Rumors of Mini iPods

TheKidWho writes "According to Thinksecret: 'Reliable sources inside and outside of Apple have confirmed Apple will announce the new pocket-size iPods in a number of capacities and in various colors, including stripes. Capacities will be 2 and 4GB -- meaning users could store some 400 and 800 songs, respectively. Prices will start at around $100US, Think Secret has learned. It is not known if the new product line will be available immediately after introduction. It is also expected that current iPod models will be revamped to add body colors as well.' With the $99 price tag, it seems these rumored iPods could make big headway in the low end mp3 player market."

Comments

this is good for joggers

[Savatte]

The smaller and lighter the mp3 player, the better for joggers and runners. cd players are too bulky and heavy, but this could easily work.

Re:this is good for joggers

[squiggleslash]

I seriously doubt the 1" Toshiba drives are sub-$100. They're smaller than the 1.8" drives Apple currently uses for iPods, and are likely to be more expensive as a result.

I have to be honest, I'll believe this when I see it. I hope I'm proven wrong, but I think either the price is wrong ($200 maybe?), the capacity is wrong (256Mb perhaps?), or they're planning something evil, like tying the machine to a more expensive version of the iTMS.

Or maybe it's "$99 for the ePod, $299 for the special connecting cable" ;-)

Re:this is good for joggers

[ucblockhead]

That depends...as a jogger, the real question is whether this device is solid state or harddrive based. I've never been willing to trust a hard drive to last while running.

It has little to do with bulk. I've run with things as large as an iPod. I'm just afraid that a few months of the bouncing would cause a hard drive failure. It's why I haven't gotten one.

The Sony Way?

[Destoo]

So that's how it's going to work. Kill the current market by spreading specs and rumors.

100$ for a 2gb lightweight device by apple? amazing indeed.

Just like the Playstation 2's specs killed the Dreamcast.

Sorry, I'm just bitter.
I probably just need more brandy in my coffee.
Merry Xmas

Re:The Sony Way?

[DeltaSigma]

PS2's specs killed the dreamcast because consoles are released on a much larger time table. New MP3 players come out all the time. They're far closer to commodity hardware than gaming consoles are, thus, someone's not going to wait more than a few months for this ipod to materialize before they go out and buy from a different manufacturer.

perfect gift

[soundofthemoon]

This would be really great. I'd love to be able to give something like this to my teenage nieces. Sure they could use a full-size iPod, but $400 is a lot for a teen to carry around and probably lose or break. $100 would be cheap enough that pain of loss wouldn't be too awful.

Then I could just give them iTMS gift certificates for all future gifts. I'd be the best uncle ever!

I think it would be Perfect Timing

[mesach]

since they are set to "sell" 100 million songs through the Pepsi promotion...

All you have to do is introduce a cheap player and then they have the free music, and you have the Apple Ipod cast in stone as the mp3 player to buy.

Makes perfect sense

[SengirV]

Why sell a prodeut for $100 when people are buying in droves at $299 - $499?

So the idea of releasing them for xmas is a horrible one indeed.

I think that the timing of the cheaper miniPods coincides nicely with the $100 mill Pepsi give-a-way starting in February.

It's all a game, the game called 'Maximize Profits'. And selling only the current iPods for xmas make you a big fat winner winner chicken dinner. Also, how many people are going to return their $150 128 meg POS flash MP3 player to Best Buy to get one of these new miniPods? I'd say more than a few.

I hope they keep the games

[Dixie_Flatline]

I just got an iPod for Solstice (actually, I got it a few weeks early), and the single best feature about it is the games.

That's right. The 4 crappy games that came on it are a blessing.

I HATE shopping. I've hated shopping since I was young and my mother dragged me out to malls to shop around. Back then, they didn't even have chairs everywhere. I stood around and hated the experience. Now, when I go shopping there are chairs everywhere, but nothing to do. It turns out, I still hate the experience.

But now that I have an iPod, I can listen to the music, toodle around with Parachute or Name that Song, and look up every once in a while to say, "Yes dear, that looks great." I don't know if any of the other MP3 players out there have these little time wasters on them, but they should.

(Oh, I hear the iPod does other things, too, like keep your contacts, alarms, notes and files. So handy!)

Re:Batteries?

[aldoman]

Exactly. This behaviour is far better, I mean the 'newbies' won't ever use the iPod as a hard drive, and if they stumbled across the music on a folder on their desktop (the iPod mounted) then they might be tempted to start uploading through there, instead of keeping a proper libary of music sync'd up through iTunes...

Re:OGG support?

[tuxedobob]

Okay, this is probably just a troll, since it says it isn't one, but it's a new troll to me. Anyway...

Is there support for OGG files?

Probably not. Yes, OGG is an open standard. Yay. That's nice. I don't feel like re-encoding 10GB of songs.

Can I use it between my home PC and my work PC both of which run Linux?

Hasn't someone released software to let your Linux-using PC's talk to the iPod? I think so.

Can I copy a new track to the iPod at home and then download from it to my work PC?

Yes, just use the iPod like a FireWire hard drive, which it is.

Will it play those files that I want to copy FROM IT to my other PC?

This is the same question you just asked. Are you expecting a different answer?

Oh, and if Apple thinks I am going to pay $100 for a portable player and then $50 for batteries, they are nuts.

What does the Neuros run on? Happy rays of sunshine? I couldn't tell from the site. Maybe it said it in the "demo", but I'm not downloading flash over dialup.

BTW, if you don't want DRM, don't download music from a music service. That's the only way you get it, and that's true for any service, not just the iTMS.

Also, if you get modded, you'll probably be modded flamebait. A troll has to actually look like he knows what he's talking about.

Re:Batteries?

[Zach Fine]

I wrote up the following screed, and then realized I should start right off the bat with the most pertinent point:

The iPod battery is user-replaceable for $49. See below for a link to one vendor.

The iPod was obviously designed for optimal simplicity, elegance, and small-size. Apple crammed a flat battery into the thing that is about the size of the entire back of the device, and thus managed to make the highest capacity/size ratio portable mp3 player available.

Adding an easily user-accessible battery door would (to my mind) break the seamlessness of the iPod's design and possibly require that it be larger as well (consider a door that's the size of practically the entire back of the device -- or whether the dimensions would change if some sort of snap-release tab-in-slot mechanism was added to the entire length and breadth of the current iPod back).

Given that the battery lasts at least 18-months, I'd prefer to have a seamless design, and then have a little fun with a screwdriver when the time comes (rarely) to change the battery. In addition, I wonder how long the tiny hard drive will last given the conditions in which it's used and the forces to which it's subjected -- it wouldn't surprise me if (had I an iPod) I'd only need to replace the battery once.

What's that, you didn't know the battery IS user-replaceable? See IpodBattery.com for details on the $49 ipod batteries they sell and to read the installation instructions. It doesn't look all that difficult for anyone who knows how to use a screwdriver.

People seem to like to pile on criticism of the fact that the iPod battery is not easily replaceable. But I haven't heard the same sort of griping about the non-easily-user-replaceable lithium-ion batteries built into most PDAs (Palm Tungstens, Sony Clies, RIM Blackberrys, Compaq Ipaq, etc). I doubt all these companies forgo providing easy access to the batteries as some conspiracy to force consumers to replace the devices or pay to have a new battery installed, but rather the devices are designed to be as small and tightly packed as possible, and given this concern less regard is rightly given to putting the battery in an easily accessible spot and adding a door.

It is worth griping a bit about Apple's previous battery replacement policy (they wanted $255 to replace the battery), but they've since changed their tune quite a bit and it'll now cost $99 to have them replace the battery for you. In addition, when buying an iPod, an additional $59 gets the warranty extended to two years.

'Course, the iPod is out of my price range. I spent less than the cost of a $49 iPod battery on my teensy 128Mb USB-memory-stick-mp3-player-voice-recorder toy (Andus resound, flashed with some similar player's firmware to allow it to be mounted on Macs, Windows, and whatever-else as a real generic USB storage device), and find that this is a more than adequate amount of memory for a few hours of jogging. But if I were to buy an iPod, it would be because I appreciate things that are well designed and a joy to use, and the battery issue wouldn't even be on my radar.

Re:Batteries? (Creative Nomad)

[valmont]

what are the dimensions of a Nomad Zen NX? would you care to give a comparison to iPod's dimensions? i haven't found on their site any documentation about which battery it uses, how much it costs, and what it takes to replace it. It does say it's a replaceable battery, but technically, iPod *also* has a replaceable battery.

hint: if the iPod is a smaller, more portable form-factor while touting similar capacity, while being less confusing, with less holes to plug shit in, less buttons to fuck with, your average consumer ain't guna give a shit about a device that's a geek's dream. detachable this or that, believe it or not, is confusing to the average user. It's a matter of which audience you cater to. More on this later.

There are reasons why there are tradeoffs. the iPod is extremely small for the capacity it offers, it is extremely portable and unintrusive. i have fit mine (2G) in just about any pocket i've had. Furthermore, many of my co-workers had bought competing players, absolutely every single one of them complained about either its form-factor or lack of capacity. Nomad Jukebox3 is a big square-ish size, much like today's CD players that are basically the size of a CD, which is NOT a form factor that is nearly as appealing as one of an iPod's. Don't get me wrong the features and interoperability capabilities of the Nomad jukebox3 are simply impressive but when a device's form-factor is not really a constraint, you can go to town with features. That doesn't mean this is necessarily what the average user Apple targets will be drawn to. The Jukebox3's affluence of buttons and holes to plug things in also make it, to your average non-computer geek, a "complicated", "confusing" device, while geeks see those features as a God-Sent. it's all relative. Sure the lack of replaceable battery is frustrating. But it ain't the first time, nor is it ever guna be the last time this sort of issue will plague consumer electronics.

Replacing an iPod battery is NOT that hard, you just gotta be careful and requires a bit of skills. If that doesn't do it, then pay the $100 for the cost of the battery and to have someone else install it and be done with it. Or buy extended warranty such as AppleCare or one from Fry's, Best Buy, CompUSA, FNAC, or whoever sells you the iPod. It ain't that bad. People always pit the price of a battery against the price of the device it goes into and get infuriated to "pay $100 for a battery for a device that's only $400". No no no and no. Most resilient, quality batteries are expensive and that's the fucking way it is. Especially the type of flat one required for the iPod, it is quite a nice piece of engineering. When it dies, you gotta pay. period. Take a deep fucking breath and accept this fact.

It always works like this: you shop for some device, it tells you it's rechargeable, but no one ever cares to ask "yes but for how long, what do i do when it can no-longer hold a charge" to make an informed purchasing decision based on those questions. They don't think, then get pissed when the inevitable happens, then go whine at their lawyers, who in the end will be the only winners in the upcoming class-action lawsuit. Once people also get the device they rarely ever look at best practices included in their manual to enhance battery life. There you have it.

feel free to read a couple more ideas about why things may be the way they are.

this isn't about zealotry. some people happened to have understood why Apple has made the compromises it did at the time it did and accept 'em without whining all fucking day, and will eventually vote with their feet and potentially wait for improvements, others choose to bitch around, karma-whoring on slashdot, thinking they're smart and have a fucking clue about industrial design and stating the obvious ad nauseum, bragging about how device X or Y has a detachable this or that while never addres