Slashdot Mirror
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.
As a digital music creator (who up until now has used a Windows-based PC and Acid Pro) I cannot tell you how excited I was by the demo John Mayer and Steve Jobs gave of GarageBand. From the looks of it (and I know that looks can be deceiving) you can record instruments straight into the computer without a digital interface... and it sounds amazing...I've tried this in the past (recording through the audio-in port) on my PC and have never gotten good results.
I can't wait to get the new version of iLife.
However, I was a little dissapointed by the price of the new iPod mini. At $250 (just $50 less than the (now) 15Gb iPod) I can't really see how it's worth it. I'll just pay another $50 and get an iPod that can hold my entire music library. Not sure what they were thinking with that price.
Though I'm not effected that much by the Xserve G5 or the Xserve Raid for that matter, I was still impressed by their cross-OS compatability.
The guitars sound good, now give me about 10db more on the cow bell.
The XServe G5 will allow to build supercomputers using far more space and will be obviously one of the best solutions around for webservers.
The iPod is more expensive than what the rumors said but it also has bigger hard drive (4Go/249$ vs 2Go/100$). I think that makes it the best deal by far in its category.
Then this 'Pepsi' thing... Looks like I'm gonna drink Pepsi instead of Coke soon. And I mean a lot of Pepsi. Definitely a good idea for Pepsi.
2004 will definitely be Apple's year and I think that's good news because it will bring some change in the IT world.
Happy new year and no, I'm not a Mac zealot.
Iraq: war to save the U
Oh well, I guess I'll be content with the $299 15 gig model.
At $249 I will not be buying one. This confirms the upsell goal- who would buy 1/4 the capacity of a regular ipod for only $50 less?
I find the minipod price disappointing, after the rumors of $100-$200. I have several friends and relatives very unlikely to pay $250, who could have easily gone for a $125 minipod. Maybe we'll see less expensive 2 gig versions in a few months.
Thoughts:
New mini-iPod is exactly like I thought it would be .. except for the
price. I thought $100 was too low, so I was thinking $150-$200. $250 is just
borderline too expensive (I.e., I'm not going to get one right away, my budget
can't justify it.
Xserve G5 - WOW!!! ECC RAM! That crosses one more thing off the "reasons not to get an Xserve list".. a very short list now. I know what my next client recommendation is going to be: Dell. No just KIDDING! XSERVE !!! Hell I might get one for home use. People are going to think "G5" = "Supercomputer".
Garage Band - This is cool. I can just hear folks saying it now: "oh now, now we're going to be flooded with crap written in Garage Band and people will think it's 'music'".. well, 95% of everything is crap anyway. This is going to be lots of fun. The iTunes integration is cool.. I'll be getting a copy for sure (I have Reason and this looks like a consumer/guitars version). Also I can't wait to see what the "real" experimental electronic musicians do when they get their hands on it and start deconstructing the fuck out of it!
"Giving away" data that costs nearly nothing to distribute! Gotta love it!
All in all, a bunch of great announcements. Thanks Apple, for making interesting products.
Personally, I'm really dissapointed with the mini ipod. The only thing that's selling it right now is its size (and the colors, I guess). I was ready to buy a $150 ipod that had 2GB of storage. But $250 is too much for me. If I'm planning to spend $250, I'd rather spend $300 and buy a full 15 GB ipod. It's only $50 more, and you get almost 4 times the storage. I don't think apple will get many new customers with this, and i hope they introduce a $150 model very soon, because that would be a hit, while I doubt this one will be very successful.
They updated the classic 1984 commercial for it's 20th anniversary. The girl is now wearing iPod... :)
t ml
http://www.apple.com/hardware/ads/1984/1984_480.h
And that makes me wonder what new stuff Apple will introduce on January 24th...
Note that it's not "Garage Band" but "GarageBand". (Straight from Apple's InterCapitalizationNounFactory.)
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Don't Steal Photos.
Vonal Declosion
The mini (4GB) version is $249, that is $62 per GB. On the other hand the 15GB 'big brother' iPod is $299, a mere $20 per GB. That makes the final 11 GB on the 15GB model a bargain at only $50: less than the cost of ONE iPMini GB.
;)
Of course, Apple uses what is pretty much a 1/.8 rather than a 1/0.55 exchange rate for the UK market, so I'm scammed either way
Also, has anyone got a URL for a video of the full keynote like the one for where he announced the G5s?
Steve himself announced it was going to happen when iTunes Music Store was originally rolled out.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
[I]one person has spent $29,500 on iTunes Music Store. Yes, $29,500.[/I]
$10,500 more and he'll fill up his 40GB iPod.
It seems as if the new mini-ipod is playing catch up with the already-announced Rio Nitrus. It's equally priced, stores 4 GB as well, is the same size if not smaller, is actually lighter, has double the battery time, and is expected to ship this month, instead of february, like the mini pod. Although you could cop out with the "stylish design" argument before, the shots of the new minipods, even with all the new colors... well, they look like butt. The nitrus, from what I've seen of it's current 1.5 gig version, is pretty quick to pickup with it's ease of use, as well. The only real advantages i see the minipods having is the firewire and mac compatibility....
Half as good at 7/8ths the price!
While the iPod mini rumours didn't come true as we expected, it was still a great keynote. Like many other people, iLife looks great (although I could have done without the corny advert that they showed). I don't see the iPod mini being a runaway success, however - for another $50, you can get the (new) 15 GB version; 20% more money spent for nearly 300% more space. I was expecting to really want one of the iPod minis, but now I'm really tempted by the entry level 'proper' iPod. It is smaller, which is nice, although the existing one was plenty small enough. Still, a nice keynote; slighly annoyed that the 'One more thing' was about the iPod mini colours, though.
"I think everyone is an agnostic but just doesn't know" - Frazz
I would have never imagined that they would include an application as great as GarageBand and kept the price of iLife at $50. GarageBand is gonna compete with products like Guitar Port, so you get amplifier simulations for a tiny price. They sounded great too. I just can't believe this, it's gotta be a strategy to sell more Macs because the technology behind GarageBand (and its $99 add-on) is NOT cheap. If it were a demo for a high-end application I would have been just as floored. How much is a G5 again?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Not to mention, the iPod mini is $20 cheaper, while the regular iPod is $30 cheaper if you are a student, lowering the small difference by another $10 (229/269)
Vonal Declosion
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
Apple said it would be unveiling stuff all year long. Normally there is only 2-3 times per year. I wouldn't be surprised if they used the Boston Expo this summer to unviel the 20th aniversary edition of the Mac. This Keynote was good but I have to agree with other people about being disappointed over the Mini-Ipod. If they were $199 then that would be good but I don't think they are going to be the hit Apple expects.
Now it looks like you have to buy iLife to get the updates.
I actually don't think it's a bad thing. It's a good deal, at a price around what a typical game costs. And if a fair price pushes them to continue to make improvements, I'm all for it.
I was anticipating a serious case of buyer's remorse given that I had just bought a 512MB flash player/USB pen drive for $150. The iPod mini is certainly more impressive than my little player, but given that it is hard drive based and $100 more I don't feel so bad.
Also, I can pop in a new AAA battery when mine runs out. All by myself.
Lasers Controlled Games!
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.
Don't forget xgrid. A beta has been announced at apple
Build you own supercluster at home...
At the moment, though I wish I had a supercluster of money presses.
Also worth noting is that they officially announced Xgrid, their clustering software. There had been a maililng list for it a couple of months ago that was later shutdown. From the press release it says:
"Xgrid makes it easy to turn your Mac cluster into a supercomputer," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "The new Xgrid software agents use Apple's breakthrough Rendezvous networking technology to automatically discover, connect and manage tasks across available systems in a Mac cluster."
The entire press release can be read here and in it they say they have posted a beta version of the software but I've yet to find it.
and that one person has spent $29,500 on iTunes Music Store. Yes, $29,500.
This one person also bought a SCO license and invested in Enron.
Who can afford that? iCant. iWont, its not what iWant! Think I'll wait 3 months for Jobs to come to his senses and reduce the price.
The new iPod will be a cooler conversation piece when you site next to a hot girl on the airplane and your new iPodmini has the same color as her favorite color.
Now, the 4 gig iPod Mini has a 4 gig hard drive and it holds 1000 songs? It only holds 800 of those 5 meg songs we had on our 5 gig iPod 2 years ago!
That's because the new numbers are based on AAC compression, which is a bit more efficient than MP3. AAC wasn't available when the original iPod came out.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
I was thinking that it might be likely that they would release a 1.5-2 gig player in the $200 range. This would directly compete against the Rio Nitrus and iRiver's offering.
But now I see that apple is continuing the trend of not really competing with what is there. They are creating premium products, charging premium prices, and hoping that the market will be there.
I think they're all cool and stuff, then they go threatening us with something like this!
If there's ONE thing I DON'T want, it's that.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
I was expecting the announcement of a $10, 3-petabyte nuclear-fusion-powered player with collapsible 60-inch plasma screen and direct bluetooth link to the Mars Rover, but all I get is this mini piece of crap. I mean, come on. In protest I will buy the 128mb NinFuju HappyListen, which only costs $200 and supports Ogg Vorbis.
Your preferences aside, I'm told that people have been known to spend ungodly sums of money on fractionally smaller cellular phones, digital cameras, camcorders, pagers, PDAs...you get the gist of it.
The iPod mini is 65% as heavy as the standard iPod.
The iPod mini takes up 60% as much space as the standard iPod.
When you're talking about personal digital toys, that's a huge space savings, especially considering the fact that the iPod mini does everything the iPod will do and has the same battery life as the standard version.
Yeah, $250 seems rich. Then again, I can't even count how many "no way in hell I'm dropping that kind of cash on an iPod" statements I saw a couple years ago, and now it's got 35% of the market share for all portable MP3 players.
I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt on their price point...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Now the iPod mini its self is very cool. But the price is a problem for me. Watching the keynote over the 'net, Jobs described it as just $50 more than a flash player with decent memory, and that's true. But, for just $50 more you can get a REAL iPod that holds almost 4x as much (4 gigs versus 15 gigs). There is a lot to be said about that iPod mini, but that price is a little much for me.
It's just so close to the price of the low end real iPod. I could understand if the price was $200, I think that would be the magic number, but I think that $250 is just too close. I don't know if the price is the result of trying to get a certain profit margin (quite likely) or an attempt to keep them from canabalizing the iPod market too much (also likely), but I think the price is a little high. At $150 they would fly off the shelves faster than anything else out there. At $200 they'd be a great deal and would sell fantastically. At $250... they won't flop, but...
Which also brings me to one other problem. The 15 gig iPod. It costs $100 to get 5 more gigs of space (the 20 gig model). So let's look at things:
So as you can see, the value of upgrading to the 20 gig iPod isn't in line with the rest of levels. With the low end full iPod at 15 gigs, the 20 gig model doesn't seem like much of as good a choice, the premium is just too high. As value goes, the iPod mini and the 20 gig iPod just don't hold up compared to the 15 and 40 gig models.
Now again, don't take this as bashing the new iPods or anything. The iPod is a fantastic device and the mini looks great too, it just seems like it would be much more wise to people to spend $50 more for a 15 gig, which has less than 1/3 the cost per gig.
PS: I can't WAIT to see the guts of one of 'em posted to the web. I wanna se it!
PPS: Let's face it, a $100 dollar iPod was a pretty rediculous idea, especially if it were to have the 2 or 4 gigs we thought it would.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The selling argument is that it's almost half the size and weight. That turns it into something I would seriously consider getting, while the old iPod really is too big for me to bother, almost regardless of price.
To a lot of people 4GB is more space than they can ever want to fill up with music they want to hear, so it doesn't really matter if they have 2GB or 13BG too much.
In terms of ease of use, I don't think KDE is much harder to use than mac os x. But the applications aren't there. Why hasn't someone designed a suite like iLife that could bring people over from Windows? I'm sure a lot of people want apples, but don't want to get a brand new computer. I see a perfect opportunity for Linux to get onto the desktop by releasing a iLife like suite - even without DVD/music/movie. Just kTunes and kPhoto and maybe something else would do, but it would give people an incentive to easily switch over to Linux instead of thinking about how nice apples are.
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.
---
I support spreading santorum
Most teens are very fashion-conscious and are enticed by technology that is extremely portable. Companies like Mattel (with its Barbie Fashion Designer software) have shown that technology tailored to girls can be extremely profitable.
The real question is whether said females will shell out $250 for such fashionable hardware. Everyone knows teens as a group have tons of disposable income, but I think they missed the price point by $50.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Now when the feds come knocking down your door, you can just swallow all of the tunes you got through file sharing!!! Is annodized aluminum digestible?
Ok, so I know this has probably been stated, but for my own sake of mind, I can get 4 gigs for $250. Or I can spend another $50 and get 15 gigs. What the hell kind of sense does that make?
Yes, it's only $50 cheaper. The thing is this: the $300 iPod is the best seller of the lot. Cost/GB is an important factor, yes, but even if the iPod was only 1GB it would still have a lot going for it over the competing players.
- cool crowd. In marketing speak, the alphas have all bought an iPod and made it popular: the time has come to focus upon the rest of the crowd.
The people who are obsessed with space have already bought iPods. Or, in other words, amongst leading edge people the iPod has become a trailing trend. So the next question is how to break not into the marketplace of people who are tech-savvy, but rather the larger group of less-technically-inclined-but-still-wanting-to-be
Amongst this crowd, there is needed some method of comparision that is, at its very heart, impossible to calculate. Comparing $300/15GB with $500/40GB is a mathematical affair. What is needed is exactly the reverse. Apple does this with colors. Guy A buys a green one, guy B buys a blue one: they can both argue over which color is better without having to get into that inevitable Alpha-male dick contest over whose is bigger. That is why there is no 2GB version. The question when you decide to buy one of these is color, not model.
Or, in other words, Apple has once again found a clever way to shift the didatic from discussing the merits of their product to discussing the aesthetics of it. Ain't marketing cool?
-Brett
Two responses come to mind immediately.
The first is that according to Apple's research, half of the households in the country have at least one person who is an active musician in them. That's a pretty huge potential market segment. I realize that you're not among them, but you should at least appreciate that the number of people who were thrilled by this demo is far from insiginifigant. Half my office (geeks and muscians both) sat watching with mouths open. Drooling. Unattractively. It wasn't pretty.
Two, and on a more philosophical note: how sad is it that the first thing you thought to say wasn't "I listen to music, I don't make it," but rather "I buy music." The commodification of music is sad enough as it is, but what's worse is to hear it described as if it's as transient and ordinary as a box of chicken McNuggets.
If you don't make music yourself... why not?
Answer: They are not different versions of the same product!!! They occupy two seperate categories:
This new player is obviously of the later type, and it should be viewed and evaluated as such. I've been shopping around for a small mp3 player to use while exercising, and this fits the bill perfectly!
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?
But PT LE (with an Mbox) is $450!!!
I don't think people realize what a good value Garageband is. For $49 (really it should be considered $25 cause the other $25 is for iDVD) you get:
1. Good quality sampled instruments.
2. 64-track (PT LE is 16-track) digital audio recording
3. Good quality amp simulators (and probably some other filters)
This is pretty amazing at $49 (or $25).
I'm not counting loops because I think that appeals more to the non-musician. Even serious electronic musicians aren't going to want to use premade loops. But still, the loops looked kinda fun and could be used sparingly.
--
Power to the Peaceful
The average 1U case has more fans than a desktop does running at even higher speeds to pass the air through it. A Powerbook is expected to run with perhaps one tiny fan that only comes on when it gets warm enough to keep it quiet and save power. There's no comparison between a laptop and a 1U server case.
Doesn't this iPod still have the dirty secret? It looks to me as if there is no way to replace the battery. "Power and battery * Built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery" Why would they release another product with the same fatal flaw that marred the first one?
- Nick Busey
www.pedalbmx.com
www.nickbusey.com
Bleh. Need I say more?
1. When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
Am I the only one who expects a portable audio device to include at the very least a rudimentary FM receiver? Not asking for AM/FM/SW/SSB/TV/Weather, just intregrated FM. A third party did it with the remote but this has just been cancelled. This seems trivial from an engineering standpoint and could not add too much to manufacturing cost (maybe $5-$10). This seems to be a manifestation of an attitude at Apple that air wave transmitted media (radio, tv) is unimportant. Whether this is a corporate strategy or they believe Apple customers should not/do not consume radio and television in the course of their iLife is unclear but either way this is an arrogant viewpoint. The iMac is positioned as the "digital hub" but doesn't include a TV tuner? American consumers spend more time watching TV than making home movies. I can get a $400 PC bundle on the corner that includes DVR functionality. Just put a radio in there Steve, I promise I'll only listen to NPR.
No it doesn't. Spend you $250 on a Rio Karma instead of the overpriced Apple and get 20gb of ogg playing goodness for your money.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
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.
Although I agree with those complaining about the price, one nice feature of the iPod mimi is it will charge via USB. And, it actually ships with a USB cable.
I was disappointed in the mini iPod announcement but I'm sure 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.
karma karma karma karma karma chameleon, you come and go, you come and go.
the scroll wheel is solid state. That's probably where the confusion came from
Remember when the iMacs first came out in all the colors? Pretty cool, but you liked some colors more than others? Well it turned out that preference to certain colors didn't quite follow a normal distribution. As a result, you started seeing lots if tangerine iMacs on sale. A lot of tangerine iMacs.
Personally, I'm betting that the gold iPod mini will by 2004's tangerine. It's pretty nasty. But y'know what? I don't care, because (a) it's going to be knocked down in price in six months, or come packaged with a dock or remote, and (b) it's small enough to fit in my pocket where I don't have to look at it and I can use that remote.
As for people saying that for an extra $50 they can just get the low-end 15GB, quit yer bitching and buy it.
Me, I'll keep the $50.
What's the point of having the iPod's FireWire if you're just going to keep the same stuff on your iPod all the time anyway? Between the FireWire connection and the smart playlists in iTunes, I can have my highest-rated tunes from each category with me, along with 1GB of randomly selected tunes swapped in each time I charge to keep the mix fresh.
I figure 800 songs (or whatever the mini ends up holding) is enough for my life: It's enough to walk around, go to the gym, or take a week-long trip without repeating. I don't need every song from my desktop computer with me every time I walk down the block.
Sure, it's only $50 more for much more space, but if it's not space that I'm going to use, it's a false economy to claim I've saved anything.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/uptodate/
Or, return it. I know of two people who received and opened 30 GB iPods the day the 40GB models were introduced. Apple's customer service took the 30s back and sent 40s, free of charge.
It's worth asking, at least. :)
A bit ike this?
I knew they'd never move from their one-button-mouse position. If it's enough to make a spaceship land then it should certainly be good enough for everything else.
Quote from the Rio Cali website:
:-p
"As featured in the Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld 2004"
And btw, *I* think that the Nitrus looks like ass, nyah!
Because to a lot of people its not a flaw. Its just like a cell phone. I've never had to replace the battery in my cell phone, by the time the battery does die completely I'm looking to buy a new phone anyways.
I just got a 40G iPod, and love the convenience of having all my music at any given place. That doesn't mean I'm out of the market for a new one.
My husband and I have two cars, so we might as well have two iPods. The mini would give us more flexibility than having two big iPods. The iPod does not fit comfortably in my pocket, and for any given day, I might just listen to a handful of albums, which would easily fit on the mini.
Docking it and uploading different songs to it in the morning is an easy thing to do. The mini is highly appealing to me largely because of it's size and the fact that it would incorporate seamlessly with my existing setup.
Drool.
Joan
Since they cross-sell the iPod with the VW Bug, maybe now they'll sell the iPod Mini with the BMW Mini
That's recording performer John Mayer, not recording artist/ I found that out a few months back when I finally had the misfortune of hearing him perform. After the sort of hype encountered, I'd gotten the impression he may actually have talent; imagine my disappointment.
Just think of it this way, instead of an extra 5 GB, you got the product before Christmas. These will not even be available until February. That's WELL after Christmas, nearly a quarter of the year.
Perhaps you should have read some of the rumors and given Daddy Dearest an Apple Gift card.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
The smaller size, pastel colors and cute name the iPod Jr. offers seems to be targeting women with a good amount of disposable income. It's too bad to because most of my friends were planning on buying the $100 iPod Jr. I guess they aren't looking to satisfy my demographic though.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Besides that Rio Karma comes with a Java application that can be run from Linux to manage the music on your player (of course it comes with Windows sofware too).
Oh, yeah and the cool thing is that the dock has an ethernet port so your Karma can be accessed from the network.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
But it is not particular cheap either. It's comparable to the other mini-HD based players.
Lasers Controlled Games!
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 wholeheartedly agree, I was getting ready to spend $100-$150 on a mini-iPod this week. I'm rather disappointed that there's only a 4gb version. Perhaps the 2gb mini-iPod is in the works?
Apple chose to compare itself to Dell's PowerEdge 1750, which Dell offers to small businesses as a dynamic content web server.
Apple's "XServe G5 Dual Processor" specs:
Dell's PowerEdge 1750 specs:
* - If you believe the benchmark from Apple, the XServe G5 is 9.0 Gigaflops, where Dell's PowerEdge is 8.2 Gigaflops.
However, as my boss pointed out, taking the Dell from Dual 3.2GHz to Dual 2.8GHz actually drops $1499. And you can still go down to 2.4GHz with the Dell.
Whether it's fare or not, a lot of people still compair GHz to GHz. So even the PC running at 2.4GHz looks faster on paper.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I went to radio shack and got an RS-branded armband with a pouch that was just on the almost-too-snug side for my gen1 ipod, so I'd expect it's perfect for the gen2. It was like $15, I think. I jog with it all the time. It's like it was made for it!
a fraction of an inch IS pretty impressive.
You just keep telling yourself that, oh and its what you do with it that counts.
Ever compare the 20 gig to the 40 gig? now that is a small difference, but its really noticable...
:p
I'd bet this is a bigger/more noticable difference. And if the new powerbooks have taught me anything its that anodized aluminum is awesome
It depends on how much your time is worth. At (for example) $100/hour, the cost of troubleshooting Linux looks less appealing that spending $129 for OS X. Different people have different cost/time trade-offs. For most people, paying a little up front for ease-of-use is a rational choice.
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.
yes, it's here.. a live stream though, so you can't "scrub" through it..
I'm gonna sell a knockoff That is a simple anodised brick the same size and shape as these new things, so that when girls come up to me and ask, "whats on your Ipod?" like Jobs says the will, i can show them the words "you are shallow" inscibed on a lifeless aluminium brick...
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
When has Apple targeted the average consumer? Never? Ah, right then. Moving along.
Apple targets affluent, aesthetically oriented buyers. Neither of these traits are "average". And, by virtue of the fact that Apple seems to be doing just fine now financially, this seems to be a winning strategy.
They're not dead yet.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Where did you see that the iPod mini is "marketed as a ipod for the masses"? They're marketing it as an iPod, but smaller. It should be good for people who want a high capacity player for wearing while exercising, or who just like to have a smaller, lighter device.
http://a192.g.akamai.net/7/192/51/0c5b0d0ef0f03b/w ww.apple.com/server/pdfs/L301323A_XserveG5_TO.pdf
It also uses the hyper-transport protocol which alot X86 users use to say gave Intel and AMD the advantage they had.
I have feeling the new 90nm dual 2.0GHz G5 will give out better #'s then the current 130nm dual 2.0GHz G5.
I'll be buying my iPod mini in about 3 months or so...I want that silver one. I already own the 40GB but I need a iPod I can strap to my arm and go workout with.
Looks like those of us that want foreign character sets engraved on our colorful iPods will have to wait until the global launch this spring. The US Apple store will not take Kanji or accented characters. A call to the Apple store was of no help either as the rep really had no clue.
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.
When you look at this from the view of apple( i'm flattering myself by pretending to know apple's view on things), its a very smart move to keep the price at 250.
First everyone and their dog was looking for a cheaper ipod, and they delivered, obviously not to the extent everyone wanted but they still did bring down the entry level. To that extent they listened to the market.
Secondly the size limit is important as far as marketing goes, 1000 songs is 899 songs better then 999 in the mind of the consumer. I don't think we'll ever see an ipod that you can't store at least 1000 songs on it, aka one weekends worth of continous listening ( 1000[songs] * 4[minutes per song] / 1440 [minutes in a day]). Apple has avoided sacrificing function for price.
Thirdly the 250 price perserves the higher ipod market. If the price was too low consumers would flock to the cheap ipods when high revenue margins are made on the more expensive, tried, true and established models, and if some small problem did crop up on this new breed of ipod it would severely damage apple's reputation and could risk it's dominance in the player market itself. However by lowering the price just a little it keeps the demand manageable for those that may think the price is two high for just 4 gigs, apple has decreased the form factor. The smaller size alone is not enough to justify the price but freebies like choice in color and armband help win most consumers over. By doing this Apple has avoided cannabalizing its higher end ipod business.
At the same time having the mini out and on the market gives apple the flexibility to release say an 8 gig mini for 250 and lower the 4 gig to 175 6 month down the road should the market begin to turn towards the competition. I think more consumers are reaching that $50 deeper then are buying none ipod devices, as soon as that trend begins to really shift you'll see a cheaper ipod but apples going to bilk the market for as much as it will bear as long as it will bear.
If you can't fix it ask the 3 year old down the street.
Can't wait to see the looks on the faces of the people at Virginia Tech when they see the xServe G5
I knew they came in colors now, but flavors?!
The CB App. What's your 20?
Worse yet, many of my fellow Mac users, who abhor MS, thinks those prices are more than fair. In fact, thet would probably pay more if only Steve asked them to! :)
I love Apple (can't live without my iBook, iPod, iTunes, and iPhoto). I would pay, and did pay, a premium for Apple hardware and OS X, but this annual subscription thing - bah!
I know. It filled me full of awe as well.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
OK. So my GF, who liked the iPod and nothing more, did not represent a large part of urban females when she yelled out "ooooooh! it's in PINK, it's in PINK" and "it's even smaller" and "look at that arm strap, now I can jog with it" (1) and " 'only' a thousand songs, I don't have more than a hundre to job to what would I need more than a thousand songs for" (2)?
When they launch here (thank you very much Apple, I have to wait to April to buy me, my GF and mom one), I'm first on the list to get some.
(1) I know that you can jog with the iPode, but she thought it was a little bit big for the arm. Now, there's an alternative.
(2) I also know that 15 GB is a lot more storage, but she don't care, since it's cheaper, smaller, lighter, and PINK.
Sure you could get a decent looking, slightly larger Jukebox Xtra that has 7,5 times the capacity of the Mini iPod and replaceable batteries for exactly the same amount of money but it's "just no iPod". And, at that point - as every man knows - there's no reasoning with it.
That is the market segment Apple is going after.
And more importantly, it's also smart from a business point of view: she couldn't explain the difference between a Megabyte or a Gigabyte for the life of her. Now, at some point the thing will inevitably run out of space and instead of getting rid of older files she'll just buy a new one. Unless, of course, the battery dies first...
Lol, I knew it - there's no way Apple could release something at a low price point.
It's funny, when the roumers came out, I had no problem with any part of it being possible - except for the price. Anyone who seriously thought that Apple would produce a mini-iPod for $99 was seriously deluded and hadn't been around Apple products for long.
One of the Apple marketing strategies is that you "pay more for the quality". Much the same approach Sony takes. New products are never released at low prices because it would seriously undermine the "I paid the most, but it's the best" marketing aspect.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Umm, exactly how did they do that.
The base model iPod is still $299. Same price it's been since the 10 and 20GB 2G iPods were introduced.
Except now it's a 15GB model.
What they've done is introduced a lower priced miniature model that doesn't have nearly the bang for the buck of the $299 one.
Bad Value, but NOT higher cost.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
"Many consumers value smallness hugely."
Here's a hint from the Apple website, in the section discussing the belt clip: "You can even clip the iPod mini to a lanyard for the ultimate fashion statement. We hear it's big in Japan."
Apple is one of the very few foreign companies to succeed in Japan, and it's all because of their focus on style. If you thought American consumers were fickle and valued style, you haven't seen anything yet. The Japanese are going to eat these things up!
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
Opterons are MUCH slower than G5s.
So there is no equivilent hardware on the x86 side.
Well, maybe a quad something or other would come close.
Everyone who buys x86 does so because they think clock speed is performance.
They see the G5 at 2GHz and think its slower than a 3GHz pentium.
This includes %99 of slashdot posters who will go on and on with rationalizations to try and "prove" that they don't think so-- they will even post benchmarks like spec (Which just measures clock rate) to try to prove it.
But at the end of the day, they are not educated in computer engineering, they don't know what they are talking about, and they will tell you BS.
Like the guys used to do in the 70s who tricked out their cars but never really knew the physics behind them, so they put in things that salespeople sold them that didn't really enhance performance-- but they told their friends they did because tehy wanted to seem cool. They told their friends about it in excruciating detail.
That is what its like having the performance argument with an x86 fan. By definition they are ignorant, and arguing with an idiot only makes an idiot of yourself.
So don't do it, unless its for sport.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I was thinking the same thing -- it would have been very similar to when Apple announced the color classic in 89-90(?) for $999 -- they got a shitload of marketshare out of the deal.
What they also got was a lot of problems in the supply channel -- I think if they *had* put the minis out at $99 a pop they would have had a fufillment nightmare, which ends up being more damaging to people's perception of Apple in the long-run.
This becomes a relevant issue courtesy of the legions of hairless apes who look for any opportunity to slag Apple.
The interesting thing (to me at least) was the near silence while Jobs was demo-ing the thing: you could hear a pin drop. Thanks to the rumor sites (and coverage of the rumor sites on CNN) the expectation was $99 iPod minis, not $249 dollar iPod minis.
I can't imagine that Jobs was thinking and feeling about the keynote as he walked off the stage, but it can't have been good.
It's the big danger associated with the MacWorld conventions and all of the speculation on the various rumor sites (and speculation on the speculation places like here....): there is an underlying expectation that when Steve says "... oh, and one more thing...."
We'll just have to wait and see how the minis sell. The audience response was not encouraging.
- learn to swim.
I think you're right.
But Apple knows its market. It knows that the initial purchasing crunch is the most expensive-- because they have to gear up lots of players to meet demand, and it comes when their component prices are highest.
So, what Apple does with all their products is introduce them at a "high" price and then lower the price later, or up the capabilities at the same price.
You saw this with the original iPods.
The $250 ipod is so close to the $299 ipod because they want to clear out the people who are super concerned with size first.
Eventually the mini-iPod will be $199. (Cause I don't think they can increase the capacity like they did with the originals.)
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
No. Apple targets cheapskates who like to get three times as much product quality and performance for %30 more money.
They specifically do not target people who cannot make a value judgement and just buy on price.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Yes, the Mini's included USB 2.0 cable may be significant for PC users without Firewire (such as myself).
A full-sized (15+ GB) iPod would require a $19 optional cable for USB 2.0 connectivity. So for me, the 'effective' price difference becomes $50 + $19 = $69.
I confirmed this with the Apple Store by phone. I also asked them to correct one erroneous statement on their site, which said that the full-sized iPods include the USB 2.0 cable. Not so. Only the Mini includes one at no extra charge.
Also, by the way, some people believe that the Mini ships with the Dock and/or Remote at no extra charge. Again, not so.
Apple's iPod specs page has correct information, I'm told.
Not that it matters, but the iPod mini's apparently high price may be a market-based way to limit initial demand. After all, the Cornice storage elements used in these devices are brand new and probably are in limited supply. Apple had the alternative of pricing low and telling everyone "It's $150, but you have to wait 6 months to get one" or making a higher profit on lower volume until the bugs are ironed out (and there will be bugs) and then lowering the price.
Just my $0.02.
As a fully qualified geekgirl I can assure you that for one, I DO know the difference between a MB, GB, and the 200TB of data I back up daily..it's pretty demeaning to assume gender has a hold on tech knowledge.
and dammit... I want one.. cause it's cute and pink....
so there
... is it hideously expensive, it's also butt ugly compared to the original iPod and just about everything else out there.
Or at least so it seems, of course it might be that those pics just don't "catch" it and it's better IRL.
Oh well.
I've decided this is a middle ground and all about style. One thing this still doesn't have over the flash players is that it still has moving parts. Yes, iPods will eventually get under $200 (remember, they were introduced at 5GB/$500, all praise St. Moore) and if they drop a $149 or $99 bomb they will 0wn(z0r) the mp3 market, but for now, they're going halfway (as they always do) and going for style. I expect to see at least one of the sluts on Sex & the City with one of these any day now.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I don't really see the reasoning for what we got instead.
It's simple. The MP3 player market is very competitive. Like always, Apple looks for the high end niche to avoid the dog fight.
MP3 players, desktops, workstations, servers, or laptops -- Apple does not try to compete at the low end. There's no money to be made using their typical high style and marketing. iTunes store and software seem to be the exception, but they are provided to encourage the sale of iPods and computers.
This is why the Apple we know today will never make a big splash in the bottom-line corporate world. Same reason why we don't see BMW fleet cars.
"Everyone who buys x86 does so because they think clock speed is performance.
"
Bollocks. Everyone=100% of the sample, in the English language.
I didn't, I bought x86 because the software I want to use doesn't work on a Mac, natively.
I'm sure that applies to many engineers, draftsmen and game players.
If you don't renew the subscription to iLife or OS X, the software doesn't stop working! .Mac does, but it's known to be a subscription from the beginning.
Vs Microsoft's attempts to lease, which *would* stop the software from workgin!
GPL Deconstructed
I don't think you guys really understand how big of a deal GarageBand is (and I mean to paid musicians whom already own pro audio software). I produce downtempo electro-acoustic psychedelic (bassy breaks stuff) tracks for a local label with Reason, Ableton Live and Logic, but none are as sweet (or should I say organic) looking as GarageBand for recording and editing tracks (Reason actually looks quite good for a synth/sampler/effects rack : yet visually lacks when one is editing within the track mode). Why should I even mention to you how good looking GarageBand is? Why you say? Simple. If it excites me to work with a good looking peice of software - which I admit - it does very much (appealing to my eye - with incredible ease of use and superior workflow), it will inevitably inspire my work. And if it inspires my work, in any sort of creative way, I would gladly pay far more than the small price of $49 for it! Now granted, it does not do all the things that Live, Reason or Logic does, but by the looks of it.... I think it will do what it does better than anything else I've seen. GarageBand should be able to listen to (and record in stereo, I believe) a firewire enabled piece of hardware (like Yamaha's brand new o1x) with the knobs controlling any enabled AudioUnit plugins (in real-time of course). Will the AudioUnit capability within GarageBand allow me to use mastering plugins (not to mention 5.1 mixing)? How many AudioUnit plugins can run in real time while simply monitoring (or recording) my 12 String & vocals? Can you pre-record midi to the AudioUnit plugin effects while monitoring guitar or vocals while jamming to a pre-recorded piece (to provide dub-like capabilities)? Will GarageBand listen to more than one midi device at any given time (keyboards, mixer & envelope pedals)? Obviously I'm not sure on some of these paticular details, but I'll find out soon enough. I must remind myself this is Apple's first release of this product, and updates will inevitably follow! The fact it will seemlessly integrate with Soundtrack (when scoring within FCP 4), plays and records at 24bit 96khz (I think - haven't found the pdf on it yet - Soundtrack does - so GarageBand should), uses AudioUnits, comes with a large amount of high quality (better than CD quality) samples (some of the best I've ever heard by the way) and comes with 100 software instruments... well... it's a steal (to say the least) at $49. Comparable software goes for hundreds of dollars more (not to mention the fact you get to upgrade your iDVD/ iMovie/ iPhoto as well). Not to mention the interface of those other apps are half as clean (re: slick) as GarageBand. Just check out the detailed "wood" side panels on the main mixer window. Don't you think it adds a warm touch? I like details like that. Thank you Apple! I'll be buying it... I'll also be upgrading to the "Jampack" available for it as well. GarageBand is the start of something incredible, for professional and amateur musicians alike... End of story.
Yes, you can record vocals as well as utilizing real time plugins in the form of Apple "AudioUnits" to add effects (effects in realtime for monitoring and recording I believe) to those vocals as well! All in 24bit 96khz quality! I'm telling you, this application is a steal @ $49!
I just read what he wrote again, and he didn't say "No woman can explain the difference between a Megabyte or a Gigabyte for the life of her." He was very specifically referring to his girlfriend.
Now, I know your comment was mostly in jest, but throwing around phrases like "it's pretty demeaning to assume gender has a hold on tech knowledge" pretty clearly indicates that you actually take some offense to his statement.
By saying what you said, you demonstrate your inability to read (or perhaps simply a lack of reading comprehension), wherein you are responding to something he didn't even say. You're doing a disservice to your cause, because you will now be written off as "another woman that doesn't listen", and you'll fight more posters in the future who look down on you.
If you want people to respect you, you need to earn it. One of the best ways to not do that is to imply someone is a bigot when there exists no evidence that agrees with your assertion.
There are plenty of people and posts that deserve your attention and work to set the record straight; his is not one of them.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.