“Finally, somebody has outdone the iPod. After years of unsuccessful attempts by Creative, Dell, Rio, Samsung and others to knock Apple’s MP3 player off its pedestal, we’ve got a player that makes the iPod seem like the oversize, clunky relic it (now) is,” Rob Pegoraro writes for The Washington Post.
“That player is Apple’s iPod mini, a $249 gadget not much bigger than a cell phone. On sale starting Friday, it packs the old iPod’s virtues into a smaller, lighter, sturdier, more elegant and cheaper design,” Pegoraro writes.
“Just like its older sibling, the iPod mini stores days’ worth of music in the MP3 and AAC formats, including downloads from Apple’s iTunes Music Store. It fits in any pocket and quickly connects to any moderately new PC or Mac,” Pegoraro writes.
Full article here.
Leave it to Apple to be the only company that could out-do itself. But we’ve known this since the Mini was announced. I just hope that it’s the High-end Flash Player killer it was intended to be.
The Crow BBQs will be held across the country next week for all the idiots that predicted that the Mini would be an overpriced FLOP.
The first run of the product has basically sold out in the U.S.
Shows you just how clueless some so called “experts” can be eh?
Something to keep in mind the next time we see a new Apple product that doesn’t cater to the cheap ass whiner crowd.
if those people dont want one then GOOD, maybe ill get mine soon then
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Just a hunch, but by summer these will be available with larger storage while the “full-size” iPod morphs into a quasi-PDA/media player. The mini will be the “standard” and the standard the “maxi’.
uh. i seriously doubt apple will make it a pda. they tried that it failed. its an mp3 player nothing more. and as for it being a relic… i think not. the original still has a much larger hd and its easier to use. with the buttons being seperate you run less chance of moving the curser and clicking t he wrong item causing many alot of frustration. personally i like the larger of the two in both appearence and functionalty.
I ordered mine (Green) 3 weeks ago or so on Apple’s web site, it’s going to be engraved and it is shipping between the 3rd and 5th of March….I do not own an “original” iPod…I just like the looks and size of the mini better. As far the storage difference…..really 1000 songs or 50 Hours of music or audio books might just hold me……….but to each their own…I will say that without a doubt Apple will sell the hell out of the the minis…..and as a Apple stock holder I could not be happier!!!!!
Shouldn’t the title have the word “OFF” instead of “OF”.
“Apple iPod knocked OFF its pedestal – by Apple’s iPod mini”
Just a thought.
Umm, hate to be the bearer of bad news here but the iPod is almost a pda already, it has calenders,contacts,notes, games and plays mp3s .. sure sounds like a pda to me
I have a first generation iPod, so the mini’s are really small in comparison. I’m seriously considering one myself (blue or silver, maybe gold). And the iPod is not a PDA. I may have some convenience features, like the contacts and calendar, but its primary function is portable audio player.
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iPod is rapidly becoming a part of the PDA/media-centre paradigm! Doubtlessly future revisions of the iPod ‘OS’ will extend this functionality further and the mini is so couture chic! ; )
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http://homepage.mac.com/johnhood
The king is dead, long live the king.
In other news, the knighted Bill Gates did not participate in the coronation ceremonies. He was too busy fighting dragons, virii, worms, and leaks.
Jonathan
Would you call most mobile phones PDAs too ? They’ve got calenders,contacts,notes, games and some play mp3s too
The iPod is a “output-only” PDA. Which isn’t bad, since for some people, output (viewing contacts) is done a lot more than input (creating contacts–which your Mac can do well).
I hope the big iPod gets the click wheel. I like the idea of the tactile feel, and I love the simplification of the controls. But make it light up!
how many here bought one????? i counted only 1…
Call me old fashioned, but I still love my 2G 10gig iPod.
Just a hunch, but by summer we’ll have a 8 GB iPod mini at $249 with the original 4 GB priced down to $199. Maybe ;-]
I purchased 7 – one for each of my brothers and sisters.
PDA market is stagnant now. The new trend is to morph cellphones and digital players to be PDA/cellphone and PDA/DMP combo by adding functions to popular devices. You won’t see an abrupt change in their paradigm (whoohoo, I used the word paradigm), but rather little by little these devices acquire new functionalities as an added value to separate them from competitors and to entice consumer to buy them.
As far as cellphone being a PDA, would you also call cellphones digital cameras? They’ve got lenses and CCD and capability to store images. I wouldn’t, they are still primarily cellphones, although having digital camera capability is quite nice for some people.
I bought one for my fiancee’ for her birthday. Silver. Took advantage of the free engraving, too. She loves my iPod, but she’s very petite and she says that even the iPod is a bit big in her small hands. It’ll go nicely with the PowerBook I’ve got her set up with.
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Rageous..mom and dad never told ya…there’s a 9th sib. I’ll be waiting for my mini
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I was one of those that thought the mini was way overpriced. I started looking at the cheaper MP3 flash players. Then I started pricing flash memory cards to upgrade the cheap players to make them usable, two to four hours of play just wouldn’t cut it as configured out of the box. My 15 Gb iPod arrived last friday.
I will buy the iPod mini just to look at as a work of art.
My 30gb iPod is as much PDA as I need (output only). My year-old Palm is in a drawer somewhere – no longer needed.
Macs and their users are generaly segregationists when it comes to computers. They indulge in an attitude of superiority and are generally motivted by negitive views rather that positive insights. Take for instance the price and availability of Mac products and the attitude of the Mac world. Why would I want to pay more for a product with less compatibilty and a general attitude that states Mac’s and their users are in a world of their own. I want to be integrated with the rest of the world, not seperated in a cultist group(Macs).Think how Apple would take off if they released their computer parts to the public, so that we are able to build our own Macs. I don’t trust anyone to build my computer or even open the case for me. That is why I am and always will be a PC USER. Unless Apple changes their ideals along with the entire Mac community.
“I want to be integrated with the rest of the world.” – Z
What kind of integration are we talking about? Really, most of the thing you can do with a PC, you can do with a Mac, with the exception of games. When you connect your computer to the world, chances are, you are doing it via Internet, which is mostly platform independent.
” I don’t trust anyone to build my computer or even open the case for me.”
And you accuse us of being cultist? What is the percentage of people in the world who do not trust computer companies to build computers? And why do you not trust a computer company? Do you trust the hard drive manufacturer, the RAM manufacturer, the graphic card manufacturer? Why are they any different?
“They indulge in an attitude of superiority and are generally motivted by negitive views rather that positive insights.”
Really? Mac users are known to be more creative, well educated, well to do people in general. Most of us can use other OSs (in my case, Windows, Solaris, IRIX, linux, and a bit of BeOS) well enough because chances are, we have to use other OSs, but we choose to use a Mac for ourselves because it is better designed and let us do what we do without having to fight the computer. If that gives us an aura of superiority, so be it. Most PC users are quite arrogant for no reason other than the sheer number of users, and most of them have never touched other OSs in their life. IMHO, that does not give them the right at all to be judgemental. Also, if you look at the Mac community, generally we are very supportive of each other. I don’t see how it is a bad thing. Here is a funny anecdote: my superior insisted that PC was better and bought one, ignoring my advise. Everytime there was something bad (which was often), I had to fix it for him. So, why did a Mac user fix a PC for a PC user if PC users were superior?