Steve Jobs: Reason Why iTouch Has No Camera And iPod Nano Can Record Video

Im sure that everybody was wondering why Apple upgraded the iPod Nano with a camera instead of the iTouch. Steve Jobs, was interviewed yesterday after the Apple event by David Pogue who is a technology columnist for the New York Times. David’s first question was “why a camera in the tiny Nano and not in the iTouch?”

Steve has responded promptly, emphasizing and reiterating what was said a few hours before the interview by Phil Schiller:

Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine,” he said. “We started to market it that way, and it just took off. And now what we really see is it’s the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw. So what we were focused on is just reducing the price to $199. We don’t need to add new stuff. We need to get the price down where everyone can afford it.

David’s second question was why the Nano can record video, but can’t snap still photos. That reason, he said, is technical: the sensors you need to record video are extremely thin these days—thin enough to fit into the wafer-thin Nano. But the ones with enough resolution for stills, especially with autofocus (like the sensor in the iPhone), are much too thick to cram into a player that’s only 0.2 inches thick.

There you go, now you know why there was all the fuss about an iTouch with a camera and when the big day arrived, there was a Nano with a camera. Happy or disappointed? You still gonna buy this products so….

[via NYTimes]