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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).
...that Apple made a huge blunder there (not supporting Real Networks). I'm sure they're kicking themselves over it.
Tim
Heh, first time I've heard that one. Funny that it's the female demographic too...
"No, give me the smaller one"
As seen on Wired: Get a free desktop PC
I bet Real doesn't like the idea of Apple not supporting their format.
That combined with their other losses these last couple of weeks, I just suspect the statement was made to make it sound like they are still a contender.
Ted
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Because men like to have big ipods
Yes, I'm bitter about Real.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
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.
My wife says she wants an iPod, after seeing someone at her office with one. I ask which one she wants, and she sends me a damn link to the mini. I said for a bit more you could get the regular iPod with more storage...apparently this one will fit in her purse better or something. Maybe it's the ability to choose a color, but I thought you can get "skins" for your regular iPod already? In any case, chalk up another possible sale for the female geek market.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Uh huh...
So where is it that you buy a PocketPC and equip it with 4GB of memory for less than $250? Maybe you were thinking of the "big" iPod? Can you buy 40GB of RAM for your PocketPC for less than $500?
mp3 music can be imperfect, but it's better than the movies that you'll be playing on your pda...
> It's been on MacRumors.com all day.
Because MacRumors is, by name and nature, a rumors site.
Slashdot only published hard news.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
The 4GB iPod is not competing with the 15GB iPod. The 4GB iPod is meant as an alternative to the flash based MP3 players offered by everyone else. Take a look: 256MB Rio Chiba is $200, a 256MB Rio Cali is $200, 256MB Yepp is $200, 512MB Creative MuVo2 X-Trainer is $289. I could go on and on. Now $250 for a 4GB iPod looks pretty good right? To say nothing of the fact that it's an iPod and looks so damn cool compared to any of the flash players out there. People saying the Mini iPod is expensive don't understand Apple's strategy here. They want to compete with flash players with the mini, and HD players with the regular iPod.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
the initial, on-topic part: i never thought these things would sell to anybody for that price, but i guess it makes sense to me that women would adopt it first. i dont mean that to be sexist, but women tend to care more about aesthetics more, i think. also, i would guess women to care a little more about it being tiny. i mean, id be willing to lug around a bigger, uglier dell player if it was superior in the ways i deemed more important. i just dont see my wife thinking the same way. she would rather have the one that is prettier and smaller. (sure, sure, insert joke about that last sentence *here*)
now for the RvB quote:
"didnt i just tell you to stop makin up ficticous animals?"
later...
"so, unless anybody has any other names for it, we'll call it the warthog....chipathangy, how bout that? i like it...got a ring to it."
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy
*sigh* do we have to go over this again and again? The iPod supports:
AAC (16 to 320 Kbps) with or without Fairplay DRM, MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF and WAV
How many portable players support RealNetworks formats?
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
So the slashdot crowd was wrong. (Yet again) Good thing I did not short those SCO stocks before... However, I feel that most slashdotters don't really understand what marketing is.
Even though "marketing" is a dread-word around here, Apple seems to have a really good marketing department to me. They get it right quite often.
Remember, marketing does not just reffer to the selling process of a given item, but also the process by which you conduct research into a given area to determine if there really is a market after all. It is important to check to see if the market is there by research, because what you can divine just by intuition is often wrong for marketing.
A very interesting read (even if you are a computer only type geek) on marketing is:
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
It covers things like how Listerine was the market leader for mouthwash - because everyone wanted to keep their mouth free from germs - and the medicie taste was irrelevant... Enter Scope, with better tasting mouthwash for "fresh breath" not germ killing so much, and now Scope is #1 in the market - Listerine #2.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Being a female tech geek myself, I was with you all when I thought the the mini was an idiotic concept priced for failure.
But then they started putting these ads in the InStyle magazine (girly fashion mag touting the latest styles out there). The ad was two facing pages with postcard pop-ups of paper iPod Minis to actual size, one of each color. Damn it if it didn't look as nice as some of those cute little handbags in the same price range a few pages away.
I still didn't get it, but I swear, if they slap a little Hello Kitty on it, I may have to cave in to the cuteness factor.
Sorry Real, but I don't see any need for the iPod to support yet another proprietary audio format. The iPod can deal with stanard AAC and MP3, and Apple's FairPlay AAC. Ogg Vorbis would be nice, as it is an open standard that anyone can implement royalty-free, but I can live with what I have right now. Real and Windows Media? I wouldn't have bought my iPod if I needed them.
The beauty (to me, the consumer) of FairPlay DRM is that every track bought from the iTunes Store comes with the same rights. I don't have to wonder what I can do with my purchases, or read any fine print. I like that. I doubt I'll ever buy off of another online store, because it's a problem I don't need... unless someone else starts selling FairPlay AAC files or standard un-mangled files.
I have a 40 Gb iPod, my husband has a 30Gb iPod - reason, he demands instant gratification, so he got his first, because I had to wait - I got the bigger one cheaper... :)
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
What is it about Apple that they can generate such huge pre-orders of a gadget that costs $250 and *still* not make a profit?
I know you're a troll but... how many times since 1998 has Apple NOT reported a profit? They're one of the only tech companies that actually make money in this ruined economy.
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
"I've met and known many female geeks. The reason most don't know they are there is because a lot of male geeks LOOK like the stereotypical geek."
And a lot of the stereotypical female geeks look like males.
My other machine is a lever.
The error is quite clear. Most people around here seem to see the iPod as basically a hard disk. So their reaction was, "A smaller capacity hard disk that's nearly as expensive as a large one? Who would want that?"
But what Apple knew that the pundits did not is that the iPod is only incidentally a hard disk--it's a music player. So to the average consumer, the reaction was, "A smaller, more convenient iPod, and cheaper to boot? Where do I sign up?" Lower capacity was for most a minor concern, because even the mini holds more than enough music for most activities.
As for support other formats, why bother? Just think of the support headache. When instead they could invest the same amount of effort into improving and promoting the iTunes store. Besides, once people start buying their tunes elsewhere, they might start thinking that they could just as well have one of those clone players. Apple already supports the most common open format, so if people don't want to go with Apple's store and format, they can always order the CDs used from Amazon and rip them to mp3.
She seemed surprisingly disappointed when I said it only came in white.
Apple's done their market research on this one, folks.
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
Slashdot: The iPod-mini is overpriced and has no target audience!
Rest of the world: We don't give a flying fuck!