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iPod Mini Worldwide Rollout Delayed
falcon5768 writes "Apparently those 4-gig, $249 little buggers are selling faster than anyone expected.... So fast that the original April rollout worldwide has been delayed till July to keep up with the demand in the states and to get enough in production to meet worldwide sales. Given that there where 100,000 pre-orders alone, does this mean that yet again Apple hit on a niche that no one else (including me) thought would sell. I have been hearing a lot of rumors that the biggest buyer of the iPod mini has in fact been those female tech geeks out there. So much for the idea a $249 4-gig iPod was a mistake." Rob Glaser of RealNetworks, though, claims that not opening the iPod (big or small) to other formats is a real mistake; he wants to see iPod support other proprietary formats (like, say, Real's).
Why buy an iPod when you can buy a PocketPC, equip it with as much memory as you want (it's cheap these days), and do infinitely more things with it beyond just listening to mp3's, such as watch movies or play games?
The fact of the matter is that Joe Sixpack will not give a crap what format his music is in, and will mock anybody who tries to explain why he should. As long as it works, that's it. iPods will continue to sell regardless of format because unlike we nerds, normal people only store music on their iPods and listen to it from there. They don't swap their shit around as we would like to. So the iPod Minis will continue to be a raging success.
I was an original Mac person. Way back with the Apple II, then the Mac, etc. Finally I switched to the PC for all the obvious reasons.
/. crowd is obsessed with specs and functionality but I think the iPod is a thing of beauty. What Apple did with the mini is add a color choice which instantly makes it legitimate to the eye of a woman. Most women I know are much more color sensitive than men. The small size helps too.
What got me to buy an iPod was the almost sensual way it felt, the intuitive way it operates and the "cool" factor which is worth a lot to me.
Of course, I wouldn't go near it until the PC interface came out and I still wish it supported more formats. I know most of the
I think secretly I like seeing the Apple logo on my desk full of functional PC crap.
M
I personally am somewhat happy that there's so much interest in them, but I have a fairly significant personal interest in having these things get shipped as quickly as possible. Here's hoping that Apple can churn the damn things out fast enough to meet demand.
Dont know if this has been mentioned, but I hear the bottleneck is the 4GB drives (rumored to be supplied by Hitachi), Apple says they've totally exhausted the supply sold to them. I hope Hitachi (or whoever it is making those drives) kicks up manufacturing a bit to meet demand.
To my family... They came out to visit, they had never seen an iPod before, and they have almost zero Apple products in the city where they are from (only 1 CompUSA is the only place that sells Apple products). They all use PCs. I took them to the Apple store, and they walked out with two iPod Minis. They would buy Apple computers if Apple would get some Retail presence in New Mexico - so that they could have a place to buy software and peripherals and such....
@ the apple store in palo alto, i counted five buyers for the miniPod in a space of about 15 minutes that i was there. 2 female, 3 male; all between 25-40 and judging by the questions they asked, not very computer savvy. i think the minipod is not being seen as a 'gadget' as all and is a high end consumable and convenient replacement for a music machine.
I am also offended that Apple thinks they can get away with giving us less for our money because it is "pretty".
Since 1999 Apple has operated on this principle. It's been working fairly well too. iMac...iBook...Cube...
Less for more.
The G3, G4, and G5 Towers have retained a good bang to buck ratio, but their "consumer" and "eye-candy" machines have become cash sinks.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's kind of sad to see a superior product (IMHO) like the Rio Karma get sidelined due to the iPod mini's momentum/marketing/teenybopper appeal.
It's like seeing your favorite band get no recognition while some guy named "Ludacris" goes platinum several times over.
I loved my iPod when I first got it, but then I got my hands on a Rio Karma. I wanted to believe that my money was well spent, but after playing with the Karma's equally-intuitive UI and seeing their Dev team actually active in their forums and implementing/listening to what their users suggested, I made the switch. Instead of pointless features for a digital audio player like "Breakout" or "Contacts" (I wanted a DAP, not a PDA), the Karma has audio-related features like gapless playback and being able to create/edit several playlists on-the-go. Plus, the sound quality is great, and not as flat as several reviewers have mentioned the iPod as being.
/me raises hand
I have no need for more than 4GB of music at any one time (I don't even have 4GB of music that I actually listen to really). The mini is $50 cheaper, fits nicely in a pocket and is made of nice scratch resistant aluminium rather than easily scuffed chrome. I saved money and saved pocket space - the 15GB, while cheaper per gig, would've been a waste since it would end up only holding about 4GB thus making it more expensive per used gigabyte not to mention less pocket friendly.
I don't think that's necessarily true. I got mine about 2 weeks ago, and I have to say I love it. I run a couple time a week and the mini is several orders of magnitude better than the iPod it replaced (an original 5GB model). If you're doing anything that requires you to move, the size makes a huge difference. At about one quarter to one third the size and weight of my old one, it is a massive improvement.
;-)
I'm sure someone will point out that it doesn't hold all 7GB of my music. Well, . . . , I don't care. It goes in the dock every other day to charge it anyway. Changing some playlists around every week or so doesn't really matter.
Oh, and I'd have to say that I am tech savvy, I am a computer engineer after all. Now I better switch desktops and finish inserting JTAG before my boss comes by again.
If it's not on fire, it's a software problem.
I can see why females who like music would go for the iPod mini, of course, though I don't know any that have one.
I went to the Apple store in a mall in New Jersey one day to pick up an extra docking station for my iPod and the line was out the door and snaking around the staircase. I went up to the guy at the entrance:
Me: "Is this the line to get in?"
Him: "Are you looking to buy an iPod mini?"
Me: "No, I need another station for my iPod."
Him: "This line's for the mini. Go right in."
I didn't even realize that it was the same day that the minis came out. [Had I been looking to buy one, I could've beat the crowd too!] I had stopped looking for mp3 players when I got mine as a gift from my wife. (Thx honey!)
I didn't see many females in the line, but maybe I wasn't really looking. I seemed to notice that they were mostly young (read: high school-aged) teens. I guess the minis are what's cool. Then again $50 is a big difference when you ain't got no job. I happen to think they are ugly, but that's just me.
My iPod gets the most looks of any player I've owned, at any rate. I'm not surprised.
Yeah, well I was one of the people ridiculing them for it. Then I played with one and now I have one. Yeah, it's less than 1/4 the capacity of the one for $50 more, but it's actually not in the way at the gym and fits in my pocket better. Well worth the money for the convenience.
Now if only they would come out with wireless sharing on it so I could browse other people's libraries at the gym, that would be sweet.
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Quack, quack.
I agree to what the parent post described. Although the Karma is not as elegant as the iPod it has a very good Dev team that actually responds to suggestions and firmware bugz. The only problem i faced when buying it was the price that in the UK where i live the cheapest i could find was 269 pounds, a price 1/3 above the US price ($270). Speaking for myself, i was looking for a versatile mp3-ogg player with enough capacity to cram my Heavy metal collection into and enough space for file storage. Before shelling out that kind of money (as beeing a degree student) i was lurking over the Archos 600 player, a player robust enough for travelling and bouncing about.As soon as i found out that it is more hackable than any other mp3 device out there (whack the HD out and exchange it with a bigger one, upload custom firmware to enhance the capabilities,etc) i decided i'm gonna give it a try as soon as i have the money to spend for it. http://rockbox.haxx.se
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
I don't recall claiming victory.
My point is that "the market" often ends up with inferior formats. MS Word's "doc" format compared to OO.o's "sxw," Macromedia's Flash against W3C's SVG+SMIL, "gif" vs. "png."
Mozilla vs. IE, Outlook vs. Evolution. Hell, Windows vs. Linux.
I was playing FPS mods long by the time counter-strike came out, "the market" was already missing other great mods like Gloom. "The market" isn't an omnipotent force that knows all the options and always picks the best. No, it's the well informed that get the best deal, it's "the market" that puts up with crap for the sake of "convenience."
Keep your industry-leading formats and software. That's all it has going for it is it leads an industry. My formats and software perform a hell of a lot better, I'll stick with them.
Yea nuts.
Use the 40gb iPod as an external hardrive. basically will fit in your pocket and also have more music then you can ahndle in a days time. good call.
Thankfully, my college days are behind me. More thankfully, they prepared me for a job that pays well enough for me to do stupid things like slap the Buy Now! button at store.apple.com whenever a new iPod appears.
The mini I bought because I was curious about the size/weight/capacity combination. Did Apple have another smash hit on its hands or had they come up with the puck-mouse of music players? Based on the article we're yammering about, a lot of people agree with my assessment of "the former".
It's amazing how light 3.6 ounces is compared to 5.6 ounces. I carried the mini around in a shirt pocket all day last week because I forgot it was there and the weight didn't catch my attention. It's also small enough to fit very nicely into my small hands (and you know what they say about guys with small hands, right? Yeah, we buy small gloves. Thank you! I'm here all week!) so I really like it.
I take the full-size iPod in the car with me pretty much everywhere I go. I take the mini on my person pretty much everywhere I go. They're a great team. I have a playlist of my highest-rated songs that gets randomly shuffled whenever I sync the mini (every week or two) so the smaller capacity is offset by the certainty of not wasting any bytes on Soft Cell's "Sex Dwarf".
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...
the wheel thing is very cool and functionality is a high point. i just dont think people get an iPod because they played with the alternatives and it worked the best.
The thing is that you can play with them and know that the work really well, without even having used a different model - they work well enough to convince you they would be usable in daily life. That's why I think that functionality may still be a primary reason for choosing them. It would be really interesting to see some kind of breakdown about how many people had had contact with one before buying them as that would go a long way to prove or disprove the theory. My theory comes about from hearing a lot of people relate stories about buying them after playing with one, and seeing people react to them at Apple stores (they show only casual interest as they pick them up, but get really into them when they start using it).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
OMG I'm becoming an apple freak. =)
Anyways, get the arm band, it's only $30(for the mini only) and works great for me at the gym. Take it off to lift weights as it'll cut off the blood flow, but for running and stuff, it works great.
A bit of advice though, don't play the Music Quiz game in public, people will look at ya funny for awhile.
i just dont think people get an iPod because they played with the alternatives and it worked the best.
What crack are you smoking and where can I get me some?
I got an iPod because scrolling through lists on dpads sucks ass. As soon as I walked into that apple store and touched that wheel I knew that navigating through my MP3 collection wouldn't suck. And then I paid for a 20GB iPod in cash, in full.
I was showing my iPod off to a girl a couple of months ago, touting the features and telling her about the smaller pink ones that were coming out soon.
She oohed and aahed that thing for quite a while (playing with it the whole time) and then asked one of the silliest questions I'd ever heard.
"Is it easy to use?"
My only response... "You tell me. You're using it right now."
She's since bought her own pink iPod Mini.
fs
I think it's the smaller size, too. A lot of gym freaks and athletes have been buying it since it's easier to run/cycle/work out with than an iPod.
Same here, my music collection is around 12 GB, but a playlist of my favorite CD's shows a total of around 3 GB. Hence, the iPod Mini is perfect for me.
I considered one of the iRiver iHP models, but memories of the difficulty of using the iRivier disc player I already have made me think twice.
I considered the Rio Karma but reviews on Amazon show many have hit buggy firmware.
Basically, I am more than happy to pay a bit extra for something that just works correctly. Or put another way, I don't have the patience to futz with a consumer electronics device.
Try to find one online. Back-ordered everywhere.
I ordered mine a week before they came out, never thinking they'd be hard to come by. Now I'm glad I ordered early. (Based primarily on a positive review by Walt Mossberg of all people.)
I'd resisted the earlier iPods due to the disk drive ---didn't think it would stand up to daily trips to the gym. It's replacing a flash-based Rio (which served me well for 3 years, and also cost $250 new).
After 2 weeks of use, I'd never go back. The On-the-Go play lists make it easy to pick out an hour's worth of music (enough to get me through my workout without having to fiddle with the dial) and vary it daily (without having to connect to my mac).
Yes, it's true. This man has no dick.
But so much for the rest of the wrold. We don't have the iTunes Music Store - now it seems we don't even get the player.
Time for me to send Steve Jobs a globe with a big red arrow stuck on it pointing at England, and a note saying "I am here".
Asssuming by "us" you meant "female geeks" (or just women generally, geek and non-geek alike), what indication do you have that Apple does think that (aside from the fact they are, in fact, selling scads of them, whether disproportionately to women or not)? They don't say anything in their marketing about them being "girl" iPods or anything like that; they show people of both sexes using them (albeit more or less entirely young, attractive people, but hey, that's marketing for you). If Apple does indeed consider them "iPod mini: iPod for women," they haven't said anything about it (and you can be sure they've sold more than a few of those 100k to men, and are just as happy to take men's money as they are women's).
I'm male, and I still would love a mini, myself (oddly, it's my second choice after the 40 GB - my ideal iPod is the most capacious, but my second choice is the least, before either the 20 or 15).
Although I initially thought the $250 price was really high, I understand it now. For those of us with less than 4 gigabytes of music, The iPod mini is not only just as good as the original iPod.... it is better. It has a smaller size, and a better design, for $50 less! It is also good for people with 4+ GB of music that don't need all their music, but enough to last an 8 hour work day or a several day vacation. The only real competition is the Muvo2 at $50 less ... but Apple hardware is always more expensive.
And I doubt the iPod mini costs more than $50 less to manufacture than the standard iPod. Compare it to desktop vs. Notebook hard drives. A 40GB Notebook hard drive goes for $119... a despktop hard drive has 5 times as much space is only $20 more!
Having said all that, I am still not buying one because $250 is too much for me to spend on a portable music player.
My sister bought one because the 128mb or 256mb MP3 player she had didn't hold enough songs for her workout.
She'd considered buying the larger ones and dealing with the weight, but when they announced the mini, she saved her cash and ordered it for her birthday.
For her, it was the weight, not the cost. It was equivalent to her purchase of the smaller MP3 player, which is the point most people are missing.
Oh, and she bought the silver, not the colors. Though she wishes now she'd kinda bought one of the colored ones.