Apple iPod Touch with A8 and 4" 1136x640 display

[Rys]

http://www.apple.com/uk/ipod-touch/

Current generation Apple SoC paired with the last generation display from the iPhone 5/5s. Should have excellent real-world performance in games at that resolution.

 

[Arnold Beckenbauer]

What is Typhoon? http://www.anandtech.com/show/9443/apple-refreshes-the-ipod-touch-with-a8-soc-and-new-camera

A8 means better battery life, too.

Edith says, that the next Apple TV could use A8, too.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Who buys an ipod these days?

Honest question..
I can't think of a single type of demographics that doesn't own a smartphone but is willing to spend $200-400 on a glorified music player with a small screen.

 

[Alexko]

What is Typhoon?

An enhanced Cyclone, apparently. Somehow I'd missed it too.

 

[PixResearch]

Who buys an ipod these days?

Parents. Kids seem to gravitate towards tablets and phones.
A cheap iphone that doesn't require a monthly data plan but still lets them play games, facetime, whatsapp while having an an app store you can control ticks a lot of boxes.

The alternatives are give them an actual iphone (hugely expensive), an ipad (they can't carry around) or a small chinese/OEM tablet. If you don't know what you're doing with a small android table though an iPod makes a lot of sense.

 

[McHuj]

My guess is that they have warehouses full of salvaged chips since they were some of the first 20nm parts. Might as well put them in a product.

Next Apple TV with an A8 would be a real interesting product, imo. Hopefully, a dedicated app store comes with that as well.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Parents. Kids seem to gravitate towards tablets and phones.

Kids of what age?
My experience with babies->toddlers using smartphones/tablets is that they lack the motor control for the fine finger movements that a small 4" screen requires, so they vastly prefer bigger screens between 5.5" phablets and 7" tablets.

 

[BRiT]

Parents. Kids seem to gravitate towards tablets and phones.
A cheap iphone that doesn't require a monthly data plan but still lets them play games, facetime, whatsapp while having an an app store you can control ticks a lot of boxes.

The alternatives are give them an actual iphone (hugely expensive), an ipad (they can't carry around) or a small chinese/OEM tablet. If you don't know what you're doing with a small android table though an iPod makes a lot of sense.

Not really, an Anazon Fire tablet makes a lot more sense for kids than an iPod. The kids mode and content on the Fire is better from what I've seen with my niece (5) and nephew (3) as well as their friends and from my friends' children.

 

[nutball]

There's still a sizeable gap in the market between ~5 and ~11-13 (or however young/old you personally believe that kids really need their first mobile phone). Kids at 7 or so know that Apple iThings, like Nike trainers and whatever else are the things the cool kids have, and like it or not they're bloody good at nagging parents to buy them expensive shit they don't need.

 

[Arwin]

iPod Touch 3G was good for my son from 1-3. After that, he was ready for the Vita and iPad. I gave him my iPad 3 not too long ago when I got an Air 2.

The thing can be useful in, say, cars or beside the bed or whatever though, and certainly as a chat device.

 

[ltcommander.data]

https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?be...=iOS&api2=gl&hwtype2=GPU&hwname2=Apple+A8+GPU

Assuming these results are accurate it looks like while the CPU was downclocked from 1.4 Ghz to 1.1 GHz, the GPU was not, with identical offscreen performance to the iPhone 6. The onscreen performance makes the iPod Touch 6 the fastest iOS device at its native resolution. A fast GPU coupled with A7-level CPU performance is likely to mean Metal will be necessary to take full advantage of the iPod Touch 6.

 

[silent_guy]

There's still a sizeable gap in the market between ~5 and ~11-13 (or however young/old you personally believe that kids really need their first mobile phone). Kids at 7 or so know that Apple iThings, like Nike trainers and whatever else are the things the cool kids have, and like it or not they're bloody good at nagging parents to buy them expensive shit they don't need.

Exactly. Our household is all Apple, linked to my Apple ID. (And now even easier with family sharing.) That meant iPod Touch until 13 (with talk/text-only dumb phone for comms) and (previous generation) iPhone after that.

 

[Arnold Beckenbauer]

Is there a dependency between CPU clocks and GPU clocks?

 

[ltcommander.data]

Is there a dependency between CPU clocks and GPU clocks?

The CPU and GPU clocks can be changed independently. The A8 CPU in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are both clocked at 1.4 GHz, but the GPU in the 6 Plus is 10% faster than in the 6.

 

[Laurent06]

An enhanced Cyclone, apparently. Somehow I'd missed it too.

Andrei explained the name was found by getting an iPhone kernel panic (in the comment section of his 7420 article).

 

[PixResearch]

Kids of what age?

About 4-10 years old.
At a little over 3 years old kids seem more than capable of finding their way around specific apps with an ipod/ipad/iphone but need an adult around to help them when they get lost and stop them buying everything on the web. 5+ no issues at all.

Not really, an Amazon Fire tablet makes a lot more sense for kids than an iPod.

I agree - the Fire's probably better. Tbh I wasn't saying it's the only option in a fair world. The best option for me would probably be to drop ship a dirt cheap tablet from China and write a simple front end exposing only a painting app, picture viewer and peppa pig video player but that's not reasonable for most people. There's a very wide range of awareness of the other options available but I suspect most people fall into the category of its either an iSomething or a cheap pad they got from a supermarket. There's a growing number who'd probably be aware of the android ecosystem by buying the tablet version of their phone but I'd guess Amazon Fire's not high up the list for the general population.

Apple's got a fairly strong ecosystem going in some people's homes and there's very little point in those people straying outside the confines. I know quite a lot of people who pretty much use apple stuff exclusively and there is a gap for kids that isn't well addressed by ipads or phone contracts. If you're in that walled garden then you tend to stay in it and the ipod fills the niche pretty well. Slightly academic really - the question was who buys them? I still think it's parents. The kid would want the phone or ipad. The parent pushes them to the ipod (imo).