Mac Mini and iPod Hi-Fi Over-Hyped?

RX8 writes "Analyst Michael Greeson takes a look at Apple's new products, the Mac Mini (Intel based) and iPod Hi-Fi and explains why they were over-hyped and how that can damage Apple. Michael explains that when you are 'an industry innovator - when your products fall short of being truly original, your own success becomes your worst enemy.'" Update: 03/04 00:07 GMT by Z : As many posters have pointed out, the article here has little to do with the synopsis. This article is mostly about the design for the mac mini and its remote, which is a fairly interesting topic. Mea culpa, folks.

Comments

Amateur Hour

[American AC in Paris]

Zonk, the Slashdot headline and summary have virtually nothing to do with the article.

For one, Greeson specifically states that he's not going to go into whether or not Apple overhyped their latest releases; by the tone he takes, one suspects that he sees the grumbling of "Apple's fanatical base" as a largely unavoidable cost of taking innovative risks. Beyond that, though, the focus of his article is on the remote control included with the mini; how it is simultaneously easy-to-use and powerful--he calls it "sophisticated simplicity"; and how he hopes and expects future devices to try to mimic Apple's design choice.

Instead, this summary takes a throwaway bit from the introduction and completely ignores the entire point of Mr. Greeson's article. The summary goes on to state that Mr Greeson thinks Apple over-hyped their latest product release--even though he explicitly says otherwise in his article. If I were Mr. Greeson, I'd be more than a little peeved that you'd so fundamentally butchered and misrepresented my work. Not even two minutes of the most basic editorial work would have revealed this.

You've been trolled, Zonk, and now it falls to us to clear the air. Of course, the joke's on us, too: we're not the ones who are getting paid to do the job in the first place.

Re:Amateur Hour

[geekoid]

...yet

Re:Amateur Hour

[tooth]

I'm sick of Zonk articles too, and the come in waves, 6 at a time. I notice it as the times when I read /. are the time when he posts a heap of articles. Can't there be some more effort put into getting this right?

Re:Amateur Hour

[baryon351]

Sadly, I don't think the summary was a troll or a joke, rather an expression of how poor many people are at truly reading news articles for meaning, as opposed to the habit of skimming over them in 30 seconds and getting a few key words to highlight mentally.

I've written articles for a few sites in the past, not as anything professional, but come across the same problem. Enough of the feedback in site comments or email comes from people who betray their lack of comprehension by their comments. I'll write about how to install an apache module for example, and specifically state three steps to be taken in order to get everything working; the responses indicate people have jumped in and tried only step three, done all steps in a random order, or in some cases completely misread the point of the article. "Hi B, I'm writing about your article on how to get eaccelerator working, and I'm getting errors decompressing the archive according to Step 2"... so I reply "Hello user, I have never written an eaccelerator article, step 2 is how to decompress the archive for installing mod_gzip". Any & every permutation comes back at me. It's possibly a reflection of bad writing skills, but honestly I don't think my writing is THAT poor.

So it goes on, and I blame half-hearted attempts in school to introduce speed reading, where anybody can be taught in minutes to skim over two paragraphs and get words like "hype" "apple" "mac mini" and "intel" then make up their own story in-mind, without getting any real context or meaning from what's read.

How is this overhyped?

[Matey-O]

Apple held an event in it's 'Cafeteria(*)' fer chrissakes!

When they pull out the stops, it isn't in an event of this level.

Overpriced leather case aside, the stuff they rolled out was worth holding a minor event over...That's what this was, a minor event.

*=yeah, it wasn't the Cafeteria, but it was held in a location they already own, it's cheap floorspace to hold an announcement.

Maybe overhyped for the Mac fanboys...

[ImaNihilist]

But not for us "normies." For the first time I'm really looking at Apple products. It's like I want them all. I don't own a single Apple product, and yet I spend forever on their store.

I'm thinking about taking out my school loans just to buy something cool. I think both the Mac mini and the iPod Hi-Fi are totally sweet.

They screwed the pooch on the hi-fi

[andyring]

Apple screwed the pooch on the iPod Hi-Fi. Sure, it looks all sleek and such, but it's priced WAY too high. $349 will get you a "home theater in a box" that will sound quite a bit better and give you a ton more flexibility, not to mention the ever-elusive AM/FM radio (not that people listen to it anyway). This thing is really no different from a $99 "boom box" type stereo with an AUX input, except that it charges your iPod, and costs $250 more.

It's my belief that if Apple TRULY wanted market share, they'd follow Microsoft's lead on the Xbox and sell it at a loss but then make it up in other ways. If they sold the Mac Mini for $299 or even $349, they'd sell millions overnight, still make money on dot-Mac, iWork, keyboards, iTunes songs, iPods, etc. And they'd get a hugely larger share of the market. Then, when mom and dad send junior off to college, give him the mini and buy an iMac for at home, or buy junior an iBook, etc.

Remote Controls

[soft_guy]

I used to work for a consumer electronics manufacturer in product design. I learned several things about remote controls. The thing that I learned that is relevant to this conversation is that there is a "regional trend" on how remote controls are designed.

In the European market things like design and elegance and simplicity are percieved to be important. Therefore a "good" remote control for the european market has very few buttons.

In the US, a remote control with a button for every feature and not as much software menus/interactions is more normal.

In Japan/Asia/Pacific, a remote control is considered to be "macho" if it has lots and lots of buttons. The more buttons, the better. A "lady's" remote control will be a little bit smaller and have a few less buttons. According to the folks who I learned this from, the average family would have a remote for the man of the house and a smaller lady's remote.

In the US, there would just be one remote and no one would think of it as a "macho" thing to have more buttons.

With regards to the Front Row remote, Steve Jobs (as usual) takes his queus from european sophisticates on his notions of design, simplicity, etc.

Re:iPod Speaker Reviews

[Golias]

Yes, they are already in the Apple Stores.

As I said elsewhere, they sound a lot like the compact Bose offerings.

In other words: Fancy use of fake imaging, exaggerated bass boost with no real bottom end, and overall unsettlingly nothing like true high fidelity.

In other words, it's designed with the intention to dazzle the casual observer long enough to run their credit card through the register, not to faithfully reproduce music.