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iPod Mini Autopsy
tritone writes "Some fearless soul has disassembled his iPod mini and provided pictures and commentary about the process. This really does seem to be an autopsy since he managed to kill it in the process. That's $249 well spent in the pursuit of knowledge. See the full report at www.ipodlounge.com."
He who breaks a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom. (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
I bet this poor soul was expectign to get a Digicam friendly CF card out of his autopsy.
$249 for a 4GB microdrive isn't a bad price, too bad it didn't work.
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
i think the mini-ipod will be a complete flop, too price for too little.
If it was being manufactured by any company besides Apple, I'd agree wholeheartedly, but we all know it will do reasonable well, simply because it's an Apple product.
When you can strap a discman on an armband and go jogging with it, then you'll have a point.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
We've been through this already: mini iPods have enough space for most people, so there is no value in getting the roomier one. On the other hand, the smaller physical size makes them much more convenient.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
I think that once you take that into account, you'll find that the iPod Mini is about the best deal on the market, from a formfactor v price standpoint, as well as the fact that it's the cheapest player in that market.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
Wouldn't that technically make it a vivisection? Since it was alive when he started?
/.ers know that real men use 'kill -9' to do this.
Only real idiots use kill -9.
#!/
I went to the Apple store last weekend and played with one. It really is a lot smaller than you'd think - barely bigger than my year-old MuVo, with about 30 times the capacity, and a hell of a lot cooler. Plus, I only have 4GB of music, so whenever I get money this is going to be one of my first purchases.
Anyone who either has small music libraries, or doesn't need their entire library with them at all times, will probably fall in love with these things. And if you wanted a bigger iPod to use as a backup hard drive, that's just silly, as a mere $100 can buy you a ~100 gig FW hard drive, if not more.
Once again, Apple has positioned their products nicely as "amateur" (iPod mini) and "hardcore" (bigger iPods) products. They should be viewed as such.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
"i think the mini-ipod will be a complete flop, too price for too little."
I'd say 100,000 units preordered isn't a flop.
Considering that this guy screwed up his iPod in creating these procedures, why on earth would anybody want to follow suit?
He who doesn't break things to find out what it is isn't a geek. (Anonymous Coward)
I got a question.... you do realize that Apple just buys the HD's used in iPods from a regular OEM (I know that at one point at least Fujitsu was selling the HD's) So why didn't you just go buy the same HD for less money???
I found it amusing that when the very first iPods came out that the same HD used was reviewed and the reviewers complained about how slow it was. The irony was not that the HD was slow, but that at the same time the "firewire" connection to the iPod was being trumpeted even though the HD could not come even closed to saturating the connection.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
It seems that a lot of the reports are pointing to tech savy females and not us gun-ho more bang for the buck males buying them... I know my girlfriend wanted a pink one the minute she saw it despite the 249.00 price tag (hers is shipping now)
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Not that Apple Care never existed before that or anything...
"i think the mini-ipod will be a complete flop, too price for too little."
Sigh*
You'll hear this up and down the slashdot site. If a fashion magazine did the review, this would be the new hotness.
For practical reason, why buy a porche (sp?), when a hyundaii 9k car can do the same. Bad analogy, but I'm trying to point out the style.
Compare this unit to the flash memory mp3 market. It's right in there... hell the autopsy/murder shows its a CF card! (I believe the normal ipods are harddrives)
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
Is it really too hard to actually learn how to do a hyperlink? Besides, the Google cache is useless because it doesn't grab images.
Expect the $100 iPod sometime between when they've sold an iPod to nearly everyone that will pay more than a $100 and a competitor can come close to offering a product with equal sex appeal for less than $150.
Put another way, if you assembled a car from parts sold at retail prices a Saturn would cost more than a Hummer.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
There are fashion conscious male techies too y'know!
I'm getting a silver one simply because it looks better and I'm not huge on music to be honest - my collection in total is only 3.5GB and I don't listen to it all anyway. Why would I want to pay more for a large, less attractive (although still well designed) device with 11GB more that will be totally redundant 99% of the time. The only thing I can possibly think I would need it for is if I got one of those memory stick readers and backed up my photos so I only needed one stick.
Before anyone says $250 for a 4GB device is overpriced, look at the competition. Sony 256MB MP3s are about 150GBP here, and that's more than $250. The Creative MuVo 4GB (comparable size and capacity, but nothing like the build quality I've seen in the past from Apple and no more than average design) costs ~200GBP from Amazon, again much much more than the iPod for an all round inferior product.
Having said all that, if build quality doesn't matter to you then I'm sure you'll find a player from some unknown manufacturer on eBay at a huge discount from the iPod. I, on the other hand, am the kind of person who spent 200GBP on a second mobile phone because it was made from titanium and looked good when I was going out. I'm more than happy to pay a premium for looks and quality.
http://www.babehunt.org/fusker/index.php?lid=10471
How does what users hoped for, equate to vaporware? Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall Apple ever saying they'd release a $100 iPod.
CT
RIP (Rest In Pieces)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom. -- Gandalf
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I don't think anything will be under warranty if they can tell it has been opened. If you can reassemble it and make it seem as though it hasn't been taken apart, and just simply doesn't work, take it back to the 16 year old girl at the return counter and try to exchange it. ;)
The issue wasn't that the battery wasn't covered under warranty, I think everyone accepts that batteries, even rechargables, are consumable items, just like the brakes and motor oil in your car. The issue was that Apple wanted hundreds of dollars to replace the battery, making it cost effective to simply buy a new iPod when the battery died.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Not any more. Their replacements are still pricey, but considering that the design of the iPods means that opening the case is a high-risk affair (something they can't easily fix, by the way; the lack of a removeable battery is critical to the design that everyone loves so much until the battery dies) involving a decent chance of having to replace some component other than the battery puts the price, unfortunately, right about where it should be.