Yesterday Apple unveiled a new line of iPods, including the Nano and the iPod Touch. Unlike what everybody was expecting, the iPod Touch didn’t come with a camera. Steve Jobs gives an explanation to the NY Times:
“Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine,” he said. “We started to market it that way, and it just took off. And now what we really see is it’s the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw. So what we were focused on is just reducing the price to $199. We don’t need to add new stuff. We need to get the price down where everyone can afford it.”
That’s interesting how a $149 iPod Nano gets a video camera with speaker and microphone but yet, the $399 iPod Touch doesn’t. Steve says they wanted to cut the price and not give more features. I say “bullshit”.
What Apple wants to do is to give you one reason (the price) to buy an iPod Touch this year and another reason to buy another iPod Touch next year when it finally comes with a camera.
This is exactly what pisses me off with Apple. They give you very basic features one at a time so you always have a good reason to buy the latest product. They did exactly the same with the iPhone. Video recording and copy/paste could have been implemented since day 1 but instead, Apple decided to wait as long as they could.
This is not a proper way to do business. If anything, this is a way to take your customers for fools.
What do you think of all this?