Apple sets date for new iPods

by Simon Aughton on August 26, 2010

Apple’s annual iPod refresh will take place on 1 September. The company has begun sending out invitations illustrated with an image of a guitar — the customary musical allusion to its yearly rejig of the hugely successful music players.

The often well-informed John Gruber writes in his Daring Fireball blog that the highlight of the event is likely to be a new “iPhone 4-calibre” iPod touch, with Retina display, a front-facing camera and FaceTime video calling.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs gave a strong hint that video calling would be coming to the iPod when he said during the FaceTime introduction in June that Apple expects to see the technology on tens of millions of devices this year alone.

Also high on the list are a new iOS-based Apple TV — possibly with its own App Store — and TV show rentals, though they may be US-only to begin with.

But iPad users hoping for iOS 4 are likely to be disappointed. Apple has yet to send the customary beta to developers, so the promised unification of all the company’s touch devices on a single OS won’t happen until later this year.

Tagged as: Apple, iPod

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  • ARI_boy

    I really don’t believe that Apple will implement “FaceTime” video calling on the iPod Touch. Why would Apple want to cannibalise sales away from the iPhone, which this would surely do? If you could make phone calls on an iPod Touch it might as well be called an iPhone Lite or something instead!

    This rumour (if it was proven to be true) also addresses something that isn’t very clear to me. Does FaceTime calling require a mobile network connection in addition to the Wi-Fi access? I thought you needed to start a basic voice call before you could then switch to FaceTime. Indeed this would mean the iPod Touch would also need a SIM card to make FaceTime video calls? Surely a deal breaker for a lot of people who don’t want the hassle of SIM cards on what is essentially a music player.

    Or am I missing something here? Can I make FaceTime wifi calls on my iPhone without making a voice call? Do FaceTime calls count towards the minutes used by my network operator? As often with these things, and perusing Apple’s website, it’s all not very clear.

  • macpheasto

    You can already make calls on the iPod touch using Skype, the catch is that you can only do so when connected to a WiFi network, just like Face Time on an iPhone.

    So adding it wouldn’t necessarily cannibalise iPhone sales. Instead, I’d say it would be one more reason to buy an iPod touch, not one less reason to buy an iPhone.

    To answer your questions about Face Time on the iPhone, as far as I know, Face Time calls don’t count towards network minutes – they run on the WiFi network, not the phone’s. As for initiating a Face Time chat without making a call first, I’m not sure. Anyone?

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