i guess a modern day Ipod taylored for Hires Apple Music. I think there's a market still there for people that don't want to use their phone
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Apple Music Apple should bring back a dedicaed music device
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You mean an iPod Touch?
iPod touch - Official Apple Support
Learn how to set up and use your iPod touch. Find all the topics, resources, and contact options you need for your iPod touch.
www.apple.com
There's still a market, albeit a small enthusiast market, for powerful PMP's with good DACs etc built in. Cowon and I think Sony definitely have products in this space. I'd love to see Apple tap into this and make a rock solid device to compete with the incumbent brands - maybe something like the old iPod Classic but with more high-end audio chops.
But honestly it doesn't seem like a market that Apple would want to go after - when they make niche products like the Mac Pro (niche is a relative term here) they tend to be very expensive and have very high margins which makes it worthwhile to sell a small number of them (again, relatively speaking). Apple's music ecosystem also revolves around streaming, and selling high margin peripherals in the form of AirPods, Beats, and HomePods - neither of which are really suitable for a PMP.
But honestly it doesn't seem like a market that Apple would want to go after - when they make niche products like the Mac Pro (niche is a relative term here) they tend to be very expensive and have very high margins which makes it worthwhile to sell a small number of them (again, relatively speaking). Apple's music ecosystem also revolves around streaming, and selling high margin peripherals in the form of AirPods, Beats, and HomePods - neither of which are really suitable for a PMP.
You can’t extract part of his complete statement like that and make your point out of “part of it”
There definitely is a market, but its way smaller than a company of Apples size would be willing to go after and it's dominated by very well established players with almost cult-like followings. Multi-trillion dollar companies don't go chasing down tiny market segments that don't fit at all with anything else they sell.
I'd say they're far more likely to do *something* to steal customers away from that market, and if I was a gambling man I'd say it would be in the shape of some kind of high-end, lossless-capable wireless product that works with Apple Music and all their existing 'source' products like iPhones, Macs etc.
No disagreements here. I mainly just bummed about it.
There used to be a time when Apple would do stuff just because it was great and would be great and it didn’t always have to be the biggest hit in the universe.
One area like that is them abandoning routers.
Those are not some huge cash cow where they would dominate the world but it would be great for their customers to have a first party solution they could trust, and Apple has left them high and dry.
That sucks.
Why be the most successful and most valuable company on the planet if you can’t occasionally do some stuff just because it’s great for your customers or a cool idea?
Just sucks.
Bean counter is doing a great job stacking up beans.
That is about where my praise for him ends
I sort of understand the idea but considering that the vast majority of people are happy using their iPhones and/or iPads to stream music I think it would be a very small niche market. Also that same group of people are listening with some version of headphones/earbuds or in their car, most of them would not even notice and certainly not appreciate the difference in what they are getting quality wise now and what they would get with "lossless" audio. Pipe dream at best IMHO (but then again I don't work for Apple).