14 DAY TRIAL // Although some believe Apple did intend to equip the new iPod touch with a camera, Apple’s CEO claims otherwise. Interviewed by The NY Times’ personal technology columnist (David Pogue), Jobs has revealed that Apple has studied the market carefully and has seen that people are into the gaming capabilities of the touch.
This, according to Jobs, has prompted the company to cut the price to the magical $199 point and enable the cheapest way to the App Store. Jobs suggests to the interviewer that a camera is not yet a priority for the iPod touch.
Customers don’t want a camera in their iPod touch, Mr. Jobs says when he is asked why they were able to put a camcorder on the iPod nano, but not on the iPod touch. According to the NY Times, Steve’s response has been this:
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. Because a lot of the games were free on the store. Customers started to tell us, “You don’t know what you’ve got here — it’s a great game machine, with the multitouch screen, the accelerometer, and so on.”
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.
Asked about the new nano and why it only does video and no stills, Jobs tells Pogue that the device is too small for the sensors required for still shots. Jobs adds for Pogue that, “The sensors for doing video are fairly thin. The sensors for doing a still camera, at much higher pixel resolution — and we’d really like to have autofocus — they are just way too thick to ever fit inside the Nano.”