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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.
Hey, there's a limit to how much I can get through this P2P pipe. The university keeps shutting down my Internet connection for filesharing. Give me time!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Sure, you may not have enough music to fill up that 20GB, but that doesn't mean that you'll never use the space.
I have a 10GB Archos MP3 player, and while I only keep about half of that full of music, I find it incredibly convenient for transporting groups of large files between places. It works just like an external hard drive.
Apple has learned quite a bit about marketing since the days when they let IBM eat their lunch by not persuing the business market. Ever since Jobs returned to the helm Apple seems to be all about a better product for a slightly higher price that is packaged and marketed well. And judging by their financial performance this has been a fairly sucessful track for a company with such a small piece of their primary market.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
When they were introduced, "hard cores" like me and, I think, a lot of the slashdot "community" (yeah, I know), scoffed.
It just shows that what we as wireheads look for in a tech product is not always what the average non-geek consumer wants. For me, the concept of "too much hard drive space" is completely foreign and absurd.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
You might have a ton of songs on your PC's HD, but How many tracks do you actually listen to?
The average radio station might have access to thousands of songs on their premises, but in a typical broadcast day they're only going to use about 40 to 50 of them.
1000 songs at roughly 3 minutes each is 3,000 minutes. That's 50 hours. We're talking enough music to go two days without having to re-dock to swap songs without having to repeat anything during constant playback. By that point, you'd want to hear your favorite songs again.
Sure, having more space on your iPod is great if you intend on using it as a data transfer and backup device. However, your average jogger doesn't care about that, and they in fact would rather shave off the 2 ounces and 2.64 square inches off the form factor. Smaller is better sometimes.
By buying a 30$ mp3 cd player and a spool of 100 disks for 20$
- 05 -28&res=l
And those of you that complain about skipping. Thats okay, mine doesnt skip, I cushion it by about three hundred dollars IN CASH.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003
no
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"
The iPod Mini was almost universally laughed at on Slashdot, and we seem to have a bad record of predicting these things (the original iPod announcement comes to mind..."Lame"). Apple does research which they use to develop new products. All we have is our personal preferences and better-than-you attitudes.
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.
Then again, I've started re-ripping all my old CDs, this time using 320 kbps mp3s, and these soak up the space big-time. I can imagine using 80 gb easily within the next few months. No, the iPod mini is great for "low" quality rips and downloaded music, and apparently people seem to be satisfied by that. I would too, though and here lies a small problem. I want GREAT sound for my system at home, but when I'm on the run with my iPod and its earbuds, a 128 kbps mp3 is going to sound just about the same as a 320 kbps mp3. This is why I wish iTunes would downsample the mp3s on my computer for use on the iPod.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
I have a 100Gb of MP3s on my hard drive at home (and the CDs they were ripped from), and so the 20Gb on my 2nd generation iPod requires a lot of reloading. On the other hand, my step-daughter has a 3rd generation 30Gb iPod (which she got for babysitting the children of somebody who works at Apple) with only about 5Gb of songs. And do you think she'd swap iPods? No way! She's *so* selfish.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Umm, there is more to a product than technical specs.
1) Size
2) Design (!!!)
3) Target audience
For a data point, I have a 15g iPod, and my wife has a blue iPod mini. I need more space. She needs a small, lighter MP3 player. Different preferences.
It's not all about the 4gigs vs. 15gigs.
--- witty signature
Typical thinking in the "here and now". They have 1000 songs now, but what about later? These guys don't think once consumers see how easy it is that their music collection will grow?
I would not buy a device that holds 1000 songs if I only owned 999. I would buy one that holds thousands because I wouldn't want my device being obsolete in a year or less.
I own a 15 gig 3g iPod and it's almost full. I'm hardly a power user either, I just collected a shat load of CD's since childhood.
I'll chant that the next time I read another industry pundit complaining about Apple's lack of WMA support (or another /.er complaining about no Ogg Vorbis support).
You're echoing the exact same arguments made when the iPod mini details were announced on Slashdot. Just about everyone chimed in and said that this thing was too expensive and wouldn't sell. Well, the small form factor (and possibly color choices) have shown to be a hit with the market and iPod minis are currently selling like hotcakes.
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My answer is you're asking the wrong question. What the buyers are asking is "The mini iPod holds more than enough music, fits in my pocket better, and is $50 cheaper. Why would I buy a regular iPod when it doesn't do anything extra, doesn't fit as nice, and cost more money?"
From their perspective, those extra 11 gigs don't do anything for them, because they aren't even using the 4 gigs up.
50 bucks is 50 bucks. That's still real money. And if you don't have 15G worth of music and don't even listen to all that you DO have, then that 50 bucks is simply a wast of money.
Talk about extra space all you want, but when you can choose what to put on and take off and you're actively syncronising, it doesn't matter. Or at least it doesn't matter 50 dollars worth.
Improved audio output. I understand the need to provide maximum playing time, but I would appreciate a decent output circuit to make my Etymotic ER-6 headphones shine. As of now, I need something like this to drive my headphone corectly and make my tunes sound heavenly.
Yes, I can use a more effecient pair of open ear headphones, but I don't want to be one of those jerks on the express bus where
eveyone can hear that I'm listening to Led Zeppelin's "Since I've Been Loving You" at moderate to high volumes.
"Oh. Right. People don't use all that space on their players so lets release inferior products for the same price! More cash for all!! Hehehe"
Had it been left up to the tranditional personal stero makers, I think they would have release a HDD based product that could hold 10, 20 CDs max so that people wouldn't abandon CDs. Apple gave people more space than they had ever dreamed of in one little gadget.Because apple didn't have a vested interest in CDs they release a product that essentially made them obselete. Sony for example would NEVER have done this. It would have effected their CD sales.
I think this will lead to a glut of about 1GB sized iPodlets pushed as an alternative to the admittedly pricy ipod, by companies who, because they're also in the record business, don't really want us using compressed music anyway.
Begs the question. Will that drive apple out of the music player business? Recall, the mere 4GB mini has sold like hot cakes.
I expect the Sony HardDiskman to arrive soon..... With over 15 hours!!! of playback!!
They will of course be useless as portable hard drives. IMO the handiest extra of the ipod.
May the Maths Be with you!
Why not use the extra space for better sound quality rather than greater number of songs?
You can have a larger size fries and almost 1.5 times the pop!
But some of us just don't need that extra bit of food, regardless of how little the cost. The marginal cost is still more than the marignal benefit.
Go take a basic economics class. Bigger is not always better.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Yes, but our personal preferences and "better-than-you attitudes" could be the basis for a valuable new market research tool. Whenever the consensus on Slashdot is that a new product is "lame," the only proper conclusion is that it is going to be a big hit. If you're lucky enough for the Slashdot consensus to be that your product "sucks," then, Yoo Hoo!, buy your company's stock.
On the other hand, if the Slashdot crowd praises your product -- particularly if they go on and on and on about its infinate configurability and the fact that there are many ways to accomplish the same task -- you might want to take a second look.
For example, I just criticized the new WiFi radio as a crippled WiFi laptop. So how do I buy the stock?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
What good is 20 hours of music if the machine only plays for 10?
Because I don't want to listen to the exact same 10 hours of music day in and day out. I can see all kinds of advantages of having a hard drive that would last longer than the battery life.
One could bring their portable music device to work, recharge it overnight without changing the songs on it, and still get a fresh batch of music the next day. Say one day I'm in a classical mood and the next I'm into speed metal; with a gigantic hard drive I don't have to choose beforehand what kind of music I plan to listen to.
Actually, /. is really terrific for predicting the success of consumer products. Almost any product that gets ripped a new one when it's introduced is going to be a success (iMac, iPod, Windows XP, OS X, Photoshop...). And anyone that gets lots of favorable comments it going to fail miserably as far as mass adoption is concerned most of the time (OggVobis, the Linux-based Zaurus, GIMP, Linux on the desktop, the WiFi internet...). The only one better at being wrong than the /. consent is Taco who's track record is basically pefect.
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.
Then again, I've started re-ripping all my old CDs, this time using 320 kbps mp3s, and these soak up the space big-time. I can imagine using 80 gb easily within the next few months.
FLAC + 128kbit aac? Yes, I know this will take up 8-900k/s instead of 320k/s. But if you put a reasonable price on the time spent ripping those CDs you don't want to want to re-rip them often if at all. If you can afford the iPod, you can afford a 250GB drive.
FLAC is lossless, about half the size of a CD, and you can encode to any format you want in the future. You should never have to rip your CDs again (unless disaster strikes your HDD).
For your iPod, I would suggest using AAC instead. Better size/quality ratio. Should you ever change your mind and go for a player without AAC support, simply remake from FLACs, shouldn't be worse than a script job.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What good is 20 hours of music if the machine only plays for 10?
Excellent reasoning skills.
Just like," what good is an entire menu selection in a restaurant when you can only eat one meal at a time?"
nice.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
What's the point of greater than 128kbps if you are listening to most of your music in a noisy environment like city streets, a car with road noise from the highway, or a noisy classroom or office? I would guess most of the listening to portable audio players is done in noisy enough environments that greater kbps would just be a waste.
Also, why is it an ugly truth that consumers haven't trained themselves to be annoyed by minor artifacts in 128kps MP3s? That's a good thing; they can enjoy music with less investment of time and money. Almost all the musical ideas come across at even 128kbps. You might miss the last fadings of one section of orchestra for classical music, but you can't hear those over much noise anyway. I can hear a little difference in many songs between 128kbps and 192kbps, but all the essential details of music I have any chance of hearing even over light typing are preserved even in 128. If you don't focus on the errors, your brain does a very good job fixing slight infidelities, as well.
It's no skin off your nose that most people can enjoy music without focusing on slight imperfections.
In addition, you are exageratting about the tolerance of the average consumer to low sound quality. Almost no one would put up with sub-64kbps MP3s. Napster and internet downloads showed us that consumers felt a good balance of size and quality was 128kbps. People just wouldn't download 64kbps because it was too distorted. However, I would love being able to sample albums I wanted to buy by downloading 64kpbs MP3 versions. It would allow me to make an informed decision about whether to download the songs, and the quality reduction would be sufficiently annoying to convince me to purchase the album.
"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."
The Rio Nitrus was the first player to use a 1" drive. It:
- has a capacity of 1.2gb
- plays WMA or MP3 files
- has a battery life double the iPod or the iPod mini (15-16 hours vs. the iPod's 8hr max)
- doesn't come with a defective headphone jack
Oh, and you can pick one up immediately at any local electronics store.
Best,
rt
Saying a portable device has too much space is like saying your bathroom has too much toilet paper, your bank account has too much money, or that your S.O. gives you too much sex.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Apple has consistently failed to meet ship dates and demand, mostly around the time they moved manufacturing from Ireland to Asia; quality also nose-dived with nearly every model having some sort of quirk or another. Sometimes it's due to manufacturing problems, but usually, it's a simple matter of failing to deliver products on time. In most companies, that gets people fired. At Apple, it's par for the course to keep customers waiting weeks for orders to get filled, or longer. Apple was also famous for loosing orders- your order simply got dropped from the system, which of course meant you lost your place in the queue.
Steve Jobs announces something, says it will be "shipping" or in stores by a certain date- usually at least a month out. The press and experienced mac heads quietly chuckle to themselves. On that date, a few systems do in fact show up at a few dealers, and a few people get their order status changed to "shipping".
At least half of the time there are "unexpected delays". About half of the time there are manufacturing or quality control problems(as is the case with the iPod mini). Nearly all of the time, it's weeks- or over a month- before the initial orders have been filled. Even orders after demand has quieted down can take forever, because most everything is shipped on-demand from Asia; my powerbook took a week to arrive, despite being shipped 2 or 3 day air; 2 or 3 day air means "2 or 3 days after it gets put on a plane, shipped from asia, sits in chicago for 2-3 days waiting for customs, hopefully clears customs OK, and then gets back into Fedex/UPS's system again". Nowhere, of course, is this disclosed to customers.
Smart Apple customers have learned to wait until Apple starts meeting demand anyway, because by that time, Apple has usually sorted out any serious defects- or at least you know of them.
Please help metamoderate.
why? she wanted a small music player, she was in the market. i could have gotten her one of the dozen 128 meg or 256 meg models, but I got this one
1) it's small..really small
2) it's dead easy to use
3) it "just works", which is a big deal to my wife, despite her CS and Math degree. she hates fiddling with stuff
4) it came in pink
5) I got it engraved with a romantic saying for valentine's day
I cannot tell you how important factors like "pink" and "small" and "easy to use" are to people outside of the 18-25 yr old males.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
As someone else pointed out, the concept of "too much hard drive space" is something most of us just don't understand at all. But it illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the general user that seperates "us" from "them"--people don't want too many choices. They just want the best and just enough to give them that.
I thought it might be an interesting viewpoint to consider since we want Linux to be the adopted desktop for new computing, but don't want to give up the endless myriad of choices in browsers, desktops, cd players, etc. To the average user, the idealistic OSS philosophy is something they don't care about. They'll just wonder why they have to install two different desktops to run all the apps, three sound mixers to hear everything, and so forth. We criticize Windows for seemingly providing less choice. I think in the case of the iPod Mini, the public has clearly spoken with regards to their needs. They just want enough to get them by. Unlike you and I who would definitely find ways to fill up that extra space, most users are not like that.
Why is it a PDA is a small computer without a Harddrive, and an Ipod is a small harddrive without a computer?
Why don't we see a PDA with capacity for 5000 songs, image, movies, audio recordings, or database files?
You're out of your damn mind. I do this. It does work.
When I plug my iPod into my Mac, it updates the rating on the relevant song. The highly-rated playlist on the mac then grows to accommodate the song. The Mac then synchronizes that longer playlist to the iPod.
Similarly, if my random unplayed playlist is limited to 2GB, when I plug in my ipod, it marks those songs as played, which takes them out of the unplayed playlist, which means they are replaced with other songs so that the playlist remains 2GB. The modified playlist is then synched with my iPod, which includes the new unplayed songs.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I've had my mini for three weeks now. Not, a super hard-core runner, but I average 25-30 miles a week, pace no slower than 7:30. I've found it to be absolutely amazing. The longest run I've used it on is about 45min and had absolutely no problems. Battery life is very good, the interface is absolutely perfect. Recommend buying the neoprene armband--very inobtrusive.
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.
They don't care *now*. They certainly *will* care in a few years when their new computer won't talk to their portable or their new portable won't play the music files on their computer.
If Apple decides next week to "refocus on their core product market" and the iPod and iTMS go the way of the Newton, those people will lose their music. The value of a DRM-free, standardized file format will quickly become obvious to everyone.
0 1 - just my two bits
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.
...because it has excellent sound quality, it can host most of my music, and I can take it with me almost anywhere.
My girlfriend has an iPod Mini because it is pink.
4 giga-what? Pink.
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.
===---===
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
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.
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