Now that we're getting closer to an Apple event re-freshing the product line in time for the Christmas market, I'm revisiting my earlier post again in this thread.
Here's my (revised) thoughts on what will happen in the next few weeks:
To get a steer on where the iPod Touch is heading, you only need to look at the recently announced changes to the iPhone 3G - ie. there were hardly any that would make the jump to the iPod Touch - most of the changes were mobile technologies (3G, GPS - and a design change to incorporate them). The big exception was the App Store, which I reckon will start to feature in almost every aspect of Apple's future releases - especially where the iPod line is concerned. App Store is the software equivalent of iTunes - it won't make Apple huge sums in profit, but it will drive sales of iPhones and iPods.
As people have reasoned out on other message threads, here's the possible directions for the Touch:
Bluetooth: possible, but unlikely. Why? Well, Bluetooth is largely a mobile phone technology and it's generally for making calls via BT-enabled devices. The only benefit to the Touch would be adding it to a remote speaker system, or playing music in-car - which would totally zap the battery and render it somewhat pointless.
GPS - this is possible, but unlikely. The iPhone uses a combination of 3G and wi-fi to locate your position with the GPS chipset, so it probably isn't going to make it to the iPod Touch, as it would rely entirely on wi-fi to be of any significant use without dramatically increasing the size of the device. in order to self-power in the way an in-car GPS unit does Again, GPS is largely a mobile technology, or in-car. Apple would damage the iPhone sales if they were to cross over too many of the phone-only technologies to the Touch.
Design/case change - this is possible, to bring it in line with the iPhone manufacturing process and standardise shared components. People have complained about how easy it is to scratch the back of the Touch, and many don't like the ugly wi-fi antenna. A case redesign is entirely likely (new colours, anyone?). Certainly, I've found that even with a protective cover, my metal backplate is easily scratched.
Memory upgrade - possible and quite likely. However, the 32GB memory in the iPod touch is 2 x 16GB flash drives, not 1 x 32GB drive. To go up to 64GB, you would need to put 4 x 16GB drives inside the case which would make it bigger and heavier - or have two (expensive) 32GB chips. When teamed up with a case re-design to match the iPhone, this might not be such a crazy idea. However, Flash memory is expensive at the moment, and it would significantly increase the price of a Touch if the memory jumped up. If the 8GB model vanishes, it means that Apple would have two memory options on the Touch (same as all the other models), not three, as it is at present. A memory increase is probably the most likely change, but I still reckon it's not going to happen until well into next year.
Price drop: this is the most likely route for the Touch in the short-term, to help boost sales - especially of the lower end models (16GB). The 8GB Touch will probably vanish from the range (again, as we've all said: why buy an 8GP Touch, when you can get an 8GB iPhone for less - even though you'll pay subscription charges for the phone service in the long run?).
So, I reckon any immediate changes to the Touch will mostly be trivial - ie. case change, a price-drop, or possibly a memory increase.
We've all read that stock of the Touch is being run down at the moment, in line for a re-fresh at some point in the next few months, so we can probably expect some kind of news on the Touch, but don't expect anything over-dramatic in terms of technology. The Touch is a relatively new product, changing it dramatically after such a short period of time on the market is damaging to customer expectation and causes the all-too-familiar "I'll wait for the next update" syndrome we read about on these forums all the time.
One last thing is the possibility of a new type of iPod Touch - ie. a "nano" version. Apple generally pulls something special out of the hat at these annual events (the iPhone, the Touch, Mac Book Air, the Shuffle, the new Nano), so expect something new and dramatic.
I can envisage a smaller version of the Touch with most of the features (music, videos, web, email, maps, iTunes wifi). However, it's difficult to see how Apps could work the same on a smaller screen - but it could open up the App Store to developing scaled-down versions of Apps for the "Touch Nano" or whatever they decide to call it. A "nano Touch" would subsequently give rise to a scaled-down iPhone next year (you'd need to be mad to think Apple are planning to conquer the mobile phone market with a single model that only gets refreshed every 12 months).
So there it is:
iPod Touch: new case, more memory, price.
iPod Touch Nano: a dinky version of the Touch with smaller memory and fewer features.
