Why Apple wants the new iPod to fail

Apple has just announced a new round of iPods. For a company known for updating its products like clockwork on a yearly basis, the update for the iPod Touch has taken a long time. In fact, the iPod has received its first update in three years. Meanwhile, Apple even killed the revered and iconic "Classic" model, which worked with the "click wheel" interface. 

The new iPod Touch model is mostly on expected lines. While it looks almost identical to the older models, it gets all the frills of the new iPhones. You get the same A8 processor, and also an upgraded 8-megapixel camera. Apple has also released the iPod Touch in eight new colours. Seemingly, it is hitting all the right notes. 

But wait. This is not enough. It is not enough of an upgrade for a product that Apple updates once a couple of years. It is not enough of an update considering the company launched an ambitious "Music" streaming service. 

The new iPods disappoint. 

Why? 

Apple has always catered to creative people. This includes people who actually care about how music sounds. These people don't actually like the sound of the iPod. They are called "audiophiles" and a lot of them are musicians themselves, who actually create the music that is sold on iTunes and streamed on Apple Music. 

The iPod doesn't play high resolution audio. It doesn't support lossless formats besides Apple's proprietary solution and frankly it doesn't even come with a good pair of earphones. 

It can be argued that Apple has continued the legacy of the iPod by adding the 128GB model as the Classic iPod was the last model that offered a high capacity allowing people to carry their entire music collection in their pockets. In India, going by the Apple press release, we aren't even getting the 128GB model. Apparently, as the 128GB model is exclusively available in Apple's online store and retail store (both of which aren't in India) it is not coming here. 

Apple could have done something interesting with the iPod. Exactly, the way it turned the concept of the workstation on its head with the cylindrical Mac Pro. 

Instead, it opted for the mundane iterative update. This update will not encourage anyone to buy the new iPod. Everything the iPod does, the iPhone does better. The iPhone can be connected to a cellular network, the iPod can't, the iPhone has a 128GB model, the iPod doesn't have that in India. You get the drift. 

In this age of music streaming, the music player needs to be more. It needs to be something different. It needs to be the singular hub from where its user can get all his/her music, but at the best possible quality. Your music should sound a million bucks if you are buying a gadget dedicated to just listening to music. 

Apple, it appears, has other ideas. It seems happy to let the iPod die a slow death. It killed the Classic claiming that its small hard disk was not made anymore. Apparently, it did not make any business sense for it. 

Apple could have kept making it: after all it has all the money in the world. But it did not want an iDevice untethered to the Internet. It was releasing Apple Music.