Nano too little and late...and no more.

[Jayszen]

I have been using my Nano (2nd Gen) up to now and it finally started to give me problems and so (as it turned out to be) on the day the 6th generation was announced (unknown to me at the time) I ordered an Ipod Nano (5th gen) in Black with 16gb from Amazon at £124. It was in stock and I expected it to be sent immediately. Later that afternoon the web page changed to expecting delivery on 7th September. On the 7th I received an e-mail stating the product was no longer available and that was that. I read reviews of the new Nano and simply decided I would not buy it as it was clearly inferior in the aspects I considered important. I decided to order the 5th gen from any source I could find - but guess what? The price has gone up everywhere for both the 8gb abd 16gb models and even on Amazon, a Grey 16gb is now over £160 when a few days prior it was under £130.

Anyway, I could not justify spending so much, did some research and I am now the owner of the Sony NWZ-A845 which I bought for £112 from [edit]. Given the feature set and build quality plus the ease of use, Nano is now a memory and in the future I will look at other brands to see what they have to offer first.

[Code Monkey]

Would you like a cookie?

I had a 2G, 4G, and 5G nano, the 4G was undoubtedly the pinnacle for the model line, and, yup, that particular class of iPod is dead as of now. Not sure about the U.K. Apple store, but the U.S. store has the 5G nanos in stock as refurbs at a nice discount ($99 for the 8GB and $149 for the 16GB). On the other hand, yep, you figured out the secret, Sony makes some very good players in this class of device.

However, here's the other secret, no one, not even Apple cares about your jumping ship to Sony's "nano" class players. Apple is clearly making choices about which slices of the portable media player market they want to own, and tactile controlled, non extensible audio and video players are obviously dispensable as far as they're concerned.

Expect to see the Classic gone before the fall music event next year and, possibly, the shuffle shortly thereafter (if the 6G nano were priced competitively, I doubt the 9 grams of weight difference is going to matter to the workout crowd). iOS and iOS derived subset devices are what Apple is focused on and who can blame them? I've been a "loyal" iPod user for over six years, spent less than $25 at the iTunes store in that time. Add an iPad and a touch to our household and, ta-da, spent over $30 in less than 2 weeks. Ask Sony how well all their direct music and app sales are going

[kornchild2002]

Do not feed the troll. This is yet another person mindlessly registering to a set of iDevice dedicated forums only to let us know their "expert opinion" and how they will never buy an iPod again. In all honesty, who really gives a crap? Don't get me wrong, I am not of the mindset that every portable player out there needs to be an iPod. I just don't understand the point of taking the 10 minutes to register on a set of forums, make one long winded post about how bad some product is (even though they have never used it or even observed it in real life), and then never come back.

It would be like me registering over at Sony's forums only to state that I think the Xbox 360 is a better console and my iPad and 4G iPod touch put the PSP to shame. I am simply not going to do it as it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Besides, we all know that there are companies out there who make some nice products. That still doesn't stop most of them from failing to see the success in combining nice software and hardware (most other DAPs rely on a simple drag-and-drop method, Windows Media Player, or some other 3rd/1st part software release that is just as bad as WMP) and it doesn't stop Apple from caring if they don't sell another iPod especially when there are millions of other people lined up to buy them.

[jjjj]

Originally Posted by kornchild2002

Do not feed the troll.

How is he a troll? He's just saying that his prior ipod nano which he liked bit the dust, does not like the 6G (which a lot of other people do not), had a problem finding a 5G at the price he wanted, so went to a different brand? That's not trollish behavior in the least. Saying, "OMG, ANDROID RULES, APPLE FANBOIS SUCK" would be trolling. This is the second or third "don't feed the troll" response i've seen from you in a bit to anyone saying they don't like something on the new releases, how is that any better? None of the ones I saw people respond to were in any way trollish or inaccurate (other one I remember was around the megapixel size of the Touch's camera).

[ScoobZ]

Originally Posted by jjjj

How is he a troll?

Deduction: Just joined; first post is to rag on the latest product.

[Code Monkey]

Originally Posted by ScoobZ

Deduction: Just joined; first post is to rag on the latest product.

Still doesn't make him a troll. In fact, if he qualifies as a troll, he's a remarkably bad troll since he failed to do more than elicit some quasi-snarky yet reasoned posts from me and kc.

Besides, I wouldn't exactly call it ragging on the latest product since, for prior nano fans, the 6G nano does, at the kindest, severely underwhelm. Similarly, if we assume the backstory is true, then the U.K. Apple did drop the ball. How hard would it be to send an email to people with in-process nano orders at the time the current model changed and say, "We have just released the 6G nano, all 5G nano orders have been cancelled. If you would like, we can adjust your order to a 5G nano as a certified refurb for 115 pounds by clicking here...."

What I see him more as is one of these people deluded enough to think that someone cares about his little "protest". At the least he needs to be posting on the Apple forums if he wishes there to be the proverbial snowflake in hell's chance of anyone seeing his statement that cares or is in a position for that caring to matter, and, of course, he'd be better off just sending feedback to Apple directly. Who knows, maybe he could be the next person to get one of Jobs' famous middle finger responses?

[ScoobZ]

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

Still doesn't make him a troll. In fact, if he qualifies as a troll, he's a remarkably bad troll since he failed to do more than elicit some quasi-snarky yet reasoned posts from me and kc.

Besides, I wouldn't exactly call it ragging on the latest product since, for prior nano fans, the 6G nano does, at the kindest, severely underwhelm. Similarly, if we assume the backstory is true, then the U.K. Apple did drop the ball. How hard would it be to send an email to people with in-process nano orders at the time the current model changed and say, "We have just released the 6G nano, all 5G nano orders have been cancelled. If you would like, we can adjust your order to a 5G nano as a certified refurb for 115 pounds by clicking here...."

What I see him more as is one of these people deluded enough to think that someone cares about his little "protest". At the least he needs to be posting on the Apple forums if he wishes there to be the proverbial snowflake in hell's chance of anyone seeing his statement that cares or is in a position for that caring to matter, and, of course, he'd be better off just sending feedback to Apple directly. Who knows, maybe he could be the next person to get one of Jobs' famous middle finger responses?

Fair enough. How about annoying gnat?

[Jesse Hollington]

Meh, probably just here to vent. Venting is actually not against the rules here as long as it's done in a controlled and polite manner.

[musichound]

As for me, I don't like the new Nano at all. I truely think Apple dropped the ball on this, and should have introduced the new Nano as a completely new entry, such as an iWatch. I think this will discourage a large portion of present Nano users from upgrading.

[Code Monkey]

Originally Posted by musichound

I think this will discourage a large portion of present Nano users from upgrading.

I don't think that's a mistake on their part.

Apple very, very much wants all their "power users" to move to iOS devices. They're way more profitable after sale than traditional iPods and they're more popular in terms of sales numbers anyhow.

[jasoncordelle]

I think with the advent of the "wristwach Nano" bands/cases there will be a whole new market for this iDevice...

having had a look at some of them, I see the appeal. Not for me, but certainly very James Bond-esque.

[Jesse Hollington]

Originally Posted by musichound

I think this will discourage a large portion of present Nano users from upgrading.

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

I don't think that's a mistake on their part.

Actually, Apple has repeatedly shown over the past several years that they care little for existing, regular customers and are more concerned with targeting each device to appeal to new users instead -- or in the very least to target those who may have skipped a generation or two.

The advent of the iPod classic in 2007 was the first clear indication of this when Apple dropped support for existing video output accessories and iPod Games, both of which many users had invested in. This made the iPod classic a decent device for a new user, but a horrible choice for most 5G iPod users.

The iPod touch and iPhone have suffered from much of the same incremental upgrades that would discourage the average user from jumping on a new model each year, while adding just enough more to appeal to those who may have passed on the previous year's model.

The nano makes a dramatic shift in design direction, but follows the same general strategy.

Apple very, very much wants all their "power users" to move to iOS devices. They're way more profitable after sale than traditional iPods and they're more popular in terms of sales numbers anyhow.

That too, but I don't think the new nano was designed primarily with that in mind. Most of the real "power users" are already on iOS devices, and the few exceptions aren't enough to justify such a radical change.

Personally, I think Apple just had nowhere else to go with the nano, so they pulled a "truck-driver-gear-change" and redesigned it completely to appeal more to the "Shuffle Pro" crowd and decided to focus their real development efforts on the iOS family. Despite the shiny new interface, under the hood the nanoshuffle is much the same as a traditional iPod in terms of the firmware and file storage aspects.

Further, the nano is new and different enough to draw in a whole new crowd of users that previously weren't interested in the iPod lineup such as it was.

I'm also betting that once all the suck- ... um, "early adopters" have jumped on the new iPod nano we'll see the price settle down to something more reasonable.

Originally Posted by jasoncordelle

I think with the advent of the "wristwach Nano" bands/cases there will be a whole new market for this iDevice... I see the appeal. Not for me, but certainly very James Bond-esque.

It's an interesting concept, but those aspects of it are far too limited right now for it to be a wristwatch-type device for all but the most precocious nerds.... You have to like an analog clock face, be willing to toggle it on when you want to see what time it is, and have to charge it every 24 hours. Oh, and it has no alarm capabilities whatsoever and not even an international clock like the previous version had.

There's certainly potential if Apple wants to develop it in that direction, but I think that Steve Jobs was being somewhat facetious on stage when he mentioned that aspect of it.

[Flyboybob]

Apple still has 5th gen. 8 Gig Nanos available on their website for $99 US. My daughter is still using my 1st gen Nano and I have a 2nd gen iPod Touch and we don't plan on buying any new ones soon. The Nano has always been a great small music player with a screen. When they added a video camera that did not fit into that category of a music player. I always thought the camera belonged on the iPod Touch and Apple has included two of them in the new iPod Touches.

The new Nano is a great small music player with FM a touch screen. It was never very good as a semi iPod Touch.

[Code Monkey]

Originally Posted by Flyboybob

My daughter is still using my 1st gen Nano and I have a 2nd gen iPod Touch and we don't plan on buying any new ones soon. ... It was never very good as a semi iPod Touch.

So you never actually owned one of those "semi iPod touch" nanos but you feel qualified to say it wasn't very good? Just no. I had the 4th & 5th gen and all those "out of place" features were well implemented. Grabbed a number of impromptu vids of the kids that I'd hate to have missed. I admit I was doubtful when I got it, but the device proved me wrong.

Nothing at all wrong with the device or the implementation. I think Apple was hoping to see stronger sales with the "free flip recorder" and instead 5G nano sales slipped behind the touch; hence, the total redesign for 6G.

[kornchild2002]

Originally Posted by Flyboybob

When they added a video camera that did not fit into that category of a music player. I always thought the camera belonged on the iPod Touch and Apple has included two of them in the new iPod Touches.

Well, when using that logic, one would say that the iPod touch is no longer in the category of music player either simply because it has a camera. That would also mean that nearly every cellphone out there is not really a cellphone because they have cameras and that almost every notebook out there is not really a notebook simply because they have integrated webcams.

No, adding a camera (or any other extra functionality) to a device does not completely change its classification. The 5G iPod nano was still just as much of an iPod as any other previously released generation even going back to the iPod mini, it just had more features. Just as with the iPod touch; Apple is now promoting its gaming aspects a little more but it is still just as much of an iPod as any other previously released iPods. It just has more features.