Slashdot Mirror
iPod Mini Sells Out
burgburgburg writes "According to USATODAY.com, the iPod mini is virtually sold out after two weeks. As we know, it had 100,000 on pre-order. It's the top seller at the Apple Store, where they advise people that there will be a one to three week wait. And it isn't a component shortage that's causing the delays. It's the huge demand amongst teens (for the colors) and athletes who like exercising with the ultralight device. While many here on /. felt that the mini was overpriced and pointed out that for $50 extra, you could buy a regular iPod with 15GB of storage instead of the 4 GB of the mini, Apple seems to have correctly identified the price point and the market they were going after. The space has become so hot that Creative's MuVo2 has also been selling well, but also for a slightly different reason. The MuVo2, which also has 4 GB of capacity, uses a CompactFlash card (which can be used in a digital camera). People have been buying the MP3 player and taking it apart for the card, which would cost more than the $200 dollars for the MuVo2."
While many here on /. felt that the mini was overpriced and pointed
out that for $50 extra, you could buy a regular iPod with 15GB of storage
instead of the 4 GB of the mini, Apple seems to have correctly identified
the price point and the market they were going after.
Which should tell /. readers a couple things:
/.'ers don't fit the target demographics (Ow! That hurts!)
/.'ers are apparently sedentary, they sit at their screens so much that weight isn't a consideration, for that matter, they can listen to stuff while sitting at the screen, so why bother?
/.'ers are more interested in pushing consumer technology to its more than whether there's a need. (It's all about the game!)
/.'ers must be colorblind (I'm R/G) so the colors aren't interesting, let along exciting.
/.'ers were wrong, and can't stand being wrong and are currently working on a strategy to change that rather than get a date for a Friday night. (Hey! This is important!)
So what's the average age of a slashdotter? Undoubtably there must be a few in the target demographic, now how many have kids in the group?
I identify more with Homer Simpson than Britney Spears and I'm cool with that, inspite of the tone of that post. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go buy some cargo pants, Justin Timberlake CD's, and iPod mini and a stone of oatmeal (because it's the right thing to do.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The MuVo2, which also has 4 GB of capacity, uses a CompactFlash card (which can be used in a digital camera). People have been buying the MP3 player and taking it apart for the card, which would cost more than the $200 dollars for the MuVo2.
More is right... a lot more! I was just pricing cards for my new digital camera (the $12 Ritz model got me hooked), and found out that the going price for 4GB is a whopping $1,130! Yikes!
After dividing out, that came to 28c/meg -- about a penny more per meg than the Lexar-brand 256 MB cards ($70). So I figured a kilobuck must not be bad, if you need that kind of storage.
But 4096 meg for $200 is less than 5c/meg!
How on earth did MuVo get such a low price on their components?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
For the inevitable ridiculous battery questions:
iPod Battery FAQ
You knew it the moment that it became popular. The iPod totally sold out. Those of us who supported it back in the old days when it was little more than a cassette player in a garage are left wincing at how they've totally gone mainstream.
White case. Headphones. LED screen. Fucking sellouts.
I have been pwned because my
>>How on earth did MuVo get such a low price on their components?
They make it up in volume! =)
Andy Mack deserves credit for that compact flash card hack. I saw it published on his website many weeks ago.
The quality of the photos on his website always amazes me.
Yea. I know.
Was I the only one that was thinking "The iPod sold out? What a poser! Down with conformity! Sold out luser!"
SCO.com uses Linux
SIZE DOES MATTER!
-Adam C. Greenfield
And it isn't a component shortage that's causing the delays. It's the huge demand amongst teens...
Huh? If there wasn't a component shortage, why aren't they able to fulfill the "huge demand?"
Wow. Seeing as how 4 GB flash cards seem to be going for a great deal more than that on eBay, I think I just found myself a new work-at-home job.
True story.
With whatever manufacturing capability they have, they can only be built so fast. Demand currently outstrips supply.
The space has become so hot that Creative's MuVo2 has also been selling well, but also for a slightly different reason. The MuVo2, which also has 4 GB of capacity, uses a CompactFlash card (which can be used in a digital camera). People have been buying the MP3 player and taking it apart for the card, which would cost more than the $200 dollars for the MuVo2
Some of their sales can be attributed to this, however I doubt that it is statistically significant. The majority of consumers are not doing this.
Now you can't even get them to replace the goddamn battery without them charging you an arm and a leg for it.
I used to love the iPod, but nowadays they seem more interested in the money than their fans.
People have been buying the MP3 player and taking it apart for the card, which would cost more than the $200 dollars for the MuVo2.
Apparently, the same is true for the iPod Mini. Accedemics are buying them just for the micro-drives.
I know a lot of people complained about the price, but given the fact that they've now sold out, Apple would have been stupid to set a lower price.
...always listen to the most vocal people after macworld. Remember the iPod mini sucks, it won't sell, it's too expensive, nobody will like it, it'll flop. As read on Spymac! Macnn! macworld! Slashdot!.
:)
And look how right they were!. pfft.
Congrats Apple. One more insanely succesful product
Mini iPod... With a not so mini demand!
It seems the 4GB storage isn't flash memory... it's a hard drive that can interface with a compactflash port.
It seemed unreasonable to think they could possibly sell 4GB of flash memory at that price.
Since it's just a hard drive with a CF interface, it will be much slower than actual flash memory.
Remember this about the original iPod?
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
And now their criticisms of the iPod Mini before it even came out are biting them in the ass.Bottom line, the editors and most of the readers are out of touch with reality sometimes.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Because this is the real world, even a company like Apple that delivers quality can fuck up (think iPod battery fiasco) but they are quick to fix the sitation. Much quicker than most any other company for sure.
Anyway, people who complain about expensive apple products should shut their mouth for several reasons. 1) Because you are cheap, does not mean others are not willing to pay for quality. We are. 2) Lots of good G5 rack comps from Apple give more power for lest $ than even Dell (the defacto standard for good'n'cheat).
To all the iPod owners out there, "Enjoy!"
Does this mean there's 100K kids who MS won't be able to sell their ipod clone to? If demand is that much greater than supply, does that mean by the time MS comes out with their lame version, they may already be 500K-1million ipod mini out there.
Forgot to post a link to the CES coverage of the demo:
http://gear.ign.com/articles/461/461850p1.html?
-rt
#More is right... a lot more! I was just pricing cards for my new digital camera (the $12 Ritz model got me hooked), and found out that the going price for 4GB is a whopping $1,130! Yikes!#
YEESH ==\
I read that flash memory can only be written
to X number of times before it begins to crap
out (I can't remember the figure, but I believe
it was far less than your typical hard disk)
Simple: It's an Apple product. What else do you need to know?
1) I was firmly in the "it costs too much for too little" (no pun intended) crowd. Then I saw one in person, and held it in my hand. The thing is light as a feather, and still feels more "solid", largely thanks to the all aluminum body. I have a 20GB 2nd-gen iPod, but as soon as the iPod mini has at least 12GB of capacity (size of my current music collection), I'm buying one. It's just incredible.
2) Don't forget that even though the iPod is only $50 more, this sets the entry level iPod price even lower. Before to get any iPod you had to spend $300. Now it's $250, and will probably get lower with future generations of the mini line.
3) Just to clarify, the iPod mini also uses a Compact Flash compatible drive - the Hitachi 4GB Microdrive. I'd bet all you have to do is format it as FAT32 and then stick it in your camera.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I'm glad Apple remains a contender and a nagging thorn in the sleep of Billy Gates' mind. The fact that Apple is still around and won't go away has to bug him on some level.
In fact, my next purchase will be an Apple laptop.
"Sufferin' succotash."
...hardware do you know people kept buying just to take it apart to pick components hard to obtain or very expensive otherwise?
I'm about to take a $20 printer apart, just to extract 2 optical encoders, $50 or so each.
Before you do anything else, visit this link:
http://www.nomadworld.com/downloads/firmware/wma-m uvo_2_4.asp
And upgrade the firmware of the unit. This is VITAL. If you do not upgrade ahead of time, you will have serious issues later on. Upgrade the firmware FIRST. It has some auto-recovery features that will prove necessary in later steps. Remove the battery when you are done. Now ground yourself.
2. At the top of the Muvo2 there are two small screws. With a very small philips screwdriver, remove these screws.
3. Open the battery compartment. At the bottom, there are two very small screws. Remove these as well.
4. Remove the back of the unit.
5. Lift the circuit board carefully. It was held in place by the previous 4 screws.
6. Underneath the top circuit board, there is a plate holding down the microdrive. At the top, there are two screws. Remove them. On the side, there is a very very small silver screw. It is smaller than the two black ones. Remove it.
7. There is a piece of black tape in the lower corner. Underneath that tape is the last screw holding down the MD plate. Remove the tape carefully, and unscrew the screw.
8. Lift the plate out. Now, CAREFULLY pry the pin-array from the microdrive. Very gently use a small flat screwdriver to work your way down the black plastic strip. DO NOT FORCE ANYTHING. It should come out easily.
9. Take the 4gb MD and format it in your camera. You should have a 4gb MD now.
10. Put the 1gb MD back into the array. Carefully press it down. Again, do not force anything, it should slide in very easily. 11. Replace the screws, place the tape over the black screw where you found it, and reassemble the Nomad. 12. Turn it on. It will report that there is a media error and go into recovery mode. 13. Select Reload firmware from the recovery menu. It will take a few seconds, reload the firmware, and then report a media error. 14. Select Connect to PC. Now, connect the USB connector to your PC. 15. Run the Firmware upgrade again, and allow it to upgrade the firmware. 16. Power it down. Then back up. 17. When it turns on, it will report a scansearch error, or a media error then throw you into recovery mode. Select Format. It should take a few seconds to format. 18. Power it off, power it back on, and you should have a working 1gb Muvo2, a working 4gb MD in your camera, and a big smile on your face.
I know it is easy to find on the web, but after reading some of the questions (many of the mod +5) on /. I wonder if some people even know google exists. ;)
Open Source Sushi
The iPod mini drive is reportedly NOT working in digital cameras, something to do with formatting..
Wired News has more on this whole thing about the MuVo2..
Guess I'll have to use this damn iPod mini for listening to music, instead of.. um.. tolkien ring??
I hate spyware and spies
the original article on /. bout the first gen ipod is funny... after alll these years
I don't think I was ever worried about it not selling. My thought was (and is) that it's not going to make that much difference long-term to market share.
The thing that I saw Jobs hammer over and over agan was market share. He wanted the iPod to not just be the biggest seller, but to be the majority of the market. So... the question is, are these new iPod Mini sales new iPod sales, or are they existing iPod users trading "up"?
According to Jobs, there's three market segments. I thnk he was a bit deceptive about the details of the segments with his "$50 more" line, but the basic outlines seem to be pretty solid. There's the low end flash based devices, there's the midrange flash and maybe small disk, and there's the high end. The iPod owns the high end.
In terms of market size, the low end and the high end are the biggest. It seems to me that someone interested in market share would go for the wide open low end with a flash based $180 "iPod micro". Not dive in to the most competitive part of the market with a price that seems designed to cannibalise their own sales.
Well, if you have the White Album on CD, you can still use iTunes to rip it into MP3 and sync it with your iPod.
That's legal and with a fast CPU/drive probably takes less time than typing in a credit card number.
After all, iTunes started out with "Rip, Mix, Burn." The Store is just a new thing that builds on the old.
People on DPReview have known about this for much longer. Just search for "muvo" on the forums at www.dpreview.com.
I was hoping the mini was going to bomb and maybe the price would come down but if I was Steve I wouldn't bring the preice down till they stopped selling. I used to think M$ was the marketting king but I think His Royal Majesty Steve Jobs has surpassed them.
It's all Politics
It's called "sales." I think it must be new, because nobody on slashdot seems to understand it. Maybe there's a FAQ somewhere.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I thought it was all about the music, man!
The story goes that the iPod drive is configured to only work in IDE mode, whereas digital cameras need the memory mode.
--
Dell is only "De-facto" among the pointy-haired bosses. You can get much better price/performance almost everywhere. If Dell starts offering AMD processors along with Intel, that may change. But, until that happens, don't waste your money on Mike Dell's big paycheck. I find it real interesting how Apple fans *always* compare themselves to Dell and Intel, never to AMD powered systems.
Dude, yer sooooo coool. I wish I could rail against Apple/Jobs with all your self-righteousness.
I will never understand how people can be talked into spending enormous sums on an inferior product through a snazzy marketing campaign.
No kidding. For $170, I can get a 1.5 GB Nitrus. For only $80 more (less than 50% increase in price) I can get a product with about 240% more capacity (the iPod mini).
"Oh, but what about the Muvo2?" According to Amazon, it's not yet available.
So, for $50, I get a better looking unit (arguable, I agree) FireWire support, AAC support (you can tout WMA all you want, but when the vast, vast majority of online sales are AAC, I could care less about WMA) And I don't have to explain to the average person why I bought such a ghetto player.
Sorry, but there is nothing standout between the iPod and the Rio offerings from a purely objective standpoint. Judging by the sellout of the first run, $50 doesn't mean anything to people in this marketplace, so the choice of one over the other is purely subjective. Trying to pretend otherwise just makes you look like a whiner.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I was at the local Apple Store Yesterday picking up an iTrip for the 10gb iPod I got on clearance from amazon. In my 10 minutes there, I saw three mini sales and the following conversation between two stereotypical female blonde mallrats:
bmr1: "Man, I really WANT one of these things"
bmr2: "So BUY it, what color would you get?"
bmr1: "Blue-no-pink, I like the pink, but my credit card bill already sucks."
bmr2: "Girlfriend, untill your visa's got three grand on it, I don't even wanna hear you bitch about your credit card bill."
I'm thinking 'Bravo for managing your debt' and 'Good god, I thought bmr's only existed in movies'. Shows what happens when you got to a mall less than twice a year, I guess.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Now if you could just legally obtain music for it, you'd be all set!
If you don't like the iTunes Music Store, you can always buy CDs or borrow them from friends, rip them, and put them on your iPod.
Hell, even iTunes can't offer The Beatles.
The Beatles' record label is once again being stubborn about adopting a new method of distribution. They also took a long time to allow Beatles albums to be released on CD. They haven't made a deal with any music download service, and it's anyone's guess when they will choose to make the Beatles' music available electronically.
As noted above, however, you can still buy the CDs.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
iPod is the best selling portable mp3 player. They own 2/3 of the market. Maybe you don't care how stylish your mp3 player, car, clothes, or girlfriend is, but many people do.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
"Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...
...
...
...
Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port
Raise your hand if you have both
Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device
There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod.
~LoudMusic"
This was modded up, 4 insightful.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
How to legally obtain music for your iPod.
Step One: Buy used CDs of the music you want on your iPod
Step Two: Rip to MP3 or AAC.
Step Four: Transfer files to iPod
Step Five: Sell all those CDs you just bought to another used CD shop
And as a plus, you've thumbed your nose at the RIAA by buying used CDs.
Of course, if you're a really cheap sod, you just borrow CDs from your local library and rip them.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
One for Disco.
One for 80's synthopop dance
and one for country western music which i am going to throw into the river when i fill it up.
All it really validates is that most consumers are fools and will fall for any hype the Apple marketing department throws at them. If people were intelligent enough to do a little research, they could find that buying a full-blown iPod for only 50 dollars more would be a much wiser decision, space wise, or another portable mp3 player entirely, rather than shelling out an insane amount of money for an Apple iPod that is shiny, pretty, and has "cool" commercials...
People can see themselves, rather easily, that the larger iPod is only $50 more.
But here's a mind-boggling concept - perhaps they know, but are basing choice on something other than $/MB!!!
A smaller device can be carried more often. I got one of the original palm pilots, but really didn't use it. Then I got a Palm V which has been in my pocket every day for the last few years. Similarily, the smaller size of the iPod mini makes it much more practical to carry about. For my use of an iPod the larger version is fine, but there are a lot of people that want as small a device as possible to work out with. Heck, one of the standard accessories you can buy with the iPod mini is a armband! Although a normal iPod is small, I would not want it bound to my arm for any length of time.
Now in addition consider a further possibility - perhaps, there are a lot of people that don't even have 4MB of music. Perhaps they only like boy bands and the collected greatest works fit into a few hundred k. For whatever reason, there are a lot of people that are not that in to music and do not have a huge variety, or a need for a large library on the go. For these people, the new iPod is simply $50 less for an even smaller product. In fact I have a 5GB iPod, not much larger, and have never really felt that much of a pull to go for a larger one as long as this works - it holds enough somgs for a ten hour roadtrip, and I can re-load when I want to switch it up. Again, if I were buying now I might go for a $50 less device just because I lived with 5MB for so long as was perfectly happy.
I'm not even going to go into fashion because I am pretty sure that's a minorty of what is making this device popular.
Last question - do you always supersize every fast food meal you buy? Why, it's only $0.20 more for a pound of frys!! Who would be stupid enough to not buy that!!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
are not reasonable, or mainstream. Perhaps Apple has figured out what most people's requirements really are. Marketing alone can carry a product only for so long, products with legs have more going for them than marketing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Those URLs have spaces in it. These should work better (1,2)
...about the four minutes it retains power.
Not to mention the bad karma of carrying around a Windows share all day long. Do you get many strangers swapping out your music for static?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Damn, iPod-Mini sold out? You know, they always said they wanted to be independent. I thought they were cool. Now it turns out they're just another corporate act in it for the money. I guess that means pretty soon we'll hear about heroine binges and downward spirals, and twenty years from now VH-1 will do a "Behind the Music" on it all. How sad.
I called the Apple Store at Tyson's Corner yesterday, asking if they had any iPod Minis in stock. They said no, but they had a waiting list. I asked if there was a waiting list online, and they said "Yes, about a 3 week wait." I got a call today from the store saying that they just received a shipment of iPod Minis, and that mine was in, should I still want it. 30 minutes later, it is in my posession. :D
These things are even smaller in person!
Damn it's nice to have a local Apple store :D
P.S. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
... makes baby Jesus cry!
What about a link "enter to the web" in html?
Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
This is not a troll, I would happily buy one if my music was encoded in mp3, but it's not. All my tunes are ogg encoded, is there anyway to get this thing to play ogg short of putting Linux on it?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
To an economist, "demand is far greater than supply" is just another way of saying "the price is too low".
Can you imagine the Slashdot collective opinion, though, if Apple had priced it at $300? "You can get three times as much storage for the same price? Apple is insane!"
Goes to show that geeks are not Apple's target market, at least for consumer gear.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
One of the reasons why I stay away from Microdrives is that I hike a lot in the mountains, and most microdrives don't seem to like being above 10k feet.
:-)
I'm also worried about what happens when it's extremely hot or cold, though that worry has not been proven out as much I think.
One last thing to think about is battery life, microdrives will chew through batteries quicker than solid state.
I also have a Digital SLR, and GF, so I should have at least as much credibility.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
*ducks*
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The reason is, like a lot of slashdot readers, the media also does not think that something like the iPod mini will do well at all. So when they consistently do something surprising (like actually selling the devices at a tremendous rate) it's news because the news people are all astonished, and assume the rest of us are as well. They are basically saying "Can you believe this?".
And of course there's a bit of infiltration - not by the Apple diehards, but by the products themselves which convert confused people such as yourself to an Apple fan once they start using the product. The trick is that you assume it's all marketing fluff with no substance, and that's where the disconnect lies. I'm not even sure why people like you think the interest is from marketing as I do not see that much marketing from Apple compared to many other things.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Saw one of these at an Apple Store. By then I had already determined that it WAS in fact quite competitive with the 256mb players price wise, was about the same size, and of course had much more space to boot. And therefore, the price was appropriate and I thought it would sell well.
Anyway, after seeing it in person I realized something important - it's better designed than the regular iPod too! Firstly it's lighter and smaller - in fact I'd say the mini's size is probably optimal and they won't go smaller in the future. The rounded aluminum case feels and looks a lot nicer and more durable. The colors are a nice touch. And most importantly, the new scroll wheel and button layout is much better than the current white pods. You no longer have to move your thumb out of the wheel area to hit any of the buttons, as the scroll wheel itself now operates kind of like a d-pad for button operation in addition to the touch-sensitive scrolling, producing some nice tactile feedback. Try it for yourself to see what I mean. The (patented) iPod scroll wheel is the critical feature that makes the iPod's design worlds better than the alternatives, and they've improved it.
So to sum up, the mini is wonderful from the design area, especially in the tactile sense. They really hit the sweet spot this time.
I must admit, after handling it I was tempted to buy, but I've been waiting for an iPod to go under $200 and I'll wait longer if I have to. I don't listen to music enough to justify more than that.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
It sold out because it's tax refund time.
Yeah, AC! Something is flaking off and it ain't the silver on the mini! Apple hasn't posted anything about it because the problem doesn't exist.
Karma Schmarma
What country do you live in?
Are you sure it's only the pod that's three days old?
Karma Schmarma
Understanding sales is one thing. Surpressing the gag reflex when confronted with it is another.
They're big enough to do it.
Microsoft can always say they don't have a monopoly.
Who cares what MS says?
That's funny because your comments appear to be nothing but marketing. Would you please post a link to a single website that has the Nitrus 2 for sale?
So, what's stopping you from screwing the mini and getting the Nitrus2?
Apparently, what really bothers you is that some people make more money and can purchase higher quality products than you!
Karma Schmarma
I was pricing micro drives for my camera and the woman told me people are snapping up the minipod because of the 4 gig drive.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
they also have a slightly significant problem with Apple even being in the music business.
I'm sick of this "Microsoft saved/bought Apple" crap that I keep hearing from uninformed retards.
*After* it was totally apparent that Steve Jobs had saved Apple, Microsoft took the opportunity to buy a real small amount of Apple's stock at at an artificially low price (they made a killing on it as the stock went up 10x in value from that over the next year).
Microsoft also got some good PR for their Mac Office product which had long been a cash cow for Microsoft. In the year leading up to the release of Office 98 and the announcement, Microsoft's sales of Office for Mac had been surpased by Nissus Writer. After they got their big PR boost thanks to Steve they were back raking in the dough from selling Office for Mac.
The amount of stock they bought was $150 million. At the time, Apple had a $7 Billion price cap and $2 Billion in cash on hand. The quarter that MS made their "investment", Apple's profits were more than $150 million.
Also Apple was forced to cross license patents with Microsoft and ship Microsoft's crappy IE browser as the default on Mac systems.
Did Microsoft "prop up" Apple. Hardly. They took advantage of a weak moment and robbed Apple blind.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I wish Microsoft had put this out... maybe then I wouldn't have to hear about what a "great idea" this overpriced piece of crap is.
You're all a bunch of Jobs' bitches.
That's not legal. You sold your license to the shop and still have the music, therefore it's cr infringement.
It's actually a 4meg Microdrive that's CF compatable
Well no wonder the *4 GB* iPod mini is outselling the MuVo at a similar price!
Fashion or, as I prefer to think of it, good industrial design, really works best as a tie breaker feature for consumer electronics. Industrial design by itself will not sell a product. It will not make up a huge difference in cost.
Size doesn't help for non-portable devices either. For example, people were not willing to pay $1700 for the PowerMac G4 Cube when they could get the same hardware in a tower for $1200. Even though the cube was *really* cool. I have a G4 cube right here (no, I didn't buy it myself and I have no idea why my company bought it). I can tell you that the cube is *very cool*. The industrial design is awesome. On the other hand, If I had been buying a computer at the time, I would have bought the tower.
On the other hand, the iPod mini is a portable device. People will pay more for a smaller portable device. Phones, laptops, MP3 players, etc. The smaller the better and people will pay for it!
I think that the iPod mini is selling because it is a good device that is well made, that has good value. It is better than most of its competitors. Also, it costs less dollars than any other iPod. Some people care about price more than price per anything.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Does this mean they're not cool any more?
It looks like the anodized finish on the silver minis is flaking off already.
;-)
It's the TI book all over again. Apple hasn't posted anything about it on their forums yet.
You're a pathetic liar! I mean that in both senses--that you're pathetic and that you're not a good liar!!
You see "anodized" means that the surface of the aluminum has been chemically altered to become an extremely hard and durable surface. "Anodization" is not something that is spread onto the surface, it is part of the metal itself, it does not "flake off"; about the only way to damage it is to scratch it, and that's not easy to do. The TiBook was painted, and paint, if not done well, can flake off under various circumstances.
OK, I suppose you could always have been making an attempt at humor... If so, you got me good
Whenever an item sells out, you have to wonder, was it a good product? or just good marketing? By orchestrating insufficient supplies, many news sources, ./ and USA today at least, are reporting the fact. That's free advertising for Apple, the kind traditional ads cannot buy. So when huge stockpiles of the things mysteriously turn up next week, we will all be more likely to pick them up because:
1. They are percieved as rare.
2. They are percieved as desired.
Perception is reality and marketers really know how to pull our consumer strings.
I like those kinda things. When people see some plain MP3 player they think it sucks ... but show them somthing pretty and they will be all awwed. "You mean it can play music AND look good". I setup a 33.6 Modem just for the blinky lights. For sure blinky lights and a nice design sells for me.
If it works out for cars why not computers ?
Just cause you don't like it doesn't mean 50,000 people don't like it. Im sure apple will make a nice pretty colour "normal" IPOD and it will sell better then the plain white one.
Solosoft.org - Your Online Resource to Nothing
n/t
You can also take apart the iPod mini for its hard drive.
neeiner neeiner neeiner I got mine and you have to wait 3 weeks!
Hahahaha! Suckers!
If /.ers had more business sense, maybe more of them could get out of their parents' basement. ; )
Man, I told him not to lose sight of his punk roots.
I've noticed a proliferation of bad language usage here on Slashdot. I'm a Christian and feel that such language ought not be used at all.
Couldn't the same joke here about "selling out" have been made without resorting to the use of the F and S words?
This has been beaten to death in thousands of /. threads before. No one has ever heard of an iPod dying for this reason... it is just due to your general sense of unease about hard drives and head crashes. However, it doesnt happen with the iPod, and no, the iPod doesnt skip on active use either. Anyway, I digress...
I have no problem having Windows iTunes manage my 64 GB collection over the network. Of course, I have a dedicated Win 2k3 server and gigabit ethernet. Whatever. SMB on NT is great for filesystem access (fuck Apple's Rendezvous, it sucks... use SMB).
The only gripe I have with iTunes (and this holds for Winamp 5 as well) is that files without ID3 tags are "lost" in the library, as a rule. Dont know how that would be solved, though. For instance, my .aiff's and .wav's cannot be ID3 tagged.
"Well, shit."
Actually, a new product like this will be released soon.
See the picture and specifications.
Key points:
* 4" by 6" by 1"
* runs XP (a real computer)
* 30 GB hard drive
* only 5.6" screen, but 1024 by 600 pixels
* integrated wireless
* USB 2.0 port
* docking station for optical drives, more ports, wired ethernet
* integrated 1.3 MP camera
Price is rumored to be about $1500.
Full disclosure: I don't have any affiliation with the company other than a friend who might work there.
Seems like a great option for a second computer in adition to a normal desktop. What do you other slashdotters think?
How to legally obtain music for your iPod.
Step Five: Sell all those CDs you just bought to another used CD shop.
See, the whole idea of making a backup is that only one copy will be in use at a time. As soon as you sell that CD, someone else could listen to at the same time as you, which now makes your copy illegal (since you no longer own the original).
Nice try though.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
I've used an iPod mini a fair bit, and from the first moment I picked it up, I knew it was a superior design.
Now, my purpose in owning an iPod is not to carry around a handy collection of music; it's to carry around all the music I might want to hear at any time, so I got a regular iPod (10GB, US$209 at Target) and I've loaded it (so far) to nearly twice the capacity of a mini.
I deeply wish my iPod had the mini's click wheel instead of the touch buttons, because the tactile feedback on the mini is worlds better -- try pausing or skipping just by feel when you're driving, and you'll really appreciate the click wheel. I don't like having to hover my finger over a button in order to touch it at the right moment -- I prefer to be able to lightly rest on the button and click it when needed. (Yes, I'm a touch typist.) I hope Apple incorporates a larger click wheel into the 4G standard-size iPods. I'll be first in line for one of those.
Wouldn't mind if they used the brushed-aluminum finish on all the iPods, since it has better grip and isn't hyper-fingerprinty like the plastic/polished-steel case. But hey, the click wheel's the most important improvement, and the 3G iPod does look undeniably cool if you keep it reasonably clean in some sort of case or bag (mine's in a dice bag, works great), so...whatever. Just give me a click wheel and a good-sized hard drive, and I'll be happy.
You can format the 4GB drive using Fat16, BUT you need to increase the cluster size (I think doubling to 64k). You can use this trick to format one of these cards for use in the (many) devices that only understand Fat16.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Neuros Has more capacity than an Ipod mini, cheaper, plays OggVorbis, MP3, can record from the internal FM radio and even go out on the net and figure out which song it recorded. You can transmit your music over FM to a radio, the HD is removable and upgradable, the software is open source, it has a built in Mic that can record at full cd quality (helpful for sneaking into concerts) The iPod doesn't look that hot any more. You can also get a 99$ version that has a 128mb flash module which can be upgraded to the 20gb version for $129.
I did a document search for "altitude" to find the environmental specs, they are better than I thought:
-300 to 12,192 m -- Altitude
5C/Minutes -- Maximum temperature gradient
40C, non condensing -- Maximum wet bulb temperature
5-95%, non condensing -- Relative humidity
-40 to 70C -- (See note)Temperature Nonoperating conditions -300 to 12,192m -- Altitude
So the altitude is not a problem like I had thought (40k feet!). Only the temperature range and temperature gradient (and perhaps humidity for someplace like a rainforest) might be of concern still.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
We are all so conditioned to be cynical of any advertising or media, sometimes it's hard to tell if a device is popular because of itself or a push. But then devices that are popular over a long time (as the iPod has been) usually have something of substance to drive continuing popularity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As you say the Beatles are holdouts for new technology...
But I am pretty convinced that the first online sales of Beatles music will be the launch of an official Microsoft Music Store (around the end of the year I think, possibly hastened by the popularity of the ipod mini). They will pay the $1billion an album or whatever it takes to be "the first".
About a year after that the Beatles will arrive at ITMS.
The funny thing is that I'm not sure the Beatles would be a giant driver for sales online, as most people that care would already have the CD's (and thus ripped them already). A few exclusive tracks (are there any left? Probably a few) might fare well, but not be a convincing argument to drive people to one store over another for the long term.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Slashdot says OGG and you follow.
But seriously, after the neato factor is over, you really should keep your music in a format that is most useful to you.
Despite using Macs almost to the exclusion of all others, I use mp3, because it's the standard. You can play them anywhere.
Even the mini. I've listened to them.
4dB? Not that I can tell.
There is no detectable difference between the two that I can tell.
Also note that audio components in neither the iPod nor the Nitrus were designed by PortalPlayer. The iPod uses a Wolfson sound chip and the Nitrus likely does also. But beyond that, the circuitry around the Wolfson chip matters. For example, the Samsung Napster uses a Woflson chip too, but uses it poorly and has distortion problems.
They both sound great, but I like the iPod better. I furthermore would have to say that I think any objective person would have to say that it is difficult to make a case that either of these is markedly inferior to the other in performance.
I think he's talking about what works in the camera. Do your 32k or 64k FAT16 thing and put it in a real-world camera that is known not to be FAT32-capable. Anyway, there's plenty of stuff that falls over when it sees a FAT16 cluster size above 32k. Try older scandisks, for example.
I bet you get all the ladies.
Wow, when I saw the headline of the post (Apple: iPod Mini Sells Out), I had flashbacks of Bill Gates giving Steve Jobs a hot cash injection.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
At least in the Sigma SD9/SD10, I know you can in fact format a 4GB card using Fat16 with 64k clusters and the camera can read it. In real life, on a real camera - and I think many other devices that know Fat16. I had also talked to a technical person at Foveon at PMA that said the only reason they did not add support for formatting larger cards using this technique into the camera firmware was that the Mac would not be able to read them (OS X at the moment cannot read the 64k cluster formatted disks, supposedly - looking into working around that).
Here, read this and this.
If I did not have a number of CF cards already and a portable storage device I'd probably get one myself. I'll bet this is > 50% of the MuVo player sales.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The main thing is that the iPod has got style. Its hip. Its cool. Like the original iMac. People love it for that. When Apple has 70% of the revenues in the HD based player market, then they are doing something extremely right. They do not have to compete on price, and that is a good thing. They can spend more to make it cooler, and people will buy it even more. Once in a while, people break the bank to get something they really want, and in this case, the iPod is one of those things.
If it dont have an RFC, it dont exist!
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Yes. You like the Neuros. Good for you. Go buy one. They haven't sold out yet.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I have a Karma, so WTF would I need with a player that has 1/5th the space.
I stated that if you MUST get a miniature player then I'd go with the Nitrus 2 before the mini-iPod. Hell, I'd go with the Nitrus 2 just to avoid being another lamea55 dip5hit carrying a lilly white toaster around with me.
However, I wouldn't BUY a mini player ot begin with anyway. I just don't see the sense in it. If I want all my music I want all my music, and I'll tow a big player with me. If I want just some of my music to work out I'll get a solid state player with no drive to be shocked and damaged when I drop it while running stairs.
Go to the trouble of actually READING my post before you post a reply so obviously in error, I don't enjoy making you look stupid.
-rt
Maybe if I was some trendy yuppie with a high paying job who has his car changed every 6 months just so he can get the new numberplate, I would consider buying an iPod, but for those of us in this country who are not earning 6 figures or winning the lottery, value for money is a far higher priority than how "cool" it is. You can get a Creative Labs player with 5Gb more storage for GBP69.00 less than the iPod.
(On a completely unrelated note, why doesn't Slashdot reproduce the "pound" symbol, even when I use an HTML entity for it?)
I can tell you must have spend a great deal of time studying the specifications of both products. However, let me see if I can find some information you may have missed.
1. Gapless playback
- Nitrus has it, iPod doesn't
- What is it? The ability to play ALBUMS without a pause, like a Floyd album with no break between songs the way it was intended to be heard.
2. 5 Band Parametric Equalizer
- Nitrus has it, iPod doesn't
- What is it? The ability to actually fully manipulate and manage the player's audio signal beyond stupid cheapo options like "Jazz" and "Hall"
3. Longer Battery Life
- 16 hours battery life (continuous playback)
- the iPod, ALL iPods (at least the ones that don't die) have 8 hours.
4. Weight
- The Nitrus comes in at 2.75oz vs. the iPod mini's 3.6oz.
- True, there both still pretty light, but note that the difference is about 25% of the weight.
5. SD or MMC Expansion Slot
- I've seen no mention of support for memory on the iPod mini.
6. Open Source Codec Support
- Ogg, Flac, etc. on the Nitrus
- iPod: closed codecs ONLY.
- Welcome to Slashdot, home of the OS movement!
-rt
I think the only zealot here is the Rio fan.
Here's some troll chow:
I haven't used a Mac since 1998. Split between various flavors of of Windows and Linux
Both my laptop and desktop have FireWire. Neither were top of the line.
Ogg matters not, since almost nothing supports it.
AAC vs. WMA matters only because one of these two formats will ultimately win the online sales war. At least in the near term.
Speaking of sales war, you choose to mention Mac's 4% market share, but you hold market share of the iPod and iTMS in disdain. Nice consistency to your logic.
Yeah, I read the specs. 4GB player. One is $249, one will be $209. One plays AAC, the other plays WMA and some weird bullshit format that almost nobody knows about.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Butt-ugly, web site is confusing to navigate, cites dimensions and weight that go far beyond the iPod, hard drive seems to be 2.5 inches which makes the whole thing clunky. Button arrangement is needlessly complicated; software said not to work on any Unix on the web site (the iPod works flawlessly even on various free Unixes out there). Doesn't play official successor to MP3, AAC.
The one interesting positive point is that it plays Ogg Vorbis, but I only see such files every few months...
Apple's biggest problem is that their products sell out. While amateurs (including all of Apple's inventory managers since at latest the 1980s) might think selling out is the highest achievement, no stock means no sales. And unless you think Apple has projected exactly one unit for each customer with demand in their market, that means unsatisfied demand. If that weren't bad enough, in missed profits on a single release, that kind of poor planning leaves giant bubbles in the supply chain. What corporate IT buyer wants to face their boss when 300 new people are hired, but Apple runs out of Macs after 25? And 250 people have no computers on their desks? Unless they buy a commodity PC, of course running Windows (or perhaps Linux, etc). While Dell, Gateway, and Mom & Pop Chopshop don't perfectly project demand either, at least the option of choosing a different source from among mostly compatible PCs keeps the pipeline full. Until Apple gets Supply Chain Management for its products under control, it will be a hobbyist computer. And if it hasn't happened by now, even during the tenure of (ex- National Semiconductor chief) Gilbert Amelio, it never will. Of all the reasons for Apple eventually perish, SCM failure is the most pernicious, and the most inevitable.
--
make install -not war
...and the sad part is, if they had priced it wrong, everyone here would be complaining about how overpriced Apple products are. If they had misjudged the market and sold only to a small niche, people here would be complainig about how elitist Apple are...
Instead, we get to hear about how clueless Apple customers are for knowing what they like, and liking based on 'feel' instead of numbers... *sigh*
These are completely different products!
... Why are you even bothering to compare the two products? Even the normal iPod is only 6.1 cubic inches!
Size:
Neuros: Go anywhere size: 5.3" x 3.1" x 1.3", 9.4 oz.
iPodMini: 3.6 by 2.0 by 0.5 inches
So 21.4 cubic inches vs 3.6 cubic inches
Weight:
N: 9.4oz.
i: 3.6 ounces
Just over 1/3rd the weight. One of these is portable. The other one should be remade into a car stereo format and a home stereo component format.
Data Transmission:
N: Full speed USB 1.1
i: Firewire or USB2
Enjoy waiting 30x longer per MB to fill up the Neuros
Battery life is similar (10hrs vs 8 hrs), charge time is horrible on Neuros (8 hours, vs 3hours for iPod).
Looks: Neuros is butt ugly, a Vogon or a geek must have designed it.
I'd happily pay for an iPod mini if I could spare the money, but I wouldn't touch the Neuros. The orange screen looks kinda cool though.
Butt-ugly,
Wow, two separate independent comments used the phrase "butt ugly" in different contexts to describe two different facets of Neuros' device and web site. Methinks this is rather telling of their [Neruros'] priorities and style.
This is not good.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Apple seems to have correctly identified the price point and the market they were going after
Perhaps, but this is Apple we are talking about. The popuplarity of the mini ipod is probably better explained by hype and fad. Actually I think they could have priced these things a little higher and still sell them out.
iPods are part useful music playing device, and part jewelry. Why would someone give up 80% of the capacity to save only 15%? The hype, and most importantly the "cute" factor is driving sales on this unit.
Apple should have priced these at $275 and stuck at that price. Better yet, strike up a deal with the NCAA, NFL, MLB, and NBA to put team logos and colors on the mini iPods for an extra $25 and they'd have to back a dumptruck up carry the money away.
I take exception to both your posts because it's pretty clear neither of you know what you're talking about. You're both mixing up the Nitrus and Karma for a start. The Rio Karma uses a PortalPlayer CPU, but that's as far as PortalPlayer's contribution goes because none of their software is used, and they had no part in hardware design. There is absolutely nothing shared in the design of the Karma and the iPod except the CPU existing on a board.
There is even less (none in fact) design shared between them and the Rio Nitrus because it uses a Sigmatel 3410 CPU. It's far less capable than you're making it out to be mostly because the CPU is far less powerful. But using the 3410 is why it's at 16 hours of battery and not 8.
As for time scale, out of the iPod, Nitrus, Karma and Mini: the iPod was first, then the Rio Nitrus, Karma, and finally (much later) the iPod Mini. The iPod Mini isn't first or original by any stretch of the imagination, though Apple would have you think otherwise. See the keynote speech where Jobs somehow ignores the existence of many 1.5GB MP3 players and compares the iPod Mini to a $250 (hard to find them that expensive) Rio 256MB flash player. He'd earlier announced in that keynote how they'd just invented midi synthesis, sequencing, and moving through photo collections quickly, so I guess that strategy nothing new to them.
But you know what anodization is, right? It's oxidation! Rust! The iPod Minis are coming from the factory rusted! For $250? No thanks!
Look at this from the perspective of someone with a music collection small enough to fit comfortably in 4 GB, or who doesn't feel the need to carry their entire collection with them: Why pay 20% more and carry around something 66% larger, just to get a greater capacity for which you have no use? For such a person, the value of the extra 11 GB is close to zero, and thus easily outweighed by the $50 price difference and space/weight savings.
exploitation of a tech-illiterate market.
Right. Apple has totally hidden from customers the fact that they make a 15 gig iPod that sells for $300. I mean, it's not like it's in their stores or anything. And you have to be a genius to figure out that 4 gigs is less than 15 gigs , so nobody without a masters in CS can figure that out.
Some people value size and style over amount of memory, and they've chosen to buy one. Apple didn't make them buy it.
I have blog like everyone else
I'm not one to gloat, but I would like to say that I totally called this one. In spite of /.'s vast collection of brilliant loose cannons, Apple seems to know what they're fu(C)king doing after all. Who'd a thunk it!!
jaz.
P.S., apparently I am indeed one to gloat. Damn!
Just wanted to say that the iPod Mini's hard drive is the same compact flash situation as Creative's MuVo2.
As was documented by Christopher Breen of Macworld, the iPod Mini's hard drive is "encased in compact flash form". Some cameras support using this 4GB compact flash card, but not Mr. Breen's. He does note that it works in his USB Media Reader attached to a PowerBook G4, shows up on the desktop as a 3.6GB volume.
FYI! In case people haven't noticed and decides to buy the muvo for the Hitachi Microdrive. Let me warn you ahead of time, after Creative found people used it for digital cameras, they revised the design and soldered the drive onto the player, so it's considerably more difficult to extract. So far I seen any confirmation that people are able to use the drives from the new batch of muvo.
Half of the difference is because the dollar sucks right now. 1.83 USD = 1 GBP! IIRC, It's usually been closer to 1.60 USD.
And EVERYTHING is expensive in the UK. It's not just Apple. it's food, movies, lodging, etc.
(scratching head) What exactly is a top-of-the-line laptop these days anyway? I have to ask because all the laptops I've req'd for work and friends have purchased in the past 6 months have had firewire on the motherboard. The most expensive was $1500.
Seeing how top-of-the-line in dollar amounts comes out to around $3300 by my informal search, I don't think any of those laptops count. If $1500 is a top-of-the-line laptop in your world, may I suggest finding a new job? I know McJobs don't pay well, but you should've known that going in.
Couple this with the fact that Firewire consistently transfers data at a faster rate than USB 2.0 (USB 2.0 being massively CPU bound, one hiccup and the transfer rate drops), and this isn't just a piddling little feature.
As for Ogg - okay, great, so you save your music in Ogg. Glad to meet you. I'm sure you'll find some friends at Slashdot. Too bad none of the people you'll come in contact with on any given day will even know what Ogg Vorbis is, much less have stored their music in that format. Given this, a company investing millions in order to have their hardware play that format is a dubious business plan at best. Very reminicent of a DotBomb business plan.
The point is that whatever sales Rio ends up with is more likely to be from geeks gutting it for the memory card than because it plays Ogg. And, hey, who knows, there might be a few wacky people running around with one who don't even stick a single Ogg or WMA on there - MP3 is here to stay, it's about time that you remove your head from your rectum and get used to the fact.
I suspect Slashdot curmudgeons are still reeling from the DotBomb.
Sales? What's that?
My ass it is.
It's Apple's best selling MP3 player.
You'll notice Apple only sells one kind of MP3 player.
Dumbass.
Bowie J. Poag
This is a common misconception that is blatantly false. By buying used CDs, you're decreasing supply of the product. The end result of this is that another new CD is going to be sold somewhere down the line, thus allowing the RIAA to profit. And as others have pointed out, once you sell a CD, you no longer have the right to possess its contents.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I don't mean that sarcastically or anything, that sounds like a great trip and I hope it all works out for you.
One thing you might consider is a portable storage device if you are going to takea lot of picture (and I sure would!!).
Good to know it worked oK in Death Valley, I was there a year or two ago and that's one of the places I was more worried about taking a Microdrive into. In particular, I was really concerned about getting in and out of an AC car with a microdrive. Most of the time though we just left the windows of the car open with a bit of Ac blowing on us for comfort.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The color ones are anodized. The silver one is probably coated with some clear finish to keep the aluminum from oxidizing (rusting).
Heh, that's funny. I had no idea someone else was going to call it that.
The color ones are anodized. The silver one is probably coated with some clear finish to keep the aluminum from oxidizing (rusting).
Bzzzt! Sorry, the silver one is anodized.
Does anyone know what is a reasonable price for a second hand cube? I would love to have one for a good price? The size and weight is what the ipodmini makes a success. When I have my ipod 40GB in my pocket I must wear a belt otherwise my pants are on my knees all the time...
That's great, almost the price of a full laptop with less than half the screen! AND it's got XP on it? Talk about pee-your-pants excitement, count me in!
And yes, I hope you notice the sarcasm here, because I'm laying it on pretty thick.
The Neuros is also somewhat immature. For example, if you pop up the menu while playing, the music will stop.
It's too bad, really, that they could not make a better product. They seem to embrace the open source community.
If you care about features a lot more than size, the neuros seems to be good player, but for most people, different players will work better.
If you need vorbis support, a Karma or iRiver will be better.
The iPod works with iTunes. No other player will, so no other player is pknoll-compatible.
for 50.00 more, i got a 15gb. i can hold three times the music. not too mention the peripherals like the iTrip antenna which i am not sure works on the mini(could be wrong about that).
it needs to be around 200.00 to make it significantly less than the 15gb model. and the regular iPod is really small anyway, so the size thing is definitely not enough to make it worth giving up 11gb of storage just to have a tinier one.
my $.02
I'm a Mac fanatic. I like Linux. Obviously not as much as I like OSX, but if I had to I could live on Linux.
In fact, most of the Macheads I know would be interested in using Linux if OS X wasn't an option. Especially if the alternative was Windoze.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi