MacTricks
If you’re a regular Mac user, you probably either watched Steve Jobs’s keynote speech today at Macworld, or, with your boss’s attention averted, you furtively checked the Apple website to read the hot news. (If you’re not a regular Mac user, you probably don’t need to read much more than the end of this sentence.)
If you’re a regular Mac user and a regular Apple nerd, you probably already knew the rumours that Apple would introduce a smalller iPod and revamp its, uh, “life” software. Well, they did both. Hurray. And GarageBand may be one of the best things yet to come to the Mac desktop. And it’s cheap! Audio production software is, or has been, notoriously expensive and difficult to use, so Apple is really filling a niche here: the budding, amateur musician who just wants to groove without forking out thousands for professional software that often needs professional hardware that often needs a stack of manuals that weigh more than my extended family after Christmas turkey and stuffing.
On the other hand, the new iPod Mini (remind you of any other recently-introduced successful consumer products?) is a real head-scratcher. It costs $50 less than the normal iPod, but the hard drive is much much smaller. It has the same interface, almost. It’s a bit smaller, but were plain old iPods really that big? It comes in silly coloured aluminum, but I thought Apple had moved on from the candy-inspired colouring era. Personally, I like the elegance of white.
I was excited when I heard about a smaller iPod. The big ones are a bit pricey in my opinion, especially when I consider that my trusty eight-year old portable CD player still works fine. (Kudos to Panasonic.) But the iPod mini is underwhelming. It’s still pretty expensive, and besides being slimmer, offers no discernable advantage.
Harumph. I will continue to tap my fingers in anticipation of the day when the iPod Plebeian Edition is available.
Previously: I Didn’t Like That Year, Can I Get A Refund?
Subsequently: Fusilli
Comments
While on the surface, the new iPod seems somewhat underwhelming, if you’ve ever spent any time with the current iPod, the size and weight differences are just enough to make it small and light enough to comfortably carry around. At 35-42% of the weight (depending on the capacity of your regular iPod) and 41-50% smaller in size (cubic inches), the new iPod Mini is precisely what I’ve been waiting for. The full-size ones are just too big and heavy to put in my pocket and walk around (mind you, I’m particularly picky about having things in my pocket). While I obviously had hoped the price would be a bit lower, the features and specs of this little miniature jukebox are attractive enough for me to look the other way when the price comes up on the cash register. 1,000 songs in my pocket at any given time should be plenty — and seeing that the new 15” PowerBook I’ll be ordering on the 16th (when the new iLife is officially released) comes with an 80 gigabyte hard drive (20,000 songs), I’ll have plenty of additional room to store a more complete music collection.
— Patrick | Jan. 6, 2004 — 9 PM
From a marketing standpoint it’s almost a completely different product, aimed at a completely different audience — people that would be considering high-end flash-memory MP3 players. Obviously there’s a market for them. For example, the high-end Rio Nitrus, which has a 1.5GB HD, holds 750 WMA songs (at a paltry 64kbps :P), or half that amount in 128kbps MP3. It’s only got USB 2.0, it only works on Windows, and it has a pretty cryptic UI with a cheesy Indiglo backlight. It also looks like a radar detector. Now, for $50 more, you can get a 4GB, sleek aluminum player that supports Mac and Windows, charges off FireWire, has an excellent UI with white backlighting, and supports much better audio standards (AAC, etc.) Rio’s next step up, the Karma, has a 20GB drive and Ethernet (!) for $349, but is also a big, clunky design…I think Apple’s hit their competitors right in the sweet spot. Of course, as the component costs go down, I foresee the iPod Mini going down to $199 before summer.
— aj | Jan. 7, 2004 — 9 AM
The more I think about it, the more I’m wondering if Apple’s pricing strategy is to protect the regular iPod from cannibalization. If the mini iPod were too cheap, it might do just that; after all, do people really need 15 gigabytes? I mean, I probably do have almost that much music on my computer, but I don’t need all of it with me all the time.
iPod Mini is probably a lot better than anything else, granted, and it’s just cheap enough, I guess, to compete against other MP3 players.
But how is it “a completely different product”? Because it comes in silly colours? It may compete with high-end flash-memory players, but the iPod mini still has a hard drive.
I guess in the end, I think the iPod mini is either not small enough or not cheap enough. Your choice. I’d expect to pay a premium for a truly “mini” iPod, but this one seems more like just an iPod on a low-carb diet.
— Luke | Jan. 7, 2004 — 3 PM