Apple Improves iPhone, iPod Touch

Once again, Apple has released a relatively minor update to their two flagship mobile products, the iPhone and the Touch. This time, memory capacity has been doubled. A common complaint about the iPhone is the 8gb memory capacity. It’s been doubled to 16gb. The Touch gets 32gb of flash memory. Both will retail for about $500.

The price increase on the iPhone seems like an awful lot since 16gb SD cards can be found for under $100 these days. The 32gb on the Touch is a little more justified but even there, 32gb CF cards can be found for around $150. I guess Apple is taking a page out of Sony’s book by charging a fortune for small amounts of proprietary memory. Personally, I’d think the iPhone and Touch would be better served by including user upgradeable storage through the inclusion of a card slot. That way, the user can add as much or as little storage as they want and Apple would be able to keep the initial cost to consumers down of these products. It makes sense to me since these devices are essentially PDAs, and most modern ones include this feature.

I must say though that the Touch is a very nice MP3 player, for an iPod that is. There’s a lot I don’t like about iPod, such as them forcing iTunes on you and the fact it can’t be used as a mass storage device. However, this is a fairly decent player for gadget freaks who have $500 to blow. I’ll hang onto my PSP Fat though, even if it is a little clunky. I personally think the Touch is a tad overpriced. Another beef I have about Apple at the moment is that their prices are not reflecting Canada’s stronger dollar. The price of the Macbook is still $150 more than it is in the US. The Touch happens to be $20 more than it is in the US. The new 32gb Touch is $519 here compared to $499 in the US. I think this is very unfair to their Canadian customers who are getting breaks on electronics from everybody but them. I’d like to upgrade my iBook but at $1249 for the new MacBook, and as much as I like Mac, I might be better off buying a similar PC laptop and installing Linux on it.