Lost in the shuffle of Tuesday’s announcement of the iPhone 4S at the first big Apple event in the post-Steve Jobs era was the news that Apple still makes iPods, and they continue to improve on them.
First, the Nano, which has become so associated with working out (something that Apple obviously recognizes) that they might as well just call the thing the iPod Gym. The latest iteration of the Nano comes in seven different colors and will now have built-in exercise-tracking capabilities, including a calorie counter. There are now also 16 different watch face variations for people who wear their Nano to tell the time, something that probably hadn’t occurred to you to do until now. With a maximum capacity of 16 gigabytes, you won’t be able to get a ton on there, but that’s more than enough space to keep you in Eminem songs while you train for your 5K.
As for the iPod Touch, it essentially got all the upgrades the new iPhone got. There’s a new operating system, iMessage (which lets you send text messages over Wi-Fi to other people with iPods or iPhones, not unlike Blackberry’s BBM system), and access to the iCloud, Apple’s new in-the-air media storage that will make your music, photos, and other media available anywhere. The first five gigabytes are free, and then upgrades are available for a fee, topping out at 50 gigs for $100 a year. Interestingly, stuff you buy on iTunes doesn’t count toward the storage limit, which probably makes record labels and copyright holders pretty happy, as it will (theoretically) encourage people to buy more stuff legitimately so they can have free access to it.
The iPod Touch tops out at 64 gigabytes (the same as the biggest iPad), but just in case you still want to cart around your entire music collection in your pocket, the iPod Classic still exists. They haven’t made any improvements on it in a while, but at 160 gigabytes, it’s still an old reliable standby, like a mud-covered pick-up truck that can still go. And just for the sake of being complete, Apple still makes the iPod Shuffle, just in case you like your music collection but don’t like choosing things from it.
Apple has sold 320 million iPods since the devices began, but how many of those have you been responsible for? And do you have a favorite iteration that you miss? Leave your iThoughts in the comments below.
Read more on EW.com:
So are you disappointed by the iPhone 4S?
Apple’s big announcement: Meet the iPhone 4S
What’s on your iPhone 5 wishlist? Voice recognition? 4G? Rainbows?
