on that Apple hasn't been able to compete with. So maybe the iPod touch will kind of help them out in in that kind of buying something for a uh kind of kind of a younger younger child who yeah you don't want to give them the phone access but um but they will want to do gaming on it as well as perhaps music. So we might see how how that one pans out but certainly interesting as uh we like our news to be. So um come back tomorrow and see what's happened then. See you then. [Music] [Applause]