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iPod Mini Hits The 'Sweet Spot'?
Tooky writes "The BBC is reporting on a survey carried out by Jupiter Research which found that most consumers were only storing about 1000 songs on their portable MP3 players, claiming that ' The finding seems to be borne out by the demand for Apple's Mini iPod'." According to the piece: "Jupiter said digital music players with capacities of 5,000 songs will provide too much space for most people. It added that consumers rate other features as highly as the ability to store all the songs held on their PC."
Thought I'd share a data point for what it's worth...
I ordered my iPod mini about two weeks after the iPods were available (about 6 weeks ago-ish), was told 3-5 weeks delivery, and it arrived at the 5 week point. A friend ordered his last week, and they told him 4-6 weeks.
Perhaps we should put together some more data points and extrapolate if this has been the trend since the iPod mini release.
For all the reasons described in the article, the iPod mini exactly fits my preferences--it's sufficiently small, long-loved, well-designed, and spacious. More specifically, for me, the breakthrough was to have a audio player that a capacity beyond ~500 megs that was also suitable for running/jogging--the mini is the first to break that barrier.
G-Force music visualization
I have one of the original 5GB iPods, and I'm constantly deleting less-listened-to songs to make room for newer songs and albums. If people are complaining about too much space on their bigger iPods, then let's trade. :P
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Style is nice, but I think that thinking in terms of higher bandwidth formats, one needs to think about the larger capacity of the other iPods.
You're the 10,000,000,000th person to point out that the 15 gig iPod is only $50 more.
You obviously don't understand who the mini is being marketed to (hint: not geeks).
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
It is much easier to organize the songs on the computer, if for no other reason, the sheer size of the screen.
I would much rather sacrifice some storage capacity for a smaller model
If you have too many choices (songs ) on your portable device, you may just end up not using (listening to) all of the choices (songs ) anyway. After a point, as the number of choices increases, the ability to make a decision suffers, and the time it takes to make a choice increases.
Thanks for a response that is informative. I am not trying to troll, just looking for an answer and you provided me one.
Sometimes they are used for even different aspects, I have my "Teach your self Spanish," various music types, and finally I am experimenting using it to store my checklists for flying.
"It added that consumers rate other features as highly as the ability to store all the songs held on their PC."
Yeah, like battery life length.....
when they were first announced, my thought along with a million other people) was 'the 4 gb is 250, and the 15 gb is 300. who woud buy the mini?'. i konw someone at work who came to the same conclusion, and went with the 5. i actually sprang for the 20 gb model, because it also comes with a case, remote, and dock. i use the damn thing all the time. however, i find myself wanting to get an iPod mini also. i figure i can use the iPod in my ar, or when i'm at me desk, and use the mini when i'm walking around or (if i ever get around to it) jogging and bike riding. that thing is smaller and lighter enough to me that i would like to have one. and after spending 400 on the 20 gig, 250 doesnt seem like a lot to me.
From the article:
i'm right at the top end of my 20G iPods capacity, with around 4100 songs. i could easily add another 10G worth of songs from CDs that i already own - if there was room to do it. since i've discovered the joys of Random Shuffle, even 4100 songs seems small - it seems like it's hitting the same album 3 or 4 times a day.
can't wait till the 100G models come out.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Here is why my wife likes her ipod mini better than the 15GB iPod:
1. She wants a music player, not a hard disk.
2. the mini controls are laid out better for one hand use
3. the mini is lightweight for running (the regular pod does not feel that heavy until it is bouncing on your belt).
4. She never transfers large files.
5. She has small hands and likes the feel of the mini better.
6. She looked at the other players that are similar in size and weight to the ipod mini and said: 'the controls stink and the interfaces are a joke. I wish I had something like the ipod, but smaller.'
7. She is not a cheapskate.
Here is why I like my 15GB ipod better than the mini:
1. more space
2. I got it for $1 as part of a promotion from my ISP.
3. I sometimes transfer large files.
I'm huge music fan and if got nearly 50 gigs of music on my computer. and more than half of that is stuff I've ripped from my CD collection or close friends at 256. I have the majority of the stuff I listen to on my iPod, but frequently I get the urge to listen to a song that I don't have. For those people who complain that it doesn't make sense for a player to hold more music than it can play on a single charge, there is a reason why they sell so many car adapters for iPods. Anyone who has ever driven San Diego to Portland knows how much nice it is to have 16-18 hours of music non-stop. Other than that, an ipod charge lasts me fine on any average day.
sorry 'bout the mess...
Sure there are things I'd like to improve about it, but I didn't want to deal with the iPod battery and I had trouble finding out whether iPod could simply operate in "mount
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Umm, there is more to a product than technical specs.
1) Size
2) Design (!!!)
3) Target audience
4) marketing/brand recognition
5) Crappy headphone jack......wait that's not good!
I think name recognition is one of the key things here:
I wonder how well the ipod mini would be doing if it was exactly the same as the ipod except for being covered in sharp, prickly spikes.
Some people buy $100 sunglasses. It's marketing. How many Apple press releases^W^W^W news stories have you seen about the ipod mini?
Life is too short to proofread.
Well, you see, most people can't plan so far ahead that they know what they'll want to listen to 8 hours from now.
Massive hard disks allow us to be as picky as we want, thus spending less time managing music than we do playing it.
Furthermore, I have a car charger for my iPod.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
A memory-based, 1GB music player.
For $100.
Until this comes, I'll stick with my Minidisc, even with its draconian DRM.
Why isn't this product out there yet?
The Ipod's price point is too high, and the memory on memory-based players is far too low.
Maybe you could start a "news" site. Then Apple might advertise on your news site. Perhaps if you ran enough "stories" about their product, you could make enough money to buy one.
Thing is, I only listen to my portable when I run. That means that there's a lot of ambient noise, which means that good sound quality isn't worth it. So I record things at a really low bit rate (32 kbps for spoken-word files). You can fit a lot of stuff in a little space that way; I can put an 8-hour book on a teeny 128M device.
Bravo, well said. I would also add that even in a pristine listening evironment, I believe that most consumers wouldn't be able to hear the difference between a good 128k MP3/AAC and the original CD -- or even SACD. Except for the musically inclined, people just don't have the ears/auditory processing to hear that. And they're all happier for it! Hell, I know a lot of people who are into bootleg recording of various bands, and the quality of many of these bootlegs is HORRENDOUS. The source material is so bad that a good CD encoded at 64kbps would sound much better. But these people love to listen and they don't seem to mind the poor qualitiy. Other end of the spectrum I guess.
This all reminds me of common stories I hear about audiophile types and people who like to tease them. Like when you're over at one of these people's house and he's demoing his $80,000 system and you say you think you heard a little distortion in the mids of the front right channel. He'll spend the rest of the evening tweaking knobs and obsessing while everyone else laughs and enjoys the music just the same as if they listened to it on their $500 stereo.
I consider myself to have damn good ears (musical background, I can easily pick up on minute pitch variation that none of my friends can, etc) and for me, 160k AAC is absolutely wonderful. 128 is fine for the vast majority of stuff, so I went a little above just for peace of mind. And most of my listening environments aren't nearly pristine, so even that's probably overkill. I guess I'm in the middle of the spectrum -- can't tolerate the really bad stuff but don't obsess about every last bit of quality that I can't hear anyway.
I kind of feel bad for the people who obsess over this to the point that listening to good music at "slightly less than optimal" fidelity is excruciating to them. Whether the quality loss is actually heard or just imagined. Just lighten up and enjoy it. Good music is awesome!
Yhe Rio Nitrus was the first player to use a 1" drive.
Fair enough, but what about the other factors critical witht he iPod? Namely, what's the price, size, and weight of the Nitus? Further, USB is pretty ugly next to firwire when you decide to drop 500 megs of new music onto it 5 minutes before you want to leave for your run. Separately, I owned two rios in my life (Rio 400? and a Rio 500). Both models had shoddy Mac OS support and froze up constantly w/ various mp3s.
G-Force music visualization
Depends on how expensive it is. At the current price point, even extrapolating up to account for the increased storage space, I'd be happy to pay for it. Until it can actually play the music I have though, it's pretty worthless to me.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I honestly can't fathom this. Ok, I can understand that maybe they might not see the value of having tons of extra space, but actually frightened by it? Are they afraid that the extra space is going to be used by Apple to rip, encode, and store their soul?
As for the 1,000 song figure it seems rather odd to me. I'm a college student who doesn't pirate music, I have what I'd consider an average if maybe smallish cd collection along with about a gig or so of stuff on my computer (I don't keep my rips, they just go onto the iPod) and I still have around 2,000 songs. I realize as well that while I may not be cramming my iPod at the moment I'll be glad I have that extra space when I get more cds and don't quickly run out. I have space to grow on this and hopefully it will be able to last much longer as a result.
People are lazy. As soon as they realize how inconvenient it is to swap songs around they'll be complaining about size and wanting more just like everyone else. At some point those 1,000 songs won't be enough and they'll have a rather strong backlash regardless of how they feel now.
The iRiver iGP-100.
Major Disadvantages: 1.5 gb drive. No firewire.
Major Advantages: It's slighty larger than a stopwatch. Costs $200, not $250 (before accessories). No Software Interface on either Mac, Windows, or Linux*. FM tuner. Flywheel navigation (just like a Blackberry), excellent GUI. Backlight. Firmware upgradable. Passes the Girlfriend Aesthetics Exam with flying colors.
For the size and craftsmanship of the device, I firmly believe that this player is the better deal, especially if you already have a full-sized iPod (or equivalent). It is easy to operate within a pocket -- just orient the flywheel, and you can navigate the filesystem with ease. The other buttons fit naturally beneath your fingers when you hold it in your hand. The player does not require any accessories to use fully; my girlfriend can exercise with it clipped on. It also comes with a case. I find the 1.5 gb drive is perfect for a trip's worth of music, or a few weeks of commuting. This is useful if you have a lot of music that is overlooked in your normal music listening, or if you aquire music quickly.
4 gb for $250 is clearly the better deal. But the....philosophy of design is an invisible modifier to that price, at least in my eyes.
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
For what it's worth, I bought myself a 10GB iPod for Xmas, just before Apple bumped the "base" iPod to 15GB (at the same price) and introduced the miniPod. While I naturally grumbled about the "lost" 5GB, I've since transferred most of my CD collection to it (the LPs... will have to wait), and I also use it for portable storage of my Photoshop and Flash projects, between school, work, and home... with room to spare. I'm sure I could fill it up if I really wanted to, but y'know... I really don't need to carry that much data around with me. I bought the iPod in part because I could also use it for portable storage of non-audio data; if not, 10GB would definitely be overkill. (Of course I could be an atypical case, because most of the music I have was acquired through royalty-paying channels.)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
People scoff at Apple's share in the market, but really it isn't too bad because people seem to compare Apple's share to what isn't Apple's share. They probably should be comparing Apple to Dell or Gateway. Some people even go on to claim that Apple is dying, which isn't quite true as sales appear to be steady, they actually are netting a profit and their liquid assets are quite sizable.
re: iPod. I think it's not too hard to see why people want one when you compare them to their competitors.
You are entirely correct. There are some other advantages that the iPod has over what I have as well, such as naviagtion and different play modes and I don't feel like I need them.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Actually, avoidance of choice is essential to mental health for normal humans in all areas, nothing special about desktop OSes in that regard. This is a major part of the explanation of the growth in depression and unhappiness over the last century while possible lifestyle choices and physical living standards have increased incredibly, most especially for women who have more freedom and choices than in any society ever.
See the book "The Progress Paradox : How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" for in-depth treatment of this phenonemon. But, very briefly, the psychological problem that makes people unhappy directly because of choices is that if you have many choices, you can never be sure that you have made the best choice. Second order effects like brand partisanship, to validate your choice as the best, follow from that.
In any case, it's a fascinating book, go check it out.
Real people care about vendor lock-in. They just don't think ahead, and fall into the trap that companies set for them. Only afterwards do they say "gee that sucks, I hate CaptiveCo for doing that to me."
Cars and washing machines don't apply - you don't have to buy special gas for your car; you don't have to drive on special Chevy roads. Washing machines and dryers don't require you to buy special clothes or special laundry detergent.
On the other hand, cell phones (in the US) were until recently tied to a provider, so if you had a fancy phone and wanted to switch, you had to buy a new phone. (I know that this has officially been changed, but I have read that there are still some more subtle techniques that companies are using to drag their feet.) Likewise, if you buy DRMd music, you're stuck with some bizarro infrastructure that has to be used for you to be able to listen to that music, be it an iPod or an audio player that supports WMA or whatever.
The lock-in on the iPod Mini (and the regular iPod) is mainly coming from the direction of the iTunes Music Store. Yes, you need iTunes to use the iPod Mini (although there is probably some project out there that lets you use one with Linux or whatever instead), but in a few years when you sell the Mini on eBay and buy something else, you won't have to buy all your CDs again just to use that new gizmo. (If you buy a bunch of DRM'd AAC files and then get rid of your iPod then you just might have to buy it all again.)