Slashdot Mirror
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."
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."
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.
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.
Thought I'd share a data point for what it's worth...
About the only thing more worthless than simple anecdotal evidence would be attempting to extrapolate trends from data gathered on Slashdot.
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.
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!
When I was debating on which to buy, I had resolved that I theoretically could get the smallest regular iPod available and only sync certain songs. It came to my attention that I don't like every song on every cd that I own. I can still keep them on my HDD, but I don't have to sync them, since I can chose to only sync, say, a smart playlist of ratings above 3. If I have a few songs that I might want to hear, but aren't 3+, I can make a playlist for them and sync it. instead of worrying, I just got a 20gig. That solved all my problems.
In your case, I'd make a smart playlist that picks the top 5 GB of most plays and add some sort of most recently played filter depending on listening habits incase you listen to tons of songs once (say on random). You could also throw in a rated 3+ to narrow it down. Don't "delete" them... just take advantage of smart playlists.
Set up a few automatic playlists:
One with all your highly rated songs.
One with all your unplayed songs, in random order, limited to fit on your iPod.
One with your least recently played songs, in random order, limited to fit on your ipod.
Then throw some albums you want to listen to on a fourth playlist.
Consider the "my rating" to be the "I want to hear this again" marker. If you're listening to a new song, and it's rad and you don't want it to leave your iPod, mark it, and it'll go to your highly rated songs playlist.
Do the "these playlists only" synch. Now, everytime you synch, you get fresh songs. Just keep those less-listened to songs in iTunes. If someone ever wants to hear them (happens whenever I have a party) it's still on your computer.
I've got a 40 GB iPod, and I still need to do this, just so I have some way of managing the 25 _days_ of music on my iPod.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
and your MP3 CD player is about 3-4 times the size of my Karma. Which, for the record, won't skip when dropped several feet. I found this out the hard way.
That sounds like the easy way to find out. All you do is let go of it, and hear if it skips.
The hard way would surely involve differential equations or a computer simulation on a beowulf cluster.
That's a really good idea! It's great for jogging. Thanks to you, I've just invented an alternative to traditional jogging hand-weights: Imagine a handle, and at either end is "spool" storage for 25 disks. You can then jog along, have 100 CD's at your disposal AND get a great upper body workout.
Of course, shuffling songs between disks may take a bit of dexterity, but that's just another benefit! Before you know it, you'll be seamlessly mixing tunes as you go!
Thanks for the tremendous idea. It's amazing how coporate America can create these artificial needs in an attempt to bilk us out of $100's of dollars.
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)
Yeah, Compusa.
I see the following scenario..
It was $999 with a $300 instant rebate, $300 mail in rebate from CUSA, a $100 mail in rebate from Apple, a $50 bundle rebate, and when purchased with a 5 year contract on a cell phone along with TurboTax and Norton Antivirus, you got a $50 gift card that can be used in the next 3 days on 2 different items in the store.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
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)
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.
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.