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."
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.
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.
On the other hand, the Creative product got ZERO coverage at Slashdot or any other trendy tech site, and still sold as well as the super-hyped iPod. Congratulations Creative, on creating yet another insanely successful product, even without the endless coverage on Slashdot and drama-queen flair of the Apple marketing machine.
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."
From a geek "my pod's bigger than your pod", point of view, this might make some sense.. From a consumer "I want something to listen to while I'm jogging" point of view, 4GB is how many hours of ogg audio?? Chances are that you're gonna have to change your batteries long before you have to change your playlist.
15GB is so that I can backup my home partition with a decade's worth of email... Not many people are going to care to do that.
The fact that I've got enough storage for a day's worth of music and a knoppix image for $50.00 less than a full sized ipod sounds just peachy to me.
The smaller package is just a bonus.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
The story goes that the iPod drive is configured to only work in IDE mode, whereas digital cameras need the memory mode.
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.
I dunno, Apple may be forced to drop the price in a bit. What percentage of those buyers already own an iPod? Is Apple really increasing its marketshare or is it just selling a device to its most diehard fans?
Selling out on launch isn't impressive, the dreamcast did that, continuing to make sales after you sold to your hardcore fanbase is what matters. In 2 months if the miPod is still selling at a brisk pace, then we can say that Apple was right about the price point.
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.
Umm, you're saying $250 is WAY too expensive when the only real competitor is the MuVo, which is *only* $50 cheaper. As for saying if they were smart they'd have gotten a 15gig...I have a 15gig iPod, and after playing with the minis, I'd trade down to a 4gig mini...I don't need 15gigs of music on me at any given time (in fact, I can't listen to more than 4 gigs in a day...). And if I don't need 15gigs of music, I KNOW my wife doesn't.
Plus, iTunes smart playlists makes it a breeze to make sure I always have my favorite music, some variety I haven't heard in a while, and any songs I've listened to a lot lately (figuring if I've listened a lot lately I'm in the mood for it) and keeps those synced to my iPod so I don't have to worry... I just plug it in to my computer, and let iTunes handle the rest.
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!
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?
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
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?
if you really don't want those features then don't buy from apple. apple does not strip its laptops down just for size. apple seems proud that they only sell full featured notebooks.
apple laptops are used for interacting with stuff. DV camera, movies, ipod, screen projector, etc. if all you do with your laptop is surf the web and email then sure, you don't need those other things. apple laptops are made for doing more than just web and email.
I actually have one of these ridiculously overpriced pieces of pop-garbage. Here are my thoughts about it.
I consider myself a power user of gear. I'm an older geek with some disposable income, but I hate wasting money. I usually take weeks to shop for and decide on a new toy. I have an older flash player and before buying the mini, I purchased and returned many other players currently on the market. I found that they were all either poorly constructed, or suffered from poor interfaces.
For example, the battery cover on the Rio Chiba falls off at the slightest touch. You have to snap the player into the belt clip if you want to keep your battery cover.
The Nitrus seems nice until you start using it. The volume buttons are mushy and don't always work. The only button on this player that works and feels nice is the "Riostick." But even that doesn't hold a candle to the clickwheel on the mini.
I have also used some of the RCA players, but Music Match is a horrible, crashy piece of software and getting files onto the player is unnecessarily difficult. My old flash player uses Music Match, and I found that as a result, the player tended to collect dust. I only went through the hassle when I really needed to. Usually only for long flights.
I did like the Rio Cali, even though the battery cover on this is a bit wonky too. But the player is $179. After adding an $80 256 meg SD card, I would be at $259. Why not buy better design and 4 gig for the same price? The marketing guys at Apple knew what they were doing. Though, if I were in the market for a solid state player, I would probably pick up the Cali or one of the iRiver players.
So, after trying many players, I decided to look at the iPod. When I first picked one up, I instantly knew that I had just moved into a new world. These things (minis and full-size iPods alike) are industrial design masterpieces. They feel good in your hand, they are solidly built, the backlight and display are beautiful, the wheel control is BRILLIANT, the GUI is transparent and iTunes is a simple pleasure to use. With the aluminum case, I feel like I could stand on this thing and not hurt it. The On-The-Go playlist deserves mention too.
The whole iPod experience is unobtrusive and pleasant. The mini fits seamlessly into your life. I have several gadgets that I carry with me. I wish they were integrated into one well-designed device. Until that happens, I need my pocket gear to be SMALL so that I can actually take it with me and use it. I can't even feel the mini in my front pocket.
I thought about getting a full-sized iPod, but I'm glad I didn't. The trade-off for size is worth it. I think the "for only $50 more" argument is silly. How many damn songs can you listen to on one charge? The mini holds 3 days worth of music! Your battery will drain after about 9 hours. With your firewire or USB 2 cable, you can quickly swap out music while you charge. iTunes is so easy to use, that the swappage is no hassle at all. And I have not found an easier way to rip CDs and organize files than iTunes.
For the record, I don't fit the "Mac Trendoid" stereotype (although I don't know many Mac users who do.) I have a beer gut, poor social skills, and I'm balding. I pretty damn practical and far from stylish. My wardrobe consists of jeans, t-shirts and sneakers and I only replace them once a year, if my wife is lucky. I'm probably one of the Curmudgeons mentioned above. But I do enjoy the finer things in life, and well designed electronics is one of the finer things.
This is also the first Apple pro
Because in the old days, people made 10 or 20 accounts each; and don't forget about the bots that automatically registered x number of users to get some meaningful uid#, or just to do it for the sake of doing it.
There certianly haven't been 726,856 people that have registered.
I'd say that 90% of the posting activity is done by 15% of the accounts at any given time
Absolutely, 4gb is not excessive, but definately enough to serve the most important purposes of the iPod - disc space and portability. Now, if it were a mobile phone too it would sell even _MORE_.
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."
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...
Right... because looking just a little to the right on apple.com to see the bigger iPod for $50 bucks more is beyond most "foolish" consumers... I think someone else's post hit the nail on the head here perfectly: That to us geeks "oh! you get more space for only 50 bucks!" it makes sense, but to the consumer, they see they can put like 2 solid days of music on it, and its smaller, and comes in colors! My father owns one (bought a mini the first day it came out), and he understands the concept of a gigabyte, and he also understood the concept of "50 dollars cheaper, and still holds more music than he needs it to, and is incredibly small" And the best part? It Syncs with iTunes, so songs purchased off of their go straight to the iPod, instead of having to burn to CD then re-ripping (As I have to do, I have one of these, its great for my car, but it doesn't hold as much)
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.
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
I completely understand your point of view, and even meta modded your insightul as fair. But I disagree with you.
The way I see it, the original ipods are MORE than small enough. If it fits in my pocket, it's small enough for me. And the way I see it 4gb is crap. Keep in mind, though, that my music collection spans 23 gigs, and I wouldn't settle for anything LESS than a 40gb ipod.
That said, I understand that there are plenty of people who would never harbor such a massive music collection. And to that end, I can understand the mini's popularity.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
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?)
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
with 512 MB SD cards currently around $140, you can get much of the functionality on smart phones. Some even have passable external speakers. Mines an mp3 player 7th instead of 1st, but it fills the gadget slot nicely for me.
+&x