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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."
For the inevitable ridiculous battery questions:
iPod Battery FAQ
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.
The muvo uses a 4GB hard disk, which is far cheaper than 4GB CF. It retails for around $350-400. OEM prices are rumored to be *much* lower.
Don't Panic
It's actually a 4meg Microdrive that's CF compatable... not actual CF.
CharlesP
wordtrip.com
With whatever manufacturing capability they have, they can only be built so fast. Demand currently outstrips supply.
Simple, its a CF type II compatible card but it doesn't use flash. Its actually a 4GB hard drive. You have been able to get the 1GB model (IBM Microdrive) for years. The 4GB model (now made by Hitachi) is fairly new and costs ~$400 retail. Apple and Creative are getting deep discounts due to volume.
You might have priced a solid state CF card. Those are much much more desireable than the MUVO2's minidrive based CF card. Those minidrive CF cards still cost around $400, afaik.
Hitachi is scalping people for the $400 because they're only competing with the $1130 solid state cards. It apparently didn't occur to them that they were underselling themselves via the MUVO2.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
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.
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.
Um, the MuVo is a 4G compact flash hard drive, not flash card.
wrong, a 2gb compact flash card is down to $155 shipped, so 4gb is worth $300 not $1100. I'm actually suprised that apple has decent prices for the first time since the original iMac.
Repeal the DMCA!
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.
and the fact that they are sending for free to random VW beetle owners to further the hype.
I know of 2 people that recieved them unsolicited in the mail, and no none of them own a aplle anything.. the only thing that is common is they both own a VW beetle.
I have also heard of at least 5 other reports of this happening.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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
$249 will be the MSRP but the street price will be less. The Rio Karma's MSRP is $300 but you can find it for $240 or so.
(Nowadays) CompactFlash is an interface standard, it doesn't entail solid state memory or anything, even though the Google directory positioning might suggest otherwise. There are CompactFlash devices that don't "store" anything at all, like modems or NIC.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
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.
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.
While for me [still a geek of course], I was happy getting the 1.5G iRiver igp-100 for $159 at Best Buy. It's small enough to work out with, and holds plenty of music for me. Plus it's enough to hold 2 iso's worth of data if I need.
Of course, the other advantages that got me to buy it were the ogg support, and the fact that it requires NO software at all. Just plug it into a windows or linux [and presumably mac] box, and drag and drop your music.
And the battery lasts long enough that I can play it all day while I'm at work.
It [mini-ipod] just wasn't worth the extra $100 to me for a player that won't play the oggs, and requires annoying software setup to work. The extra space would have been nice, but not terribly necessary.
Just my take on things.
Ender-
Nothing to see here
Zero. The iPod dosn't support ogg.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Yeah, but it is the rest of the readers that moderate them up. The active posters are actually less like to get moderation points than casual readers - says so in the moderation rules. For example I have excellent karma, meta moderate daily, and it has been over two years since I have gotten moderation points.
:)
That is what surprises me most when I see completely wrong posts moderated up to +5. I can understand someone saying a stupid thing, and I can even understand some people being fooled by it, but when all the moderators are fooled all the time it makes me worry about humanity
do you have one documented iPod death due to jogging?. Yeah, I haven't heard of one either.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
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.
No.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
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
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
You can also take apart the iPod mini for its hard drive.
"Bullshit! Provide the link to a 2G CF card for $155...."
c ription=20-160-136&depa=0
Some products have insanely high profit margins if you don't know where to shop around. For example your local WorstBuy routinely charges twice as much for generic ram as what it would cost to get better ram from a reputable website.
~$160 for a 2.2gb CF drive
http://www.memorylabs.net/comflasmem.html
http://store.yahoo.com/digi4me/tr2coflcacac.html
http://www.pcsupplysource.com/
Although if you want it shipped from a very well-known and reputable website, it's $179 from Newegg.com, shipped fedex express saver.
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?des
Repeal the DMCA!
How does this make them any better than a "power hungry" monopoly like Microsoft? ....basically all I'm saying is that Apple is as money-hungry Microsoft and I don't think they have any more scruples than MS does in getting paid. To think otherwise is foolish...
All publicly-traded corporations are legally required to be money-hungry, and Apple is certainly no exception. However, one of the things that makes them better than Microsoft is that Apple is not a monopoly and does not abuse its position the way Microsoft always has. How many times has Microsoft been found guilty of breaking the law? How does that compare to Apple?
Besides that, Apple makes better quality products.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
WAV is a subset of RIFF, which (being another IFF derivative) shares a lot more in common with AIFF than people realize, and so it might be able to do metadata also, but I don't think any tools actually support it, and most stuff working with .wavs that I've seen just seem to assume that you only have a single WAVE chunk in the file so they'd probably break horribly if you gave it anything more complex anyway.
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
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
Wave files support all kinds of metadata. In the wave editor I like to use you can have information for: Title, subject, engineer, copyright, genere, artist, keywords, orignator software, creation date, orignal medium and comments. This is just in the standard information pane. There is also a broadcast audio extension pane for more information. Putting information in the standard pane and saving it does not seem to cause playback problems with any other programs.
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
Nope, if you check the dates Apple had its battery replacement program and iPod warranty extension program in place BEFORE the Neistat video and website was opened. Apple had been planning the program for months before the Neistat brothers even called them. Not only that but for several months other companies had been offering battery replacement services for about $15 more than the battery.
The Neistat brothers were told of these things, they knew about them but they still went ahead and badmouthed Apple for not having these programs. One of their original web hosts even gave them free bandwidth in exchange for them posting both the video and information about Apple's battery alternatives. The Neistat brothers ignored the web host and they only posted their negative video without seeking to really help others who needed similar services.
Overall it is only a few people who have had battery problems in as short of a time as 18 months. Many people have had their iPods much longer and still have good battery life. Apple has been very up front in saying that the batteries have a life of about 500 complete discharge/recharge cycles, a standard for that type of battery.
Sapere aude!
I used the first release of iTunes for Windows, and found that it skipped and often crashed when I tried to play music from an SMB share. I had no problems at all with streaming from within iTunes though. Hopefully this has been fixed in later versions.
I think you are confusing what Rendezvous is, by the way. It's an implementation of the ZeroConf service discovery protocol, and a really slick one at that. I've used two Apps which make use of Rendezvous. The fist is iTunes. When I plug my PowerBook into any network, I can instantly see any music that's shared by others, and play it. You could do this using SMB browse requests, but it would be a hack. The second is iChat, which I recently used in a very dull meeting. I had set up an ad-hoc WiFi network for the meeting (three mouse clicks, by the way) to copy a presentation from someone else's laptop to mine and I thought I'd have a look at iChat. As soon as it was launched, it populated the contact list with other people in the room and let me chat to them. Again, you could do this with some combination of SMB broadcasts and NET SENDS, but it's not a good solution.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Your first counterpoint is FUD. The hard drive only needs to access data a few seconds every minute, and there are no reports of iPods failing due to jogging etc. I've seen teenagers using iPods and dancing more vigorously than a jogger ever does, and they said they've never had a problem. Your second point is crap too. Who cares if your iPod doesn't support high-end lossless formats? You're listening to your music on a portable device through tiny headphones. Do you really think you'll be able to tell a difference in that situation? As far as keeping a mirrored version for transferring, why don't you just get the 40GB and fill it up. You'll have enough music that you'll never need to transfer again, and can delete them from your main system. Finally, the assertion about iTunes is utter crap. I have 7000+ songs in my library, and I have no problems at all navigating, even over a network. I've had multiple systems playing from the same archive, and there were no problems. You must still be using Token Ring if you're having problems over a network!
I don't know about the lifespan of the HD being reduced by movement, but I can tell you that I've had my Ipod for 1.5 years and have never had a problem with the hard drive. I use it a lot in the gym (about 2 hrs a day) doing a lot of cardiovascular exercise and probably could be said to abuse the hell out of that thing. The hard drive doesn't spin much unless a song is being accessed and it seems to cache the next song or two. Mine han't broken yet and I haven't heard of one breaking due to head crashing, but it is a valid concern.
Try, Edit>Show browser. You can sort by artist, genre, or album. I think SoundJam MP could do something like that too. I just wish that Soundjam was still being developed. I liked how Multiprocessor aware it was. i could rip and convert wit one processor and use the other for full-screen visuals without any slowdown. Itunes visualizer is crap. Apple should license G-Force as their default visualizer, IMO.
Itunes plays AIFF. I actually load all my songs in aiff and then convert them for the iPod. I run the optical out from my computer to a Headphone amp/DAC and Sennheiser HD 600's. The Optical connect on the G5's is as good as any other I've seen and the headphone jack is as bad as any I've seen. Even playing uncompressed AIFFs through the factory jack sound like doo-doo. If you're interested in quality, 256kbps aac is basically identical to AIFF when played through the headphone jack on a mac. If you want lossless audio though, get a good Transport and DAC or go with a turntable, because even "good" soundcards usually have terrible output stages.
well given your link:
http://www.memorylabs.net/comflasmem.html
i take it you wre refering to this product:
http://www.memorylabs.net/macoflha.html
read down and look at the specs:
SpecificationModel 1024C/1022C
Configuration:
Capacity 2,400 MB/2,200 MB
Heads 2
Disk 1
Interface CF+ Type (ATA and PCMCIA
Compatible)
Sectors 512
Areal density 30 Gbits/
Media type Glass
Performance:
Rotational speed 4,200 RPM
Media transfer rate 52.4-99.6 Mbits/sec
Transfer rate 3.3-6.5 Mbytes/sec
Seek time (avg) 10 msec
Thats a solid state storage device huh?