Nano 6th Generation
The "movie pitch" had to have been "It's the iPod Touch meets the iPod Shuffle".
I have felt since the moment I first saw this device that it needed to become an "Apple wrist watch". Since then a few others have said the same thing.
When you consider the Nano 6th Gen you have to wonder, "What problem was Apple trying to solve here?"
Factually speaking, they needed to reset the "Nano feature set" and "training wheels" people into using the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. They had already included camera, radio, TiVo radio (Live Pause), speaker, color LCD, plays music, plays movies, plays tv shows, plays audiobooks, podcasts and audio files of all types. The Nano 5th Gen had become the iPod "Swiss Army Knife".
If you've carried out and built something that is right size, which the 5th Gen was, and you've got playing every file type, and it has a speaker in case you left your earbuds (or in my case... I listen using Pioneer HDJ-2000 headphones) at home. The only thing left to knock it down and things back again.
Now you have to change it substantively change the device 'form factor" (physical size and shape) and the interface. People asked me what I thought about the iPod Touch when it first came out. My comment was "It's a Trojan Horse to teach adolescents how to use an iPhone, so they get an iPhone when they are older." The Touch interface Nano allows Apple to move the "Multi-Touch" interface farther down the iPod product line.
Also fewer moving parts, and easier (cheaper) to manufacture. The device is 6 parts, a drop forged aluminum housing, hogged out (NC milled) to fit the battery, logic board, headphone jack and switch assembly. Then plugged down and glued to the surface are LCD, upper glass and digitizer.
I wasn't a fan of the 3rd Gen form factor, this one is rather like it. It basically is the Shuffle 2nd Gen refitted. Because of the shape and size, I can see these will find their way into the washing machine more easily, and be dropped and lost more easily. Because of its diminutive size i can see them being replaced more readily, because it looks to non-repairable.
Relative to the 5th Gen Nano, have you heard how this 6th Gen benfits the owner?
1) Smaller more likely to loose device
2) larger proability of finding its way into the wash since it clips to clothing
3) teaches the user how to use multi-touch interface
4) glass front once dropped and broken renders device useless
5) monolithic appearance gives owner impression that it can't be repaired
6) $150 just like the last Nano model
No savings, smaller feature set, easier to loose, seemingly un-repairable, those are all benefits for Apple not the user.
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