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Rumors of iPod mini, 100 Million Songs, Xserve G5 All True
The mini is anodized aluminum and comes in silver, gold, blue, green, and pink. Accessories include a dock and armband. It can be connected to the computer via FireWire 400 or USB 2.0.
Jobs also announced some changes to the existing iPod line, including a bump from 10GB to 15GB for the $300 version, and new in-ear headphones for $40.
The Xserve G5 is, like the previous Xserve, a 1U server. It can hold up to 8GB of ECC DDR 400 memory, and up to 750GB of storage. It includes an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server 10.3, and comes in three configurations: 2GHz for $3,000, dual 2GHz for $4,000, and cluster node dual 2GHz for $3,000.
The Xserve RAID got a bump, too. The 3U RAID has a 500GB increase in capacity to 3.5TB for $11,000; 1.75TB for $7,500; and 1TB for $6,000. And, it is now certified for use with some versions of Windows and Linux.
Jobs, with the help of recording artist John Mayer, introduced the newest member of the iLife media application family: Garage Band. It is a music instrument and recording tool, that can mix up to 64 tracks, comes with 50 software instruments, over 1,000 professional loops, and 200 effects. It can record live instruments and take input from a USB or MIDI controller. It simulates various modern and vintage amps for guitar playback.
The optional $99 Jam Pack adds 100 more instruments, 2,000 more loops, 15 more amps, and more effects.
iPhoto, the most maligned of the iLife apps for its performance problems, received a much-needed update. It can now handle up to 25,000 photos (instead of mere hundreds), and adds automatic and smart albums (similar to iTunes), ratings of photos, and sharing via Rendezvous. Like iTunes, you apparently can't modify descriptions and titles through sharing, but unlike iTunes, there are no copyright restrictions.
iDVD and iMovie also got updates: better control, new and improved effects, and more. iMovie has exporting directly to your iDisk for use on your home page and importing directly from an iSight camera, and iDVD adds a navigation map and archiving projects for burning on another computer. iDVD also gets higher-quality Pro encoding, with 2 hours per DVD.
iLife, for $49, and the Jam Pack are available starting January 16. There was no indication that any new components of iLife will be available for free download, but iLife will be included with all new Macs.
Final Cut Express was bumped to version 2, and is basically updated to include the features from Final Cut Pro 4. Upgrades are $99.
Microsoft announced Office 2004, an upgrade to Office X. People who purchase Office X now until the spring, when 2004 is released, will be eligible for a free upgrade.
Pepsi's iTunes Music Store giveaway will begin on February 1. Yellow caps noting the 100 million song giveaway will have a 1 in 3 chance of winning.
Jobs also noted that iTunes Music Store has 70% of the market share for online music purchasing; that 50,000 audio books were sold for the quarter; that 500,000 songs are now online, making the store the largest online; and that one person has spent $29,500 on iTunes Music Store. Yes, $29,500.
I agree, $250 for the new iPod is too much, considering a new 15GB Dell DJ is the same price, and has a much longer battery life. Of course size and sexiness of the iPod mini come into play, but it doesn't seem like a good value.
I am amazed by the Apple keynotes that Steve Jobs give (and Apple streams from their site) twice a year.
There are two things that amaze me: First, that Apple can consistently release cool things that can keep its user base excited. Second, that Jobs can actually make an interesting two hour show out of it.
For those of you who have never seen the magic of a Steve Jobs Keynote, go to the Apple site under the Quicktime section and view the keynote. It's two hours long, but I'm wiling that if you don't find it at least "really cool" to watch, you'll agree it's better than the average dreck we sit down and watch on the telley each night. This keynote is a good example because it takes a large number of moderate announcements (unlike the unveiling of the iMac, the G5, the major OS upgrades, etc.) but STILL makes you excited enough to want to go out and play with these things.
It also gives me an appreciation of how many market segments Apple is entrenching itself in. You can really see the "digital hub" strategy at work, as well as the fact that income revenue is coming from hardware (iPods) music downloads (iTunes) Internet subscription services (dot-Mac) and others. Go check out the keynote for yourself. I think it'll give you a much different perspective in what and where Apple is in this decade.
And thank goodness SOMEONE is working to keep the computer field new and exciting!
Murray Todd Williams
I'm not sure what the difference is going to be here. If your computer has a bad A/D converter and electronics (and most do, really), then no piece of software is going to make this better. If Macs have sufficiently high quality A/D conversion for this purpose, then you should be able to use any recording software, and I believe there's plenty of it.
I was disappointed in the mini iPod announcement but people will buy them.
Most people focus on "for $50 more you can get 15 more gigs" but there's more to it than that. People will buy the mini ipods for design.
It is smaller and lighter. iPods are already small. Many consumers value smallness hugely. To a consumer who cares more about unit size, than hard disk size, the mini iPod is better and cheaper.
There is also the cuteness factor. Mini iPods come in color. For students in particular, I think this is going to be a big thing. If you think the mini iPod looks better, and it's cheaper, it's a great deal.
Like many iPod consumers I don't care too much about the size of the hard disk, because 4 gigs is enough for me. I don't need to carry my whole music collection around. Sure, I might do that, but it's not a huge deal to me.
So we're left with a smaller, cuter, cheaper iPod that costs less and carries enough music. I'd buy that.
Go into an apple store and try handling one, see how you like it, you may find that 4 gigs vs 15 gigs becomes the least of your concerns.
But I will close with, still disappointed, really wanted to see a 2 gig in the $99-149 range.
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I support spreading santorum
I can think of several reasons why the iPod mini is priced so high. If it is priced at $100-$200, how many of you will get the mini instead of the big iPod? Now the smallest big iPod at $300 suddenly sounds like a better deal. The mini is priced not to cannibalize the sale of its bigger brothers.
If the mini iPod is cheap, everybody will want one. Now. And Apple will not be able to meet demand, not for the initial run of production anyway. There will be the problem of several weeks (or months) wait, same old again. As silly as it sound, I think higher price helps control demand not to outpace supply.
And I think, for Apple, people who will get the mini iPod now are those who want to keep up the 'cool' and do not have to think twice shelling out $250. That's the reason the colors are only available for the mini, and not the big iPods. This will help branding exclusivity to the iPod mini, only for those who want to stay fashionable and can effortlessly afford the price.
Wait until April, when the iPod mini is available worldwide and the production ramps up, Apple may drop the price or up the capacity.
Steve Jobs also said that mini iPod is going after the high-end flash-based player, not the HD based player. Considering those flash-based players are priced around $200 for a lot less capacity, iPod mini is very competitive. It's Apple engineering at its best. Who else can engineer a HD-based product to compete for a flash-based market?
The iPod minis may not have great price/storage ratios compared to the regular iPods, but compared to these other things they're absolute bargains. If anyone is buying the other players for whatever reason (just not quite enough money to spend a few dozen extra dollars for a regular iPod, or don't need the capacity and would rather have smaller size, whatever), the iPod minis might actually be just what they need.
I'm told they they just announced an updated version of that Rio Nitrus; it'll hold 4 GB, and sell for $249 - the same as the iPod mini. It appears these two will go head-to-head; I'm curious to see how they do, both against each other and against other players (at both ends of the price and capacity scales)...
All that said, I personally want to hold out until I can afford the $499 for the 40 GB "regular" iPod, and even if I didn't want that much capacity, I'd still be more inclined to spend the extra $50 to get the 15 GB instead of a 4 GB mini. I can totally see the appeal of the minis, though.
There are several things that drove adoption of the original ipod. It was a large capacity (for the time) player that looked nice, had a good interface, and was squarely aimed at the high-end buyer.
This new ipod is a low capacity, item that has another apple product already poaching sales (the 15gb $299 ipod). And on top of that it is still $250!!
Someone at apple is getting fired for this and rightfully so. The average consumer (and there are millions of them) doesn't want a smaller ipod with colors, they wanted a cheaper ipod.
Consumers said everything was great about an ipod except its price, and the rumor sites reflected that. Consumers strongly said they wanted an Apple mp3 player with a small amount of storage (2 gb was what many people were hoping to buy) and a low price tag (somewhere between $100 and 150).
Perhaps Apple could not have realistically met the magic $99 pricepoint, but to set the low end price at $250 is just laughable for what is marketed as a ipod for the masses.
Hell, apple would have been better just to drop the 10gb price $50 and skip desiging a new product all together.
It is smaller and lighter. iPods are already small. Many consumers value smallness hugely. To a consumer who cares more about unit size, than hard disk size, the mini iPod is better and cheaper.
To an extent I agree with you, but we've reached the point of diminishing returns IMO. First, I think we can all acknowledge that there comes a point at which smaller is just smaller, not better (no jokes, please!). I mean at some point it actually becomes a detriment to usability - the buttons have to be too small, it's hard to keep track of in your pocket (or wherever you keep it), it's more prone to damage, not as comfortable to hold in the hand, or whatever. Where that point is I'm sure varies a bit from person to person, but it exists for everybody - for example, nobody would be able to use an iPod the size of a Tic Tac, and almost everybody who tried would probably lose it within a week of buying one.
The regular iPod is already small - probably as small as a lot of people would want something like this to be (certainly not everybody, but a lot of people - just to head off some of the "it's not small enough for me!" responses). The iPod fits in your pocket but you never can forget it's there. It's light but has a nice, quality heft. It looks nice. People can easily see that you're using one (honestly, I think this is important to a lot of iPod users). And it's approximately the same size as a lot of other electronic gadgets we're used to - PDA's, cell phones, etc.
Now, according to Jobs, Apple is targeting the iPod Mini at the "Flash player market". If this is true, it's not going to work. People buy flash-based players because they're cheap, not because they're small. I would guess the current market share of players $200 and up in this category is exceedingly tiny - frankly, if you have more than $200 to spend on an MP3 player, you're going to get an iPod anyway (or some equivalent). So, now people have the choice of two iPods at approximately that price, one of which has more than three times the storage space - at best you've just split the iPod market without adding any new customers. At worst you've got a money-losing new product that doesn't sell.
I have no doubt there will be a flurry of initial orders for this thing from the Apple faithful - there are a lot of wealthy gadget lovers out there who also happen to be Mac-heads, and they buy pretty much everything Apple releases. Beyond that, though, I'm not sure. I don't see how this product opens the iPod up to any new customers it didn't have before.
2GB for $100 would have really hit a sweet spot, though, and probably would have absolutely destroyed the flash player market in one fell swoop. It would have opened up the iPod line to a vast new customer base and no doubt would have made buckets of money for Apple in the long-term (maybe not the short term due to cost, but if Apple ends up basically monopolizing the entire mp3 market, that can only be good for the bottom line over time). I don't really see the reasoning for what we got instead.
I have mixed feelings about this; I thought the original iPod was merely an "okay" idea. Not useful to me personally, and not deserving of the hype it was getting. I now have the 3rd gen 20 gig model, and have to acknowledge that it was and is an amazing product.
So I'm hesitant to strongly trash the mini iPod, just because I was wrong, before. I can sort of see where Apple is going with this -- most people either don't have huge CD collections, or don't see it as a big win to carry everything with them. Continuing to grow the HD sizes on the big iPods isn't going to make the things any more appealing these people. Shrinking it will, even though existing iPods are incredibly compact.
But there are two things I can't get away from:
First, it's a small step pricewise from the mini iPod to the 15 gig version, a far better deal, in my eyes. OTOH, it's not exactly a problem if one of your products' sales are being cannibalized by one of your more expensive products. If the mini iPod gets people who were previously considering a flash-based player to consider an iPod, and they end up with a 15 gig model, that's hardly a loss for Apple. Maybe Apple doesn't even plan to sell that many of these at $250. As the price of the guts comes down, they can price-drop these way down, and reuse much of the R&D they did for them when larger HD sizes are available in the appropriate form factor. And in the meantime, they're acting as a weird sort of advertisement for their big brothers.
But the thing that bugs me more is the simple thought that a $150 2 gigabyte model would have absolutely cleaned up in the marketplace. Overnight, sales of flash based players over $100 would have vanished.
I hear this a lot and i though the same thing: Why on earth did they not introduce something for $149? We all want a cheap iPod. Obviously.
It is safe to assume that this is obvious to Apple, too. The logical conclusion is that there is something about the product that keeps Apple from selling it for cheap. Here are just some things that come to mind:
1) It's not technically possible. Those mini-HDs are brand new, and there was only enough time to test the 4G versions. Mind you this is a consumer product, and must work flawlessly (unlike computers).
2) Apple cannot possibly make enough to satisfy demand anyway - they have had production problems in the past. So make them expensive now and increase profits and cheap later - people love price cuts.
3) It's always possible to intro the 2G / $100 version later on. Unless there is serious competition (e.g. Sony or similar) the price will be closer to $149 though.
Finally, this is a ground breaking product in terms of size / capacity, so to expect it to come for really cheap is unrealistic. In addition, the production process for a completely new product is tricky to pull off at a high quality level. That's not to be underestimated. Apple / iPod has an extremely good reputation so they have basically no room for error - the press would tear them apart immediately.
I think you are confused, and mixing up usability with ease of use.
The iPod has *both*, so maybe that explains the confusion.
But it's always good to pay for usability. Usability *never* changes no matter how practiced you become. A iPod 1 foot tall will always remain 1 foot tall, and will remain as unusable a month after purchase as when new. An iPod the shape of a pointy five sized star, no matter how small, is just as unusable no matter how much effort you put into it.
The fact that the iPod is both usable *and* easy to learn is a testament to it's design:
It's smooth, rounded, corners, makes it easy to slip into and fish out of a pocket. That's usability.
It's light weight is usability.
It's simple charge via Firewire is usability.
It's simple scroll wheel with large embedded buttons is usability; it's the ability to use it without looking, and has nothing to do with ease of learning.
It's hard protective aluminum shell is usability, not ease of learning.
It's ability to boot is usability.
It's ability to play Solitaire, Breakout!, and Missile Command is usability.
It's ability to act as a normal Firewire drive is usability.
It's ability to scroll through your collection quickly is usability.
The layout of the five buttons to up, down, left, right, and center is usability; the ability to use all the buttons with only two fingers, your thumb and index finger, is usability, and not ease of learning.
Ease of learning? That's figuring out that the scroll wheel controls volume, contrast, seek, games, and menu selection in different contexts: That Apple overloads the scroll wheel in five situations, and you learning which five, is ease of learning. Or that Apple overloads the 'action' button to toggle selections, the games, and switch modes between seek and volume, that's ease of learning. Or, difficulty, I suppose.
GPL Deconstructed