Christmas wish: an iPod Touch with camera
Parents of the first world need an iPod Touch with a camera, but to really understand why, I need to tell you about the best school holiday experience I’ve ever had first.
Boy8* and I played together at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney for nearly three hours last week. We could have stayed another hour or two easy if we weren’t beginning to starve.
You’re thinking, ‘Huh? What kind of weird eight year old is this? I don’t know any eight year olds who’d be happy to spend three hours in a botanical gardens.” But don’t click away — I haven’t told you the full story: your own restless, distracted eight year old boy could also spend an entertaining, educational and interactive three hours in the park if you had an iPhone 3GS and the iPhone app The Hidden Park.
I’m an Augmented Reality (AR) sceptic but even I have to admit, Hidden Park’s kids-in-the-park-focused AR game is really something. It works with a bunch of famous botanical garden-type parks around the world and when you launch it in one of those parks it takes your kids on an interactive puzzle-solving expedition which has spatial, math, language and puzzle-solving elements.
I was blown away at how the combination of real environment and virtual environment kicked his imagination into overdrive. I’ve uploaded photos and a video taken as part of the challenges here if you’re interested. You can see from the video that he’s fully immersed in a fantasy world, partly his own creation, partly Hidden Park’s. He could have kept playing for hours if I’d had food with me. Again: I’m not a big fan of AR… for adults. For kids, I am now a believer.
Now, to the point of this story: Apple does a great job of product segmentation and there’s no doubt from their advertising and marketing that the iPod Touch is Apple’s primary youth product. So, why doesn’t the iPod Touch have a camera?
An iPod Touch with camera is such a good idea Apple's own product shots position it as a media device
The iPod Touch with a camera would be a perfect device for Boy8 and his peers. His favourite activity on my iPhone is taking photos and videos. Lots and lots of them. His generation are digital media natives, having grown up in a world of easily accessible video and still capture hardware.
Sure, iPod Nano has a camera but the screen’s too small, it doesn’t have WiFi, and there’s a critical failure for the youth market: it doesn’t support apps. The iPod Touch would allow Boy8 to use kid-focused media apps and over WiFi, he could publish his edited media direct to the web or email.
Sadly, you’d still need a device with a GPS and compass to play Hidden Park together but that’s probably starting to price the device out of reach.
Mr Jobs, if you’re listening, I would like a tablet too, but please, can we have an iPod Touch with a camera first? Kthxbai…
* Boy8 is our son. He’s “Boy8″ because he’s still too young to be identifiable on the interweb. The “8″ is his current age.
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[...] hearing from parents who are stunned that their kids could have so much fun in a park. This recent blog was such a great example that we thought we’d show it [...]
[...] Gary Hayes ] Augmented Reality game for kids, reviewed by a blogger who tried playing the game with her eight year old in the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens – it kept his attention for 3 [...]