iPod Touch 3G processor inconsistency

Apple have a notoriety for using a horribly effective (or just plain horrible) business model, in which whatever device they currently have available has some deliberate, strategically downplayed set of shortfalls for the sole reason to be introduced in later versions, as though they’ve created the best thing since sliced bread. With the third generation of the iPod Touch, however, they’ve reached an all new level of this “bait and switch” technique that’s just unbearable.

Rather admirably, the iTouch has recently grown into somewhat of a budding games platform, the little powerhouse sporting some impressive graphical processing and an interesting combination of control schemes to boot. Because of this rather daring image shift (from a ballsy PMP to an all-in-one games console) apple has, in its third generation of releases, made some changes to the components inside; namely, that of the device’s processor and added OpenGL support (2.0 instead of 1.1 as supported thus far).

Now; usually this is within the norm for the multi million dollar corporation, as already mentioned, but what makes this instance so awful is that in doing so, they didn’t even bother to introduce a new generation for the damn things!

Just to recap, insofar apple had made a stellar job of keeping the hardware of these devices, iPhone and all (the iPod Touch being a sort of little brother to the iPhone), pretty much identical. Because of this, developing for one device ensures that things would work the same all throughout; at least for the most part.

You’d think this wouldn’t be such a big deal as long as they changed the devices all in the same manner to keep the generation consistent; but what happened here was that only two of the three third generation models of the iTouch got this upgrade. What this meant was that this incongruence wasn’t just introduced from one generation to the next; but instead, at least logically by their associated names, it happened within the same generation!

As simple as it may seem, I’d have to call out some serious Bullshit on that. What they’re selling is not the third generation models of the iTouch. What they are are simply a second gen, 8GB model just called the third gen model, with only the remaining two sporting the full package of updates, which should have been given to the lot of them!

I see very little reason for them not to affect the upgrade throughout the whole set if only to fleece potential customers, who would be looking for an improved gaming experience, out of an extra hundred bucks.

… Oh, right.