Jan Zdarsa As usual, iFixIt.com has taken apart Apple's latest hardware, and this time we get a look inside the third-generation iPod Touch. As it turned out, the new Wi-Fi chip also supports the 802.11n standard, and in addition, a small place where the camera probably used to be appeared.
Before the Apple event, there was speculation that a camera would appear in the new iPods. It eventually did, but only with the iPod Nano. iPod Nano 5th generation can record video, but he can't take pictures. Steve Jobs commented that the iPod Nano is so small and so thin that the current technologies for taking photos in resolution and with autofocus like in the iPhone 3GS would not fit in the iPod Nano, so it remained with lower quality optics only for video recording.
And as it seems, Apple planned to place this lens for video recording in the iPod Touch as well. This is indicated by the vacancy in the places where the camera appeared in earlier speculations, and with this camera there were also several prototypes. After all, even iFixIt.com confirmed that to this location slightly squeezed optics from the iPod Nano. Just before the Apple event, there was talk that Apple was having problems with the production of iPods with a camera, so the iPod Touch was probably being talked about. But maybe it wasn't production problems, but marketing problems.
The prototypes with the camera disappeared about a month before the keynote, and it's quite possible that Steve Jobs also intervened in the whole thing. Maybe he didn't like that a premium device (which the iPod Touch certainly is) could record video but could not take pictures. The more it would be compared to the Microsoft Zune HD, and naysayers would only talk about the fact that the iPod Touch has such low-quality hardware that it can't even take a picture. And customers would be dissatisfied because they would expect that if the iPod Touch has optics, it can definitely take pictures.
But there is still a place for placing optics in the iPod Touch, so the question is whether Apple plans to use this place in the future and eventually place a camera in the iPod Touch. Personally, I don't expect it before next year, but who knows..
There is another interesting thing about the 3rd generation iPod Touch. The Wi-Fi chip supports the 802.11n standard (and thus faster wireless transmissions), but Apple has decided not to activate this feature for now. I'm no expert and can only speculate that the Nk network would be too demanding on the battery, but anyway the chip in the iPod Touch supports this standard and it's up to Apple to enable this feature in its firmware at some point in the future. In my opinion, developers in particular would certainly welcome it.
