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iPod touch Why does iPod touch 5th gen only have A5 and not A6?

C

cooper56

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 5, 2011
12
0
Seriously this actually makes me angry. I have iphone 4s im still on my contract and cant upgrade to iphone 5 for another 6 months without paying extra fee on 100 some dollars on top of iphone. I was going to get ipod touch 5th gen and use it as sort of gaming machine and music player as well as keeping my old iphone 4 but it seems like they really screwed over people who wanted the ihpone 5 with no monthly payments which is what ipod touch always has been its like were getting iphone 4s not iphone 5 should be 4.5th generation since its not on iphone 5 quality.

Does any one know why they did this is there actual reason other than they would sell less iphones.
 
I'd love to know the real reason. It's likely cause selling old hardware saves them lots of money. I wonder how much adding a 5MP camera lens added to the manufacturing cost.
 
cooper56 said:
Does any one know why they did this is there actual reason other than they would sell less iphones.
Click to expand...

That's exactly the reason why. In business it's called "product positioning". When a company makes different products, it needs to be extremely careful about making sure that its lower priced product doesn't cannibalize sales of its higher priced, premium product. If Apple made its iPod Touch exactly like the iPhone minus the phone/cellular data capabilities, it would take away a lot of incentive for those on the fence to buy the iPhone over the iPod Touch.

This isn't a conspiracy, it's just business sense.
 
IllIllIll said:
That's exactly the reason why. In business it's called "product positioning". When a company makes different products, it needs to be extremely careful about making sure that its lower priced product doesn't cannibalize sales of its higher priced, premium product. If Apple made its iPod Touch exactly like the iPhone minus the phone/cellular data capabilities, it would take away a lot of incentive for those on the fence to buy the iPhone over the iPod Touch.

This isn't a conspiracy, it's just business sense.
Click to expand...


This.

When it sells apple gets $300. (Minimum)
When the iPhone 5 sells apple gets $650. (Minimum)

The iPod touch is aimed for people that want a simple device that can listen to music/play games/take a quick picture and don't pay attention to specs.
 
iPad user here, wondering why the tiny iPhone spec is more powerful than my iPad 3 (A6 vs A5x):rolleyes:
The reason could be simple...iPhone is the best-selling products of Apple. They don't want other competitors to get ahead of them...just to attract more new users and maintain current users' loyalty.

btw, Ipod touch basically has no real competitors in music player category.
acorntoy said:
This.

When it sells apple gets $300. (Minimum)
When the iPhone 5 sells apple gets $650. (Minimum)

The iPod touch is aimed for people that want a simple device that can listen to music/play games/take a quick picture and don't pay attention to specs.
Click to expand...

This also makes sense, the profit margin Apple makes with each iPhone is larger than other products

Seriously, iPod touch 5th gen is a huge improvement over the 4th gen already. What do you expect?
 
cooper56 said:
Seriously this actually makes me angry. I have iphone 4s im still on my contract and cant upgrade to iphone 5 for another 6 months without paying extra fee on 100 some dollars on top of iphone. I was going to get ipod touch 5th gen and use it as sort of gaming machine and music player as well as keeping my old iphone 4 but it seems like they really screwed over people who wanted the ihpone 5 with no monthly payments which is what ipod touch always has been its like were getting iphone 4s not iphone 5 should be 4.5th generation since its not on iphone 5 quality.

Does any one know why they did this is there actual reason other than they would sell less iphones.
Click to expand...

The above poster explains exactly why they do it but thankfully with the iPhone 5, there's no reason to be annoyed. The difference in real world speed in A5 vs A6 is negligible. The A5 is still perfectly acceptable and for that reason I'm happy to pay half the price of the iPhone 5 for it.
 
I would think it's because Apple's partner's cannot produce enough A6 SoC's to go in the iPhone 5 and the 5th gen iPod touch.

I doubt it has anything to do with cannibalization of the iPhone purely because 98% of Apple's customers don't care at all for the specs inside the iPod touch.
 
cooper56 said:
Does any one know why they did this is there actual reason other than they would sell less iphones.
Click to expand...

isn't that the ONLY reason? :D Apple is just one of the thousands of greedy companies that exists in the US. They are working hard for their shareholders.
 
I'm annoyed too. The iPod touch 4g was the exact same as the iPhone 4, minus cellular and equal camera. I'm just going to get the iPhone 5 on contract instead as it's free on most contracts in Australia.
 
acorntoy said:
This.

When it sells apple gets $300. (Minimum)
When the iPhone 5 sells apple gets $650. (Minimum)

The iPod touch is aimed for people that want a simple device that can listen to music/play games/take a quick picture and don't pay attention to specs.
Click to expand...
Bad move they make less money.

Im not buying iphone 5 i ll get next update maybe iphone 5s or iphone 6 w/e its called in year or so. They lose out because i would bought ipod touch which gives them some money at least vs nothing so tell me how it makes them more money or am i one few who wont upgrade.
 
Okay i might buy ipod 5th gen any way. Im just wondering does any one know any other differences? So its just the a6 chip and fact i dont use 3g or cellular. It has siri and same camera etc right?
 
AdrianK said:
It also had half the RAM and a lower quality display (non IPS I believe).
Click to expand...

I never saw that anywhere. I thought that the iPod touch 4g and iPhone 4 both had 256MB RAM and non IPS displays. I knew that the iPod touch had 800MHz A4 and iPhone 4 had 1 GHz A4.
 
ZacT94 said:
I never saw that anywhere. I thought that the iPod touch 4g and iPhone 4 both had 256MB RAM and non IPS displays. I knew that the iPod touch had 800MHz A4 and iPhone 4 had 1 GHz A4.
Click to expand...

Actually, the iPhone 4 DID have an IPS display, and had 512 MB of RAM. Both devices were clocked at 800 MHz.
 
EveryMac.com has a table showing the differences between the iPod Touch 4 and the iPhone 4:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...between-4th-gen-ipod-touch-iphone-4-ipad.html

They don't have one comparing the iPod Touch 5 and iPhone 5 yet, probably because it's not released so there are still a few details we're not completely sure about yet.

cooper56 said:
Okay i might buy ipod 5th gen any way. Im just wondering does any one know any other differences? So its just the a6 chip and fact i dont use 3g or cellular. It has siri and same camera etc right?
Click to expand...

Yup, Apple said that the iPod Touch 5 supports Siri:
http://www.apple.com/ipod-touch/built-in-apps/

They said that it's a 5 megapixel camera (compared to 8MP of the iPhone 5) without being any more specific except that it does appear to share many of the optical (lens) similarities of the iPhone 5. My concern is that because the iPod Touch 5 is a much thinner device than any iPhone, there could be image quality compromises made to fit all those components in a thinner size; thinner is not always better, especially when cameras are involved. But that's my speculation, and we won't know for sure until it comes out. There are no full resolution images taken with the iPod Touch 5 loose in the wild for us to examine.

Honestly, the A5 is still plenty powerful for the iPod Touch. The A6 would have been very nice but I understand Apple's need for product differentiation and I don't feel like it's a compromise solution. Keeping the 4th gen around, now that's a compromise solution. Someone mentioned the A5X. It's the same CPU as the regular A5 but with bumped up graphics and a significantly faster bus to accommodate the insanity of that is its 2048 x 1536 display, so the iPod Touch wouldn't benefit as much from the A5X since it's display has no where nearly that many pixels.
 
watchthisspace said:
I would think it's because Apple's partner's cannot produce enough A6 SoC's to go in the iPhone 5 and the 5th gen iPod touch.

I doubt it has anything to do with cannibalization of the iPhone purely because 98% of Apple's customers don't care at all for the specs inside the iPod touch.
Click to expand...

And your post only shows that 98% of statistics are completely made up.

Do you have any evidence to back up what you're saying, or are you just pulling this out of thin air?
 
IllIllIll said:
And your post only shows that 98% of statistics are completely made up.

Do you have any evidence to back up what you're saying, or are you just pulling this out of thin air?
Click to expand...

Actually I did pull it out of thin air. I'm sorry you got upset over it.
 
Apple has to use the A5 to keep costs down or else they have to make less money on each Touch sold. I understand Apple's position and it makes sense. The new Touch is still a great machine with basically NO competition.
 
IllIllIll said:
Actually I didn't get upset. I'm sorry you got all butthurt because you got called out for making baseless, ignorant statements.
Click to expand...

I'll take out a very scientific study to see what percentage of people actually know/care the specs of their iPhone is :) What I'll do is ask every person I see with an iPhone while I work, if they know the specs of their iPhone, aside from camera and how much storage. I'll then make a nice graph of these results and send them to you.

Also, it was one statement.

Thanks!
 
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