Rumored iPod Flash Leaked

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently a -->detailed design of the new Flash-based iPod--> has been leaked. It doesn't have a screen and is this size of a cookie!" With size estimates ranging from 256 megs to a gig, it will have a much lower price point, and can be worn around your neck. Assuming it's not just a rumor. Update: 12/07 19:31 GMT by M : Temporary working link.

Comments

True purpose of the flash iPod

[levik]

At a low low price of $200, Apple's main goal for the flash player will be to make its slightly bigger and slightly more expensive players (the mini at $250 and the full size at $300) seem like very well priced bargains.

Price points

[madrivertech.com]

It will have a much lower price point than...? ... other iPods? ... other flash MP3 players? ... other MP3 players in general? I can get a Gigabyte Lexar flash for their MP3 player for the low $70's off of eBay. I am using a part in the same family now "Jumpdrive" and am satisfied with its quality under heavy use.

Re:What's the point?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I'm pretty sure someone else mentioned this. The point is that with a flash/nvram based player, it's immune to shock. People who work out at the gym, jog, bicycle, whathaveyou can't really use an iPod (at least for long) because of the constant shock the hard drive would be subjected to during operation. Idle with the disk parked it's pretty invulnerable. Playing music, and you are asking for a head crash if you bang it, or try jumping jacks or step aerobics.

When you are working out you really don't want the screen, and you only need an hour or two of music.

Re:What's the point?

[teeker]

It would tighten their lock on their iTunes business. I can't really afford a real iPod, but I could probably afford one of these. If it worked with iTunes, it could be enough to pull sales from other cheaper players. I'd like to buy a cheaper player, but I really like iTunes and have a lot of music purchased through them, so ideally it'd be something that would work with the music I already have without having to burn and re-rip, or use tool with dubious legal status like HYMN to remove their protection. It would be useful for Apple to have an inexpensive alternative that is compatible.

Just my $.02...

It's All Part of Job's Plan

[chia_monkey]

Remember back in the day when Steve talked about the digital hub? And then when the iPod came out and he said he wanted to use them to help sell Macs? Then iTunes came out and even though Apple doesn't make much money from iTMS, Steve says he wants to use it to help sell iPods.

Evidently his plan is working. Last week that report came out showing about 6% of iPod users had switched from PCs to Macs and that another 7% plan on buying a Mac. The halo effect is boosting Apple's revenue.

So the iPod rules the HD-based market. Now it's time to take over the flash-based market and make sure no other company erodes Apple's dominance in the player market. I see this as yet another opportunity...people that can't afford an iPod will buy the new flash-based one. Money for Apple. When these people can afford it, they'll buy the big iPod. It's like the gateway drug to Macs.

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[jvagner]

Bah, I think he's wrong. I want a player without moving parts, and I don't want to spend that much money on an iPod not knowing how long it's going to last. $400-800 items shouldn't seem disposable, and the iPod seems like that to me. I buy a flash player for $150 and I care less if it dies on me. I just don't trust modern commoditized hardware at this level, and that includes all manner of iPod.

Re:Except

[chia_monkey]

I agree with you in your theory...that the halo effect requires certain conditions to exist before it can happen. My only sticking point with what you're saying is that we're talking about Apple here. You said "If you make a cheap minimal flash player you lose this selection effect; you are now targetting the budget market, where the halo effect is less likely to be effective because these are the people more likely to just go buy eMachines or whatever it is they make these days with a minimum of fuss." Do you really think Apple would make a cheap player...or a cheap anything for that matter? Apple prides itself now in making elegant machines.

We could debate this forever, but until we know exactly what Apple will come out with, it's a moot point. If they put out something cheap that gets lost in the shuffle (which would really really surprise me), then I think it would be a big mistake on their part. My guess is that they'll come out with some new player that makes all the other flash-based players look like cheap toys you could pick up at any gas station along with a bobblehead doll with any fill up.

Re:iPod mini #2

[badasscat]

You forgot about the fact that demand was so high for the mini that Apple could not produce enough - they've sold a shitload of these despite YOUR opinion that it's expensive.

It's not just his opinion, it's the opinion of a lot of people.

And you apparently don't know a lot about marketing if you think that Apple "could not produce enough". There are such things as manufactured shortages.

I've searched high and low for honest to goodness iPod Mini sales numbers, including through Google, Apple's investor relations site, and my E*trade account (where I can get company research that would otherwise be unavailable to the general masses). They just don't seem to break iPod sales down by model; they only release total numbers, and I doubt that's unintentional. I don't think anybody would dispute that the iPod Mini has sold fairly well to early adopters but I've just never been able to find any real data to back up your claim about Apple selling a "shitload" of them - anybody can underproduce an initial shipment and then claim demand is so high that there are shortages.

If someone's got some real and up to date sales numbers of the various iPod models, let's see em and compare. My guess is after the first wave of Apple die-hards buys in (which should have happened by now), the regular iPod will outsell the Mini by about 10 to 1 - it's just a much better value and I think most people know it.

Pricing does matter when you're taking about the mass market. Despite the iPod's overall success, I think Apple's still stuck in this idea of pricing things for their little hardcore niche. I don't think it's going to work in the medium- and long-term with the iPod Mini, and I'm not sure it's going to work at all with a flash-based iPod (I don't think there are millions of Apple faithful out there waiting for a $200 flash-based iPod, and there certainly isn't a mass market for such a thing).

Then again, I was surprised at the original iPod's success at its price point, so I've been wrong before - but that player was blazing a trail where none had gone before. Flash-based mp3 players are a dime a dozen so it's not as if Apple can come in and convince a bunch of people that their player is worth a premium of 100% or more over every other player on the market.

Re:What's the point?

[CrankyFool]

God damn, I love how history repeats itself.

iPod announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on, there are a ton of mp3 players, including these CD-MP3 players which are the wave of the future. And $400? Another Apple lunacy that won't sell!"

iPod mini announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on, it's $250! And a third the capacity of the $300 version! I'd pay $50 more to get three times the capacity! Another Apple lunacy that won't sell."

iPod flash announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on! It's $200! And the market's already saturated with flash players! I don't see the point. Another apple lunacy that won't sell."

It's ... weird, it's almost as though Apple understands their market better than Slashdot geeks do, though obviously that _couldn't_ be the case.

Look, I sympathize. I've twice in my life looked at products my own company was developing and said "that's stupid, it'll never sell!" The first time was when working at Berkeley Systems and looking at the first You Don't Know Jack demo (you know, the only product originally made by BSI that's still around to one degree or another?); the other was at Macromedia, looking at Dreamweaver "Oh come on, anyone who really wants to code HTML uses vi/emacs! Who'd pay $400 for another WYSIWYG HTML editor when they can get hotmetal for free?" Turned out? A ton of people who wanted a good one.

Face it -- we're just not very good at predicting market success for some products :)

anecdotal data

[cmoney]

ever walk into an apple store? the most popular item is undoubtedly the ipod mini. these things sell not because of "value" or number of gizmos but for design.

you don't find teenage girls walking into best buy, picking up a rio mp3 player and saying "ooh it's so cute, i want pink!" "yuck becky, pink is so last week, i want gold. that's hot." but you do see that in apple stores. and then their mom comes in behind them and says, "ok, but you're not getting that louis vuitton bag for christmas!"

i'd like to see a breakdown by ipod model as well, but anecdotal data says the ipod mini has cache among markets that other mp3 players don't even address. other tech companies are trying to market to the slashdot crowd, with gee-whiz features and more storage for less money. apple's realized the rest of the world is a much bigger, less fickle market and now they're getting paid for it.

No screen? Why not

[babbage]

Some of the article discussion complains that leaving out the screen is a bad move, but is that necessarily the case?

Maybe not.

In the essay What have we got to lose? (as anthologized in _The Salmon of Doubt_), Douglas Adams gives a fascinating overview of all the cases where a clever new product was born not by adding some dazzling new feature, but by identifying properties that could easily be dispensed with.

Some of the most revolutionary new ideas come from spotting something old to leave out rather than thinking of something new to put in. The Sony Walkman, for instance, added nothing significantly new to the cassette player, it just left out the amplifier and speakers, thus creating a whole new way of listening to music and a whole new industry. Sony's new Handycam rather brilliantly leaves out the zoom function on the grounds that all a zoom does is cost money, add a lot of bulk and render every amateur video ever made unwatchable. (They might, while they're following this line of thought, consider marketing a record-only video player, and video companies might consider releasing movies that are actually recorded in fast forward mode.) The RISC chip works by the brilliant, life-enhancing principle of getting on with the easy stuff and leaving out all the difficult bits for someone else to deal with. (I know it's a little more complicated than that, but you have to admit, it's a damned attractive idea). A well-made dry martini works by the brilliant, life-enhancing principle of leaving out the martini.

So... an iPod with no screen. Well why not? How often do you actually look at the screen? Probably not very -- most of the time the device sits in your pocket, and a lot of people just control the thing through Apple's remote control, which of course has already dispensed with the screen, and has in fact left you with something that looks a lot like the device in the article's photo.

But okay, some of the complaints are right -- browsing through even a modest music collection can get tedious when the only controls you have are to skip forward & back by a track. Being able to see what's going on is nice, but do you have to be able to see it when every iPod listener is already ipso facto listening to the device? Think about it: this would be an excellent place to use some kind of audio / speech interface, and Apple certainly knows how to design a system that way, having had a speech interface built into Macs for many years now.

That may or may not be what Apple is up to here, but it seems like an obvious future direction for the suite of products. It wouldn't surprise me at all if, for example, a future version of the bundled headphones doubled as a microphone somehow, so that you could control the device by just saying "iPod, shuffle playlist Beatles", and it would go forth and do your bidding, and you didn't have to dig it out of your pocked or your backpack or whereever you keep yours stashed.