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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."
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Perhaps you should skip the battery and get your sense of humor replaced. It seems to be faulty.
Little mixed up at your "I will never understand how people can be talked into spending enormous sums on an inferior product". I see from your web link that "Rio is also pricing the new Nitrus very aggressively. It will retail for $249.00 and will ship this month." Isn't that the same price as the mini?
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."
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
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 $180 "iPod micro". Not dive in to the most competitive part of the market with a price that seems designed to cannibalise their own sales.
Well, if you have the White Album on CD, you can still use iTunes to rip it into MP3 and sync it with your iPod.
That's legal and with a fast CPU/drive probably takes less time than typing in a credit card number.
After all, iTunes started out with "Rip, Mix, Burn." The Store is just a new thing that builds on the old.
I was hoping the mini was going to bomb and maybe the price would come down but if I was Steve I wouldn't bring the preice down till they stopped selling. I used to think M$ 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
The story goes that the iPod drive is configured to only work in IDE mode, whereas digital cameras need the memory mode.
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!
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
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.
New HD-based players have now seen the gold standard of the iPod and copying that.
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?
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
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.
You can also take apart the iPod mini for its hard drive.
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."
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.
They don't have identical audio quality. The SNR of the Nitrus is -4db higher than the mini iPod.
...
Weird. I believe you, but I'm sure you understand why I voiced my (apparently) uninformed opinion: Both devices have their audio components designed by portal player. My understanding was that they were practically identical in this regard.
Aesthetic appearance is a personal call.
Right, but it's still very important. It's wrong to denigrate iPod buyers for using it as a major part of their purchasing decision.
The iPod UI is, IMPO, overrated. Not only does it lack the ability...
You might not like its feature set, but... what about it's UI? (And your comment suggests you might not know about the iPod's on-the-go playlist feature.)
Argument already invalidated. The nitrus 1.5gb is $164 at computers4sure
Touche. But you have to buy it from some weird web company with a number in their name. You're still right.
Nothing. If I remember correctly your the dude who posted this flamebait. My initial post was just a comment on where all the Slashdot people are...
Um, what? Your post was self congratulatory horseshit.
the mini iPod is just a rip-off of the Rio Nitrus, and slashdotters are all hanging out on the Rio Karma and Nitrus boards laughing at the herd of iPod "individuals" buying minis with sub-par audio quality.
I will never understand how people can be talked into spending enormous sums on an inferior product through a snazzy marketing campaign. The species is doomed.
Why not accept that iPod purchasers have different desires than you? They don't want a product that appeals to your manly aesthetics. They want a product that is guaranteed to be easy to use, easy to purchase, and has already made a million people very happy. Leave them alone. Iduno, maybe you were joking, but you sounded like an asshole.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
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$209 at Target) and I've loaded it (so far) to nearly twice the capacity of a mini.
I deeply wish my iPod had the mini's click wheel instead of the touch buttons, because the tactile feedback on the mini is worlds better -- try pausing or skipping just by feel when you're driving, and you'll really appreciate the click wheel. I don't like having to hover my finger over a button in order to touch it at the right moment -- I prefer to be able to lightly rest on the button and click it when needed. (Yes, I'm a touch typist.) I hope Apple incorporates a larger click wheel into the 4G standard-size iPods. I'll be first in line for one of those.
Wouldn't mind if they used the brushed-aluminum finish on all the iPods, since it has better grip and isn't hyper-fingerprinty like the plastic/polished-steel case. But hey, the click wheel's the most important improvement, and the 3G iPod does look undeniably cool if you keep it reasonably clean in some sort of case or bag (mine's in a dice bag, works great), so...whatever. Just give me a click wheel and a good-sized hard drive, and I'll be happy.
Neuros Has more capacity than an Ipod mini, cheaper, plays OggVorbis, MP3, can record from the internal FM radio and even go out on the net and figure out which song it recorded. You can transmit your music over FM to a radio, the HD is removable and upgradable, the software is open source, it has a built in Mic that can record at full cd quality (helpful for sneaking into concerts) The iPod doesn't look that hot any more. You can also get a 99$ 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
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
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
If it dont have an RFC, it dont exist!
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
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?)
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 is still cautious about over-production because it still doesn't have the confidence of the public yet vis-a-vis survival. They produce too much, and flagging sales give rise to "Apple is dying" rumors. Produce too little (e.g. "sell through") and they get criticisms like yours. There is no middle ground. Apple gets no "slack." Every misstep is trumpeted as their last. It's still better to sell out than to have an over-hyped "flop" on its hands.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Gil Amelio couldn't market pussy in a prison. He doesn't know anything about the computer business to this day and, despite taking several measures that improved Apple's fiscal health (and I wouldn't ignore Fred Andersen's role in all that), he led the company into a death-spiral with a cluelessness that was maddening. Consumers weren't being given a reason to buy Macs. The machines then were utter crap (Performa series, anyone?) There were too many of them and they weren't innovative. Loyal customers and smart people within the company like Andersen were what got the company through that period. (Oh, and Amelio did buy NeXt and bring back the True Believers. Thanks, Gil).
Fortunately, Steve Jobs wrestled the wheel away from him and resumed level flight. Survival of the company is no longer an issue. Recent articles have intimated that the growth phase of the company's resuscitation has begun. And the timing is excellent; Microsoft is dead in the water, period. I'm a consultant for home and small business users; XP is the company's most exploitable system to-date (but it's still not ME, thank God). Next Generation/"Trusted" Computing is a non-starter. Apple is beginning to get mindshare in a lot of quarters solely on the basis of the "no virus/malware/spyware" issue. The "Slashdot Constituency" isn't deriding Apple about performance, stability, lack of software (except games, d00d) or "modern" operating system issues any more--as was the case during Amelio's tenure--and, frankly, Steve Jobs now has a product he can be proud to offer to business.
The point for Apple now is not to bite off more than it can chew. That's why you don't see the competitive ads challenging Microsoft on a heads-up basis--it's not time yet. A premature ramp-up in anticipation of the kind of demand you think they should have could be disastrous. And if Virginia Tech can get 1100 G5's on-demand, I wouldn't worry about three-hundred new hires at Podunk Insurance; Apple will take care of them.
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