“The mini is the perfect iPod: sleek, easy to use and easy to carry around. And it plays music — beautiful, beautiful music — what could be better? On paper, to nerdy dweebs like me, the mini doesn’t look like much of a deal when compared with its bigger, 15-GB sibling, which costs just $50 more but holds four times the music,” Leander Kahney writes for Wired News.
“But as Wired News correctly divined at the mini’s launch at Macworld, Apple will sell boatloads of minis. Customers are buying it for its merits, and they couldn’t give a damn about its relative demerits,” Kahney writes. “Who cares if the 15-GB iPod costs just $50 more? Everyone interviewed at Macworld who had seen the mini had been charmed by its glamour. The specs didn’t matter; they had to have one, and the cost be damned.”
“That’s why competing players like Dell’s DJ, Archos’ Jukebox or Creative’s MuVo2 stand little chance of unseating the iPod as the top player on the market: None is as cool, as slick, as pleasurable to hold, use or listen to as the iPod mini,’ Kahney writes. “‘Undoubtedly the greatest strength — and arguably the greatest achievement — of Jonathan Ive and the Apple design team is that they are never, ever satisfied,’ said Alice Rawsthorn, director of London’s Design Museum, in an e-mail. ‘No sooner has one great new product been completed than, rather than rest on their laurels, they pick it apart and work out how to make it much, much better.'”
Full article here.
I’m waiting for the $50 WMP-playin’ model…
baaaawhaaaaaahaaaaa
AND it comes in pink
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The mini will end up in the Museum of Modern Art. Mark my words.
Wired is one great mag.
I was a $50 complainer at first, but I was wrong. And like the article states, “Cost be damned!” That mini is a beautiful thing.
Me want now!
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http://homepage.mac.com/johnhood
But I wonder how many Windows computer owners are reticent to buy an iPod because since it is an APPLE product, they think it will only work with an APPLE computer???
Overheard a couple in the Fry�s store discussing that and cleared up their confusion….I hope.
Johnny’s right–the iPod and iPod mini are achieving this level of sales with MOST of the public still believing that they won’t work with their Windows computers! I recently got a mini (silver) and nearly everyone in my office assumed it wouldn’t work with their Windows computers. While a bit annoying, the upside of all this is that there is still enormous room for growth as the potential market comes to understand that they can use the device. While Apple ads clearly mention Windows compatibility, this will really sink in only when HP comes out with its re-branded iPod.
If people don’t know it works with windows then they are really fucking stupid or they didn’t watch the ads or did watch the ads but are really fucking stupid.
Overall Windows users are notoriously uninformed. I tell people that there are no viruses for OS X and they are floored. They just don’t have a clue a lot of the time. Why else do you think they buy inferior products that are going to give them years of frustration and trouble just because it is a little bit cheaper? Apple should run a few ads dispelling all the wierd myths and misconceptions that Windows users labor under.
And here’s Glick7 with his same old rant… Sales of iPods would hit the stratosphere if ONLY Apple would include an integral microphone and voice recording capability.
Glick 7,
I disagree. I don’t think there are that many people wishing for voice-recording capability, but I think it would boost sales even more if it had an FM tuner. In any case the little suckers are selling like hell, so maybe sales would move from stratospheric to, I don’t know, ionospheric, maybe?
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“Windows users are notoriously uninformed.”
Can I get a big “A-MEN!” brothers and sisters? I’m still flabbergasted when I have to explain to sheeple…er, ah, people, yeah, that’s it, people!…that my PowerBook can connect to the Internet. And no, Dell doesn’t make them. No, Apple. Apple Computer? From Cupertino?…Steve Jobs? Never mind. And no, that’s a Windows feature, I mean virus, so it doesn’t affect me at all, and *sigh* yeah, I can email, and yes, dammit, I can too open Word docs! But only at gunpoint, now get lost Einstein!
I personally don’t want voice recording or video or picture capabilities built-in to the iPod. However, I do think they would make awesome attachments for those of you who do want them. If they were built in to all of them, then they would be heavier, more complex, and take away from the simpleness that is the iPod.
If you want any sort of media options, they should be extras, only for the advanced user who wants them, and not a standard feature that the social user has to put up with.
I’m with Glick7.
Put a high quality microphone in the iPod and that would stick one big solid Pod, I mean, foot in the door of the corporate world… you know, the guys that make the decisions about which OS/Computers to buy.
What about a battery that will last longer then a year…or at least a replaceable battery….I think Apple pulled a fast one on everyone….it will cost a arm and a leg to get it replaced