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Why iPod Mini is a smart move for Apple
Ample Dave writes "Ars Technica has an analytical article up right now that looks at Apple's strategy with the (many would say overpriced) iPod Mini. I have to admit that I bought into the rumors of a dirt cheap iPod Jr., and thus was very disappointed when the real price of $250 was announced, but this article changed my mind. It leads me to wonder about Apple's other pricing games. You an see this kind of thing with the eMac and iMac, too."
I'm as much as an Apple fanatic as most of em; I've got my two Dual G4s, my powerbook, and my 3rd generation 20Gb iPod, and I'd agree with this article completely except for one thing...
It costs an extra $120 to get all the accessories that should come with the damn thing! Why is it so much extra to get the armband, the dock, and the remote? For $250 the should be included.
No, all the rumours were based on a 1" 2GB drive that was on the market already. The rumour sites didn't realise that they could go higher than 2GB, and the 4GB drives were announced the same day.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
No- 2GB. Why? We were all expecting a cheap player. As such, we didn't expect a cheap player to hold too much.
When you are expecting lower prices, you expect lower specs.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
On the other hand, high-end MP3 Players (like the new Rio, whatever it's called) are almost $200, but for another $50, you get a much larger capacity.
I think it's worth it, I'm a student and can't afford it, but I would buy one if I weren't poor.
And no, I'm not a Mac User/Activist
What a scoop!
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
you've just been upsold by $50
Thats like digital cameras these days.
Only $250! But the CompactFlash is so small as to be stupid. And you'll need a case. And some rechargeable batteries. And an AC adapter. And a docking station. And...
After its all over, you just spent $500 on something that costs $225.
I guess thats the new Bait and switch? Or can you come up with a better name for it? (upselling?)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Sure you say "I can get 11GB more storage for only $50!!" But that is the geek inside of you, always wanting bigger, better, faster, more.
How many people don't even have enough MP3s to fill the 4GB mini? Answer: A LOT. They don't give a crap that they can have every MP3 in the world in their pocket. They want something easy to carry, and being cute pink helps too.
I have always admired the ipod for its design and interface, but even with as small as they made it it was too big for me so I have been through a few flash players. But come Feb 16, guess which new player I'm going to have....
Also, IMO, the ipod mini is going to pave the way for where the ipod is going. As the 1 inch hard drive capacities go up to the 10, 20, 30 GB range, I can forsee a time when the ipod is discontinued and the mini takes the center stage.
"But does it have OGG?" (Answer: No, and it never will.)
I think the price comparison chart is a bit off, since there are cheaper 512mb players to be found. I got mine at http://www.pcwebshopper.com/mp3.html. No, I don't work for them. Oh yeah, it doubles as a USB drive.
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As he states in the article: "Secondly, the iPod is cool. Apple is cool. Is the iPod Mini cool? As a married, Caucasian male in his mid-30s who thinks he looks good with a shaved head, I feel somewhat ill-qualified to judge what is and is not hip." Is he trying to review the iPod, or to tell us he's a member of the Aryan Nation?
I was just looking at an article in the paper about this, and similar devices by other manufacturers weren't very much less, and in many cases had much less HD space. And objectively speaking, they weren't nearly as cool. So I won't begrudge Apple their pricing scheme.
But still, it's not like it's wristwatch-size. When I heard the rumors of a small iPod, I shrugged and said "it's already small." It's like hearing about a new version of Photoshop. I was happy with version 6.
c-hack.com |
First of all, price point comparisons between other MP3 players doesn't really do the iPod any justice. It is over-priced for what you're given yes; but you're paying a premium for ease-of-use, style and of course the brand name. It's an Apple product, designed to work with other Apple products, and I'm sure that it works quite well. I own a 128 Muvo and that's all I need for an Mp3 player really. It's dual-function (128 Mb USB key acts as a USB drive as well), it's copy and paste in Windows for Mp3s and files (no need to install any extra software or drivers like some minidisc players I know of) and it's pretty sturdy. Granted, I got it for free so it's a bit better deal then a 4GB HD for $250 but hey, to each his own.
Secondly, maybe the Apple marketing team thought that a $50 difference was all that was really stopping them from taking hold of the lower market share. I also think that once people start buying more of the iPod minis, it will force Apple to bring down the price of the iPod Majors. I've yet to find 15Gb of music to fill up my player with, legal and quasi-legal. It really is a mind-game. $50 may put some people above what they wanted to spend on a player. If it stops 1000 people from buying other players, Apple just made $250,000 instead of $0.
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
While it's true that the iPod Mini compares well with the other players in the article, they didn't say why anyone would chose the Mini (4 GB) rather than pay the extra $50 and get a 15 GB iPod. Even at $299, the full iPod still compares favorably with most of the other players in the article. So why would anyone buy the Mini?
I've run with mine 3 times a week for the past 4 months and haven't seen any ill effects thus far. Or is there some problem I'm missing?
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is that is positioned to sell as many as they can to people that will pay $249 for them. When those people run out they can drop the price to $199 and maybe even introduce a 2G at $149. And sell a shit load more.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
The original iPod had 5 GB of storage. The mini iPod has 4 GB for now, but in a year what will it have? This is a new form factor that will become more and more attractive over time. At some point (three years from now?) it won't matter that a mini holds 80 GB and a normal iPod holds 160 GB, the smaller size will be enough of an advantage to go for the mini. At some point the mini will simply be the iPod. Then the larger one will move on to video.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Oh, please. Not every man is design impaired, and color and styling may be among the criteria evaluated in a purchase. When you buy a car, or clothes or whatever do you completely eschew color and design? I doubt it. While the very few will take function completely over form most of us enjoy having something that is aesthecially pleasing besides being of great functional value.
Am I to assume from the tone of your post that if you were to be able to have a girlfriend/boyfriend you would completely ignore looks? :-)
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The fact that Apple's product is too expensive isn't excused by the fact that all its competitors are too expensive too.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
One of the things I think most people don't consider is that most of the naysayers who point out the $50 difference between iPods are Slashdot/Apple types; people familiar with the tech industry, and most offerings by most major companies.
But consider the average Joe wandering around his local shop, who doesn't know much of about technology, and just knows that he wants a player that can hold lots of music, and isn't particularly large.
He is going to see many tiny music players, all with the ability to play the mp3's he downloads from Kazaa.
Being able to compare a 512MB player, and a 4GB player for the same price won't leave much decision making to be done.
Now me personally, I bought a 15GB iPod recently, because I feel $50 more is a pretty good investment for 11GB. But many people don't understand what a "gigabyte" or "megabyte" are. They see Apple's ad for "1,000 songs!", and think "Hmm, that's a lot of songs."
Vonal Declosion
I'm not sure what you are basing this on. It doesn't skip - I run with mine (short distances: 2-3 miles) without any skipping issues. It is a little large/heavy to wear comfortably on a waistband or arm band, though. The iPod Mini ought to cover the size issue nicely.
Who says you can't? The iPod has a 32mb buffer to help avoid skips. That translates into about 20 minutes of music depending on your bitrate.
Teen age girls. They buy a lot of music.
Fashion is important. Small is important; their purses are full of stuff.
Think of it as technical jewelry.
I know girls who are buying all five colors to match their outfits and moods.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
>>So why would anyone buy the Mini?
Smaller form factor and colors. For a lot of people this stuff really really matters.
I run and I would much rather carry the Mini, than a full size ipod. Plus, I only have 3 gigs of music, so I really wound't get much more value out of a 40 gig player.
Jeff
I mean, come on! I'd choose the skateboard over the apple branded over-sized suppository.
The iPod Mini has also had an interesting side effect. Before Apple announced it, everybody thought that paying 300$ for the lower iPod was crazy, and that it was greatly overpriced. Today, most people believe that the 300$ iPod is the best option available, and that it is reasonably priced. Definitely, these Apple guys are marketing geniuses...
Right... I would also agree.
However, as Apple says, 20% of the market is people spending $250+ for a 512MB flash player.. and that's the market apple is after. They are not trying to sell this to those who otherwise would buy a normal iPod... because we sould say "50 bucks more for 10 times the space, that's a no brainer"
You can get the Rio Karma for $250. That's a 20gb player. So in fact you can get "a much larger capacity" for $0 extra.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
If Apple keeps selling iPods at a healthy rate, there will soon be more iPod users than Mac OS X users.
Today, the bulk of new iPod customers run Windows, not Mac OS X.
With the iPod mini opening up iPod sales to more buyers, the balance towards Windows will shift even more. There is no fighting "the great multiplier".
As most Windows users don't seem to be all that fond of Apple's "medical computing" white motif, making iPods in different colors was simply a "must do" business decision.
Very soon now we will see a fundamental shift at Apple. Numerically, they will have more Microsoft Windows customers than Mac customers. Apple will then have to decide what to do with them. Most of them will be early adopters, buying the iPod/mini because it is the established portable music player.
Apple will have to make the choice of whether to port their music/media software to Windows or will face losing most of those customers... who do not want to switch platforms (at a very high cost) just because of a music player.
When there are many "good" music players available in a year or two, these customers will be making the decision to get a new iPod or one of the many newer/cheaper/just-as-good winPods (which will work with many music stores, not just one).
All in all, the digital music market promises to be full of interesting developments over the next 1-2 years as companies jockey for position. Unless Apple opens up their products, ports their products and makes them cheaper, I would think their chances of being the ultimate winner are low. My bet is that most people will not switch computing platforms over a music player.
Without answering the battery/moving parts problem, it then says "However, if your budget is keeping you from snapping up a larger player, or you do not have much of a digital music library to speak of, then a smaller-capacity hard drive player like the MuVo2 or iPod Mini is a better deal than a flash player." But it doesn't explain why. Batteries would be cheaper in a flash player. If you don't have a big library, small capacity flash players are cheaper than the iPod Mini. How is it a better deal?
What is wrong with selling things with a little more dash and flash? Color beeps? The new beetle? Reminds me of the old story that Motorola enginner were atonished how their beepers starting selling only cuz they offerent different colors. Not some new whiz bang feature.
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I'd still rather pay $50 more for a 15GB iPod
Could you people just put on your marketing hat for a few seconds?
Joe and Jane Consumer do not have more than a few gigs of MP3s, at most. Once you hit a certain point, they aren't looking at the capacity anymore - they are looking at style and price. With the mini-iPod, they are saving $50 and getting better style.
Style = Smaller (until things become choking hazzards)
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
So by your "logic", no one is buying BMW or Jaguar automobiles, instead, they are buying Yugos.
Because, as you say, "Nobody cares about quality."
You're a Windows luser, aren't you?
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as a student you get one for 229.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
There is one lesson Apple seems not to learn: people want much and they want it cheaply. Nobody cares about quality.
If that were true, every computer would be an eMachine, every car would be a Kia, and every DVD player would be an Apex.
But no, people buy Alienware computes, cars from BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, Audi, ect, and hi end DVD players from Denon, ect.
Apple is not the only company that concentrates on selling a smaller number of items to people who want quality, and they are not the only company that is good at it.
I have blog like everyone else
I think a lot of people would rather pay $50 more. That doesn't hurt apple at all--in fact, I imagine it is part of the plan. Consider that you are looking at players in the range of $250 and considering the rio, iRiver, ipod mini or one of the many others. Then you have an epiphany and realize the $50 more gets you a 15MB ipod and you go for it. What apple has just done is convinced you not only to buy from it rather than it's competition, but to buy it's more expensive model. Apple changes the environment from 'which brand should I buy' to 'which apple product should I buy'. I think it is very smart. Those extra $50 start adding up pretty quickly even if the minis aren't selling particularly well and the competition--well they've got trouble.
That's one reason I've been eyeing the 20GB one. I'd also like to store all my CDs on there and then box them away. The fact that I can then connect the iPod to my stereo, car, computer, etc... to use as a jukebox is also a major plus. But of course, it's still a bit much for those of us on a student's budget.
- You think the iPod is too big, and the mini is just right
- 4 gigs of music at 192 kbps gives you ~2 days of continuous music. (Calculated here.) That's enough to last a week or so, and with firewire transfer speeds, changing playlists isn't that big of a deal
- You want the newest, coolest thing
- You're an Apple fan-kid
I'm sure I've left off some potential reasons, but those are the ones that came to mind right away.you get much larger capacity in a much larger form factor and a much crappier interface, a much larger weight, and no system integration.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Below you'll find the analysis. First column is number of gigabytes, second column is the size of the device in cubic inches. The third column is the ratio, "storage density". Notice that the Rio Nitrus is the only unit which comes close to Apple.(Anyone know of a way of making columns show up in slashdot posts?)
This is exactly what I thought when I saw Jobs give the keynote. It's only $50 more for another 11 GB in the low end full size iPod. What a rip off.
Then I looked at the size of the mini. It's smaller than a Sony Ericsson T610 phone. "Way too little" *is* what costs more cash in tech. The 1.8" Toshiba drives in a normal iPod aren't exactly going to be cheap. The iPod mini is using a 4 GB 1" *microdrive*. Yet it's not much more expensive than comparable flash memory players.
I think expectations were raised far too high by rumours before the keynote of $99 2 GB iPods. In the UK, we're seeing it priced at 199 pounds "subject to change." I reckon it'll come down in price a bit fairly soon anyway, maybe to $200. Then people might realise what a good deal it really is.
Most of the other high-end mini players are just as little, or less, for just as much, or more, cash:
Manufacturer | Model | Price(USD) | Capacity
Apple | iPod Mini | 249 | 4.0 GB
Creative | MuVo2 | 299/199 | 4.0 GB
Rio | Nitrus | 249 | 4.0 GB
iRiver | iGP-100 | 249 | 1.5 GB
Rio | Nitrus | 199 | 1.5 GB
Sony | NW-MS70D Network Walkman | 299 | 256MB
iRiver | iFP-195T | 299 | 512 MB
Creative | Muvo TX | 269 | 512 MB
DigitalWay | MPIO FY-200 | 249 | 512 MB
Rio | Chiba | 199 | 256 MB
iRock! | iRock! 860 | 149 | 256 MB
The iPod Mini gives you sixteen times the storage of a Rio Chiba, for $50 more. Or eight times the storage of the Network Walkman, for $50 LESS. Of course, a chintzy no-name player is gonna be a lot cheaper, but you get what you pay for, and in its class, the MiPod is a pretty freakin' good deal - sort of the Phaeton of small players.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Because:
A) Like it or not, they're a major industry player.
B) They're a competitor to Microsoft. Possibly the most significant competitor.
C) We need more competition in this market.
D) MacOS is Unix-based, and Slashdot has a Unix-centric userbase.
I thought those were pretty good reasons, personally.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
You can still only (in a normal market) lower your price... So Apple has also given themselves room to add new models at this opening price, while lowering the price on the 'older' models to compete further down the offering--further increasing their market share. One thing that will allow them to do this is increased volume and production improvements. They will be able to lower their own costs as they sell more Minis, thereby opening a place for a lower priced model.
/.--Apple is a hardware company. iTMS is a mechanism for selling iPods. I think this was a very shrewd move. I should think in time for the next Christmas season we'll see a new Mini and the current ones selling for $50 less, cutting further into that flash market share.
Had they started selling the iPod Mini for say $149.99 US, they would not have been able to lower their price without hitting their margins. And--as people remind us regularly on
When the next Minis come out, maybe I'll get a first generation one at the reduced price.... until then, I'll probably upgrade my original iPod (5G) to one of the large ones. But that's because I use my iPod as a way to carry a large percentage of my music Library. My runner friends are already converting to Minis.
And it is cute...
You're thinking like a geek. Extra space? Removable what? These are the responses you'll get from an iPod mini customer. If you show them the larger, white box, they'll point at the mini and say "this one is cuter and smaller". And if you get a savvy ipod mini shopper, they'll say "1700 songs...more than I have or plan on getting".
cat
They'd sell a zillion but then loose a zillion dollars because it's not profitable.
Can you burn everything you buy with MS's music store to CD?
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
What exactly do you mean by : Apple will have to make the choice of whether to port their music/media software to Windows... Apple has done this already unless you mean something else. You use the same music software with your ipod with your mac that you use with your pc.
To a great many people, 4GB (if they even understand the concept of a gigabyte, some people actually don't bother themselves with such things!) is a number sufficiently high that a higher number is needless. For someone that isn't going to fill 4GB, buying a 15GB player is spending money on features they don't need/want.
However, for many of these same people, small form factor is desirable, as are colors.
It's funny how many geeks don't get that not every potential iPod customer thinks in terms of data storage.
Concerned Onlooker wrote:
Not every man is design impaired, and color and styling may be among the criteria evaluated in a purchase.
While this is true, the small minority of men that aren't design impaired embarrass the hell out of the rest of us.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
You will always find the other MP3 players at less than MSRP and you will never be able to purchase the iPod at anything other than MSRP. Barring farfegnugen freebies, of course. iPod minis are purely fashionable.
What you (and others) are describing may be exactly the reason to price the mini at $250. If they hold production on the mini down below the levels of the main line, they could make out like bandits in the following scenario: Customer walks in the store looking to spend $250 max on an MP3 player and sees the mini 4-gig as the best deal at that price; they then see the 15-gig iPod at $300 and decide "what the heck" and spend the extra $50.
Not a very original insight. I certainly wouldn't buy one. However, RTFA - there is a market at that price level, and Apple wasn't quite reaching it with the 15 GB iPod. This market apparently doesn't have a use for 15 GB. We could fill up three 40 GB iPods, but I suppose (I hope) we're not typical.
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Size:
Zen: 4.4 by 3 by 0.86 inches
iPod: 4.1 by 2.4 by 0.62 inches
iPod Mini: 3.6 by 2.0 by 0.5 inches
Weight:
Zen: 7.9 ounces
iPod: 5.6 ounces
iPod Mini: 3.6 ounces
Yes, you might be able to find more storage in the Zen, but size is the issue here. Further, I think anyone can see that the iPod's design is far more intuitive. The Zen is a great product, and I drool over the price tag. However, the iPod can not be discarded as an overpriced player. Expensive, perhaps, but there are reasons.
The Political Programmer
But you were comparing the new mini iPod to the regular iPod. If you compare Karma to regular iPod, the weight and size are the same or smaller. Interface is a personal thing, I prefer the Karma one simply because it gives me many more options to tweak, such as full 5-band parametric EQ, on-the-fly playlist editing, etc etc. It's actually quite similar to the iPod one apart from that.
"System Integration" is vague at best, and meaningless at worst (for instance it means nothing to a Windows user). The simple fact that you can use a Karma with Linux should push it up in most slashdotters' eyes. Plus you have a choice of ethernet port. And it plays vorbis, flac and a bunch of other stuff. You can keep your "system integration" thanks. Karma integrates with _my_ system in ways an iPod never will.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
That is pefectly correct. The mainstream public that like pretty things, don't think like geeks.
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If you break it all down like the Ars Technica article does you can kind of rationalize that it's a good value, but nothing stands up to the fact that if they just took the current iPod and dropped a 4GB drive in it, it would have been much cheaper. The iPod is already perfectly designed and plenty small for 99% of people. I bet with the saving in R&D they could have sold the 4GB full size iPod for $149. Hell, they could have even added colors to it. It would have killed ALL competition including portable CD players. Complete market dominance.
I love Apple but they are still going for the margins and the bleeding edge design. When are they going to realize that when you already have far superior design you don't have to keep going. Rest on your laurels and innovate OVER TIME instead of killing the markets you're leading in up front.
- Lightweight, metallic case
- Teeny form factor
- USB2 or FireWire interface
- Backlit LCD
- Easy navigation/interface
And so on. It seems like every player on the market gets maybe four of the five, except for Apple, which nails all of them. And Apple crushes the market. I ran into the exact same thing last month when I was shopping for a laptop: want one that has the best 3D graphics card (ATI MR 9600 Pro), thin profile, light weight, beautiful LCD widescreen, WiFi, bluetooth, metallic case, etc? You have but one choice, my friend. I realize maybe Apple has a brilliant, one-of-a-kind group of innovators dreawming up all these great products. But it shouldn't take a world-class engineering team, or even a particularly brilliant one, to simply knock off all their products and give Apple a little healthy competition.I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Apple will have to make the choice of whether to port their music/media software to Windows or will face losing most of those customers... who do not want to switch platforms (at a very high cost) just because of a music player.
Yeah they really should port iTunes, oh wait! They did! iTunes for windows
And why should they all the sudden make a change in their business from being a niche player to something that's doomed to fail?
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
I'll say it again. Apple is a premium hardware company, like BMW or Mercedes in the auto industry. All do a good job of marketing and selling a premium product. If Apple's marketshare of portable music players falls, which it will, that's fine because they know how to operate with low market share.
Sure BMW could sell more cars if they dropped their price, but that's not their business model. Market share is not Apple's core business model. The are many comments in this thread that would sound odd if you replace Apple with BMW, because we all accept that BMW sells a premium product. You should accept the same with Apple. Note here that premium does not mean high end or better. It just means premium, something consumers are willing to pay more for.
Yes. The iPods minis are overpriced, and they have their limitations. It would be foolish to argue otherwise. However BMW stills sells cars, and apple will sell iPod minis. Is it a catagory killer, like Jobs suggested in his Keynote? No. Are they horrible products? No. They will sell and make Apple money.
"Oh, come on, please. Who really has more than 4 gigs of music?"
"Uh, me, and any of my friends who listen to mp3s."
"Well, you're all egotistical freaks with abnormally large music collections!"
It's like this: the mp3 landscape is changing rapidly. As much as it's become hackneyed to say it, iTunes, the iPod, and the iTMS have had an explosive effect on digital music. Heck, without either of the other two items, iTunes alone is among the most intuitive and easy mp3 ripping software currently available, if it doesn't actually have the top spot. Once people with laptops discover how easy it is to rip mp3s, they all have the same reaction: to sit down with a big stack of their CDs, and rip the whole thing to mp3.
But, just for the sake of argument, let's look at some numbers. I have 2140 songs currently ripped to mp3, for a total of 10.26 gigs. Let's round the numbers down a bit, and say that averages to 4.5 megs per song.
Assuming a dozen songs per album (pretty safe, if my collection is any indication), you're looking at less than 75 albums ripped before running out of space. 75 albums is nice, but it doesn't come close to the collections of anyone I know. So, in other words. 4 gigs is easily enough to store your favorite stuff... but for most people, it's not going to work for everything.
"...in the long term they will be failing." Long term here being what, 5 years? How many portable audio players, CD, Tape, MP3, etc, have a product life cycle of 5 years? Zero. Sure, the Walkman has been around forever but it certainly hasn't remaind the same product for the past 25 years, or even the last 5 years. Portable CD players 5 years ago didn't know what MP3's were. Now, even the inexpensive ones play MP3 encoded discs.
USD30 mp3 players? Maybe eventually and at that point, Apple and all the other device manufacturers will have a new product with new features that people will gladly pay a premium price for. 10 cent downloads? Riiiight, that will happen....maybe with indie music, but never with mainstream, RIAA endorsed/encoded, DRM'd music. If you've ever read any type of financial article about iTMS, you'd know that it is a loss leader to sell iPods, cited here. Those songs will not be less than $0.99 for a long time, maybe $0.69 on sale, or something to that effect. Yeah, yeah, $0.79 at some of the other sites, that's got them where in market share and profitability? $0.10/song gets you what? In legal trouble with the music industry, and a real quick sucking sound of your VC funds because for ever song you sell, you lose $1.00 or so.
Apparently Mercedes-Benz, Giorgio Armani, and Rolex have never learned your lesson about "Nobody cares about quality." I know I do, which is why I bought an Apple Powerbook G4 instead of some POS HP/Compaq. Does this make me biased toward Apple? No. I bought the better product for my needs and the comparable Dells, which I do not believe have better quality or service, were several hundred dollars more and did less than my PB. I also don't shop at Walmart because of the low quality of much of the items they stock. Obviously, Walmart is doing something right to become the number one retailer in the world, but I still refuse to shop there and a completely separate discussion. I don't buy Kia's because I believe that they are lousy automobiles. My point here is that many people, including myself, care about quality.
I'm not quite sure what universal law of economics you are talking about, unless you have some odd perception of the supply and demand curves. If there was an economic law that stated that the cheapest product wins the most market share, we'd all be driving Kia's (or taking public transportation), doing all of our shopping at the dollar stores, buying clothes at the salvation army, and buying old computers off eBay as "upgrades."
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
The price seems cheap to me, A 4gig 1" hard drive costs more at retail than the whole Ipod does. People with high end digital cameras are buying the Creative Nomad Muvo2 4gb at $299 just to take out the hard drive and either tossing the player, or replacing the 4gig drive with a one gig drive.
perhaps if you went by suggested retail prices you could come up with a chart of competitors that looks like the one the author has at the beginning of his article. however, unlike apple devices its fairly easy to find mp3 players that sell for drastically less than the MSRP which, when comparing store prices, could then be added to the list to (then) point out why apples prices are ridiculous. to wit:
RCA Lyra Jukebox (40gb) : $260
Rio Karma (20Gb, ogg support, ethernet) : $267
Samsung Napster (20GB,line-in,fm transmitter) : $260
Dell Digital Jukebox (15gb) : $249
(source: cnet.com)
and of course we could go on and on. 4GB for $250 that *actually sells* for $250 is absurd. competitors are judged by the price at which it can be purchased *and* features. going by MSRP alone is pointless, especially in apples case.
You would be talking a major loss leader then.
Your scenario assumes that Apple makes more profit on the 15G than the 4G. Which is possible, but not likely. If Apple were making a large profit on the 15G, why not just drop the price $50 and make it back through quantity? Now they've spent a lot of engineering time, manufacturing time, ad space, and patience of Apple fans to sell a product that noone will buy in favor of something more expensive with a (possibly) smaller profit margin.
I do agree it'd be great if they all came with all the accessories, though. It's not just the mini; the 15 GB doesn't come with the dock, remote or case.
Here's the really interesting "hidden outrage": A few months ago, when the iPod line was 10 / 15 / 30 and the 15 was the $399 midrange instead of the $299 low end, the 15 did have all those extras (since Apple includes them with the midrange and high end, while making them optional for the low end). Apple sells each of those items for $39 (overpriced, but there you go). That means that a few months ago one could have bought a 15 GB that included all the extras for $399; now it would cost you $416, or $17 more, to get the same stuff (!), since you buy the extras separately - yet remarkably, they achieved this not by actually raising the price of anything, but by simply improving everything - they just replaced the midrange 15 with a 20, and then the low end 10 with a 15, while keeping all the other specs (prices and included extras) the same. Pretty damn clever of them, if you ask me...
Why would someone spend $250 for 4 gigs in a iPod Mini, when I can by a brand new Dell Dimension 2400 with 40 gigs of space on it for only $400! That's only $150 more dollars for 36 more gigs of memory!
It's ridiculous that they could charge that much for something with no storage in it at all. I don't care if it's a little smaller. It's absolutely a crime that they should even insult us like this.
Very refreshing concept. Why can't other Slashdotters do the same?
True story.
Just FYI -
:-)
The iPod (and I assume the mini) has something like 20 minutes worth of shock protection. It does not play from the disk, it buffers the songs in memory and plays from there. This also increases battery life quite a bit, since the disk isn't constantly spinning.
You could make the iPod skip if you put it in a paint mixer or something, but if it skips while you're jogging, it should be sent in for repair. That or you jog really badly
"you'll end up paying probably $350-$400 to make the iPod mini really usable."
How is the Mini-iPod not usable when you first open the $250 box? It comes with connecting cables. It comes with a whopping 4gb disk built in (you do don't even have to buy extra cards like digital cameras or other flash mp3 players). It comes with a handy belt clip. It comes with decent headphones (I concede, they're not audiophile quality). It even comes with a rechargable battery!
In short, you do NOT need to spend $350 to $400 to make this player usable. It is extremely usable right out of the box!
Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing.
Well, the other side of the "accessories sold seperately" coin is - you could get stuck paying for items you don't want or need, if it's all bundled in at one price.
I'd never use an armband with a portable music player, for example. I tend to put them in my inner coat pocket in the winter, and other times, just leave them in my car, on my desk at work, or wherever I want to use them.
Even the remote, which I thought was a "must have" option for my iPod at first, is little more than a toy to me now. (As often as not, I use my iPod to listen to music in my car - so I can't make use of their wired remote in that scenario anyway. I just have a Griffin iTrip plugged into the top of my iPod.) It's fine for when you're actually using the earbud headphones -- but I don't find it that much more of a problem to just reach down and use the iPod's controls themselves for volume or to skip tracks.
As they say, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." When you buy something with "free bonus accessories" in the box, you can be sure you paid for them in the price of the item.
Once again, a public service announcement for the Slashdot crowd:
Not everyone is a geek!!!!
Thank you, and have a nice day.
Only tangentally related, but it seems silly to spend $19 on a cable for USB2 when you could add Firewire to your computer for $8 including the cable, and have it be useful for so much more....
After it came out, I heard many people suggesting that Apple wouldn't merely sell a lot of them, but it would sell a lot of miniPods to people who already have iPods - people who want something small to take jogging or to the gym or something.
The world is full of people with different needs and requirements. Apple's targetting a different niche (people and function) with the miniPod to that of the iPod's. That's quite reasonable.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But surely for runners, what is more important is the removal of moving parts, *not* that you need something smaller than a standard iPod?
I mean, that is what I see as the reason why people still buy the solid state devices, when you can get reasonably small, not much more expensive drive based units anyway.
Just as the battery issue has been (over) hyped recently, if the iPod Mini sells significant numbers to runners, what are the chances of complaints about skips, or damaged hard drives?
And there are other issues that don't get touched on. Ergonomics for one - I haven't tried it, but I fail to see how the combined button / scroll wheel offers good ergonomics. (Note that the touch buttons of the current iPods are *far* worse than the original button configuration).
And what about the fact that it uses a different dock connector? So all the existing peripherals don't work with the iPod mini. Media reader anyone? OK, the iPod mini is a bit short on space for photos, but with the increasing importance in digital photography, even if you don't need such a device now, wouldn't you rather spend a little bit more to have that flexibility in the future? (and that's not to mention the voice recorder and other dock based addons that are currently available for the iPod).
I don't much agree with $500 jackets and $200 jeans, as I am not a fan of fashion, but buying a nice computer isn't exactly the same thing as looking good for the sake of looking good, especially when one's livelihood depends on the amount of productivity (and least headache) one can get out of one's main workstation. And having something that looks nice never hurt anyone, either. Basically everything you buy these days short of toilet paper is designed to look aesthetically appealing (humans are visual animals... you don't prefer looking at ugly stuff, do you?), and the retail price reflects the development put into that.
Going by your logic, everyone should buy marginally acceptable computers that are *just able* to run the critical applications needed on a day to day basis, like the $10 T-Shirt and $20 jeans. That drop in demand would prevent new development, slowing the pace of technological advance in the computer industry. This principle is basically applicable to every other tech-influenced industry, as well.
If people never bought Apple (or other "luxury", as you put it, brands), the consumer adoption of GUIs, mice, "office" productivity suites, large-capacity mp3 players, laser printers, (I could go on...) would have been much slower than it was. And you could argue that these things would have been developed and adopted anyway, but that's neither here nor there, and total conjecture. There's always the cheaper alternative.
Furthermore, anyone who's ever studied economics knows that revenue and profits do not scale directly with price. "Budget" goods produced and sold in quantity routinely outpace luxury items in terms of sales, revenues, and profit. Who's worth more - Toyota or Ferrari? Toyota - by an order of magnitude or two, I'd imagine. But Ferrari makes a badass machine that can be yours for six figures. WORTH is the amount of money that a commodity can be sold for on the open market. It has nothing to do with your personal financial situation and your personal tastes and preferences. You're basically inconsequential. The market determines worth, NOT you.
It seems as if you have a fundamental problem with the principles of capitalism and how differences in price & economies of scale drive innovation and adoption. I suggest you check out a isolated economy that produces nothing but common goods for general consumption. Something like... North Korea.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The controls... they brought back tactile feedback. I thought it was phenomenally poor from a usability standpoint to move the iPod to using "buttons" you can't press with gloves on, can't press through the outside of your pocket, and can't even tell if you've pressed unless you have the clicker on or are looking at the device. I'm sticking to my old iPod with the mechanical buttons for now, and I'm hoping by the time I need a new one they will have fixed the regular iPod's interface.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
Try going jogging with a Karma strapped to your arm.
;-) to your ankles, which can get you arrested.
Riiiiiiiight.
The iPod Mini is not all about price per gigabyte. It's about a good amount of storage (WAY more than a flash player) in a very light package. The iPod itself is a bit heavy still for jogging. Best you can do is put it on your belt and it flops around enough to pull nylon jogging shorts (hello, Dolphin
I visited Macworld this year and spent some hands on time with both the iPod and iPod Mini. Even though the previously separate control keys from the original iPod were consolidated with the "wheel", I greatly preferred the user experience of the Mini. The latest (3rd generation?) big iPod has a sort of virtual dial, and the "buttons" have no tactile feedback. The Mini overloads the functions on the dial, but does it with a tiny click which I found much easier to use.
So, even though I see the 15GB iPod is much more compelling from a value standpoint, I sort of suffer from the reverse problem - I'd rather have a Mini with an even larger drive but the same operating controls. That market is defintely going to be the last one served here!
Both iPods seem inferior at a glance to the very original iPod. It was too expensive and (now) not a good story on space, but the wheel (an actual physical control) was just awesome.
I think iTunes is pretty good too, but one of the things you rarely see mentioned here is that there's a huge gap in feature set between the Mac and Windows versions. No, it's not in the app or music libraries, it's in the support of players. The Mac version of iTunes supports any mp3 player capable of playing MP3 or AAC which is pretty much everybody if you don't want to play the music you bought at the iTMS (they're all AAC).
The Windows version of iTunes is identical in functionality to the Mac version if you have an iPod. But it appears that iTunes Windows won't sync with anything other than iPods.
Sadly, Apple is shooting itself in the foot here. Given a choice between iTunes and anything else, iTunes would clobber all comers. iTunes is well thought out and implemented, while the alternatives seem thrown together or hacky. But, if I can't organize my world on my PC and sync to my non-iPod, I just won't use iTunes no matter how good it is.
This protects Apple's iPod sales vs. the competition (on Macs, you've already paid your tribute to Apple when you got your Mac!) but at great cost. If iTunes in visibly better designed software than it's competitors, it's only a matter of time (and short time, I think) before the desirable interface aspects are ripped off. And just like productivity apps, you reach a point where adding more features and innovation has a diminishing return.
iPod profits pay for iTunes, so there's really no other way this can be. But I feel bad to see Apple miss a chance to really lock up their domination of the iTunes-like app world because of this business model. As an ex-Apple employee and Apple watcher, I hard to see this mistake being repeated - they really are poised to achieve a Windows-like stranglehold on the computer end of the formula, but by closing off the other players (that the cited article shows they can beat anyway!) they're marking themselves for death.
Just a warning about that...
I used my 20GB original iPod with the touch wheel (you know the one I mean) for just about everything for a while. I used it in the car, in the living room, in my bedroom and on the move. It's very sturdy in terms of taking knocks, sure, and especially so with a carry case. However, the constant inserting and removing of headphones and various 3.5mm-to-whatever cables took its toll in about 6 months. It developed some serious noise in the left channel, and eventually went quiet altogether. To be fair this isn't Apple's fault, but a design flaw common to 3.5mm headphone sockets.
On a more positive note, I found it didn't do badly against a CD player twice its price in my main hifi, which was a pleasant surprise. For most of the time it was working, I rarely touched a CD. And having a huge amount of music while walking around was great.
If I can't fix my iPod at some point, I'll probably end up buying one of those baby iPods. I have about 12 gigs of mp3s at the moment. I'd be quite happy to have, say 2gb of playlists of music that I can't live without, and often want to listen to on a whim, and the rest be a floating list of randomness. I can't say I gain a whole lot from being able to walk around with track 8 of some godawful CD I bought 6 years ago around with me.
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
iPod owns the market in the $300-500 range because everyone else's MP3 players cost less than $300.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Its very simple. Like all other technology before it, the portable MP3 will get a lot cheaper and a lot better. You just have to wait. The longer the better. The first DVD-R writer was $1000 only 3 years ago. Now they could be had for a measly $125 on pricewatch and with more and better features. Unless you absolutely have to have one at this exact moment (which most of us really don't), just give it a little time.
One bit of advice that might save you some money: get some contact cleaner (that really spendy stuff you get in hi-fi and electronic repair stores.) It is very likely that a thin layer of crud and/or oxydization has developed at the exact point on the headphone jack where it comes in contact with the plug. you might not even see it easilly if it's only big enough to hold the channel barely far enough to prevent a solid connection.
Brush some of that cleaning solvent on the jack contacts (you may need take it apart to do this, but it's obviously out of warranty anyway or you could have this fixed for free), and while you are at it, clean the plugs that you usually use with it.
9 times out of 10 a good cleaning is all that really needs to be done to repair unreliable headphone jacks, noisy volume control knobs, unresponsive VU meters, etc.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Yes it is. Anyone who chooses to buy the mini one is perfectly capable if they choose of instead buying the large one. It may not be apple's intent to compete with the ipod here, but given that the two do similar things in a similar price range, they are competing with each other, even if there are some differences between them.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Besides the smaller size, lighter weight, and consumer appeal of colors, newness, etc, one other point to consider with the iPod mini vs. 15GB iPod argument is the accessories. iPod mini comes with a belt clip, arm band, and remote. To get a belt clip and remote for a 15GB iPod will set you back $80 (if you get it from Apple), so then "why not jump another $20 to get the 20GB?" as the 20GB comes with the accessories (plus a dock) and 5GB more space. Then you've jumped in price from $249 to $399, which is significant to most anyone. For their target market, I think Apple did a great job with the iPodmini, and I wouldn't rule out a price drop in a few months after the price of the components has dropped a bit.
I think the difference is the geek factor. The Karma attempts to do too much for someone who simply wants to listen to music. The iPod is stylish (personal opinion, it is more so, by far, than the Karma) than the Karma and more simple to use.
I own an iPod. Anyone who plays with it says the same thing, it is beautiful and works great and nothing else on the market touches it. But what I really thought was interesting was a comment that an industry analyst made about iPod Mini. Considering Apple's position in the market and a $250 price tag, a competitive product would need to be at least $50 cheaper. I think that is an interesting perspective of a strictly 'business' analysis. Just not the kind of thoughts technical people have.
The hard drive technology they are using in both iPod and mini are still fairly expensive. The key to lower prices is that component becoming cheaper.
Apple is doing what they've done many times before: release a nice new product that is indeed overpriced. Then time will go on, the price will drop, and quality will go up. Remember when the iPod came out just a couple years ago? First of all, it was a bit underwhelming--$500 for a 5 GB player. Other HD-based players were larger and cheaper and remember, there was no iTMS adding value to it at the time. But time marched on, the price fell, and capacity went up. Now the same $500 gets you 8x more storage. And compare the original iPod to the new mini: one was $500 for 5 GB, the other is $250 for 4 GB.
Apple is going to make hay while the sun shines and plenty of people are going to pony up the bucks for the first gen player. These should be $199 by summer and maybe $149 by fall or XMas. And maybe Apple will drop a $99 1 or 2 GB bomb, at which popint they will totally 0wn the mp3 player market.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.