“In search of a replacement for his broken MP3 digital music player, Nathan Ward had narrowed his choice to Apple’s iPod Mini and Dell’s Digital Jukebox by the time he visited an Apple Store in Dallas. “‘The Dell’s cheaper,’ Ward, 30, said Saturday as he examined a multihued array of $249 iPod Minis at the shop in Dallas’ trendy Knox-Henderson neighborhood. The Dell is usually the same price, but the company has temporarily slashed it by $50,” Jim Fuquay reports for The Star-Telegram.
“Ward left without making a decision, although Apple’s reputation for ease of use and the Mini’s business-card dimensions were appealing, he said. The Mini weighs less than 4 ounces, holds about 1,000 songs and is smaller than the wallet-sized standard iPod and Dell,” Fuquay reports. “Even if Ward had been ready to buy, he would have walked away from the Apple Store empty-handed. Demand for the iPod Mini has taken off since its Feb. 20 debut, but supplies are short.”
“At the Apple Store, the best shoppers can do is put their names on a waiting list. Several other area stores, including Foley’s, Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA and Target, quickly sell out each time a shipment arrives,” Fuquay reports. “Apple, which makes one of every three MP3 players shipped to stores in the United States, said it took more than 100,000 orders for the Mini before the device’s debut. Apple’s Web site advises buyers to expect shipping to take one to three weeks.”
Full article here.
“For some reason, I ALWAYS see them available at my CompUSA stores.”
Buy them up and put them on eBay. A quick way to make a few bucks.
“The pricing is all wrong on the mini. They should be selling them for $299 until they have enough product to go around. I suppose there was no way to predict this kind of unreasonable popularity, though.” – KennyLucius
While I think iPod will sell well at $299, I disagree with your statement, though. Selling iPod at $299 will only reinforce the notion that Apple hardware is expensive, expecially when the target is non-technical people. Remember that Apple also hopes to gain mindshare from selling iPods to Windows users and to make tons of money while doing it. I believe Apple has to balance them out. I also think that if the price difference is way to much, people will just buy the competitors’ product now instead of waiting for the iPod supply to catch up, because there is really no guarantee that Apple brings the price down to $249 after the initial demand (unless they pre-announce it, which brings a totally different issue). IOW, I am glad Apple is not too greedy
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iTunes and the Mac may rip CDs a little slower than the Winblows counterparts, but I’d rather have songs that are glitch, pop, and skip free. Faster is not always better- Winblows is notorius for crappy rips and burns.
It takes less battery life to run the cheaper-sounding and cheaper quality WMA format on a cheaper quality music player, so don’t let the battery life issue be a decision-maker when purchasing a music player for any longterm. Buy a brick???…Dell NO!!!!! The mini-Pod is IT and is worth being on the waiting list.
Just got my green mini last week! Love it. Happy b-day to me!!! Now I guess I’ll give my original 5GB iPod to my son.
And does Comical Paulie mention this pro-Apple story in his blog, which used to make some ridiculous claim about being an objective view on alternatives to Windows?
Of course not!
Instead, the man who makes Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf look like a paragon of veracity focuses his amoeba-like intelligence on the Dell-inspired decision of the BBB to admonish Apple for its G5 advertising campaign.
To say that I loathe Paul Thurrott would be a understatement of staggering proportions, and so I propose the following: –
There are many Internet bookshops – including the most famous one – that allow you to post reviews and give grades to the books they sell. I know that I pay attention to those reviews and so do many others. I can’t help but feel that Paul’s books would benefit from some honest reviews. Of course, I would never encourage anyone to file a review if they haven’t read Mr. Thurrott’s books, because that would be wrong.
There was a post here about how iTunes rips songs slowly on Superdrive equipped Macs and the explanation was correct, the drives are crippled. Thats about the only qualm I have with apple, but thankfully that has been remedied by the RPC-1 community, now ripping at 16X…. Thank You!
It makes financial sense for them to skim the market at a higher price point. My understanding is that they can’t make the hard dirives fast enough but that they are now ramping up production. Mass production will mean they can be manufactured at a lower cost.