Apple Musing

The iPod Touch appears to be selling incredibly well, along with the iPhone. While the Touch platform is the future of Apple's pocket products the Shuffle, Nano and Classic are not going away any time soon. The Shuffle and Nano provide a low cost music only option, and in the case of the Shuffle a tiny form factor, which is what many people want or need and the Classic will be with us until Flash HD size/price can match that of mobile HDs.

If these devices are going to be around for a while then they are an aberration in the Apple platform family, in other words that are almost the only device platform that doesn't run OS X. All of Apple's Laptop, Desktop and Server machine run it, the Apple TV runs OS X. The only device that performs more than minimal processing that doesn't is the Time Capsule.

The original iPod platform is based around the PortalPlayer platform and it has served Apple well, but now they have an embed-able version of OS X. As well as that they have all the libraries required to run music, video, photos etc on it.

A Nano Touch?

I'm not suggesting the iPod Touch Nano, nor an iPod Touch with a massive HD in side it. What I'm suggesting are devices that look exactly like the current ones (well, probably with a seasonal redesign). Users would not know any difference, so why do it? To remove the need to develop for a different platform. To allow Apple developers to work on iPods without know anything about a new firmware. To provide new opportunities to advance the other iPods.

Taking their form factors and the click wheel interface into account I wouldn't imagine them running mobile Safari or picking up your internet. But Apple has seen that people like being able to purchase music direct from their device. So adding Wi-Fi and Music Store purchases would be pretty easy.

I'm sure many developers would be interested in taking what they have learned from iPod Touch and iPhone development and trying the challenge of producing games for the click wheel based device. Games are the highest selling category in the App Store, why would Apple not want to take this out further to iPod Nano and Classic owners.

Production Savings

The other possible benefit of such a move could be savings produced from being able to order more of the same chip-sets and electronic parts. We've already seen that this is something Apple is good at leveraging. The last Nano refresh was probably one of the most cost effective one's ever, taking the screen from the previous Nano and turning it on its side, the same in/out 3.5mm socket from the iPod Touch which then allowed Apple to add voice notes etc.

So will Apple unify the core of their iPod devices? I don't know, but if I worked for Apple engineering that's what I would be suggesting.