“Some pooh-poohed the assorted colors of Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod mini as frivolous, but the digital music players are a smash hit and have become fashion accessories in and of themselves. Beyond being just a nifty way to listen to music while riding on a bus or working out at the gym, the iPod mini’s eye-pleasing design in five metallic colors has made it a reflection of the user’s personality, analysts said,” Duncan Martell reports for Reuters.
“‘They are a point of differentiation for the individual and they’re almost a status symbol,’ said Tim Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies. ‘Because of the colors and its small size, it really is an expression of personality.’ Phil Leigh, an analyst at Inside Digital Media, says: ‘Even though those white ear buds aren’t really that great, people want to wear them with an iPod so others know that they’re carrying an iPod,'” Martell reports.
“And while the larger, white iPods that are about the size of a deck of playing cards have been a huge success, it’s the smaller business-card-sized iPod mini that has resonated with the digerati and could spawn design innovation in other compact digital music players, analysts said,” Martell reports. “‘We can only hope,’ Bajarin said. ‘I would hope that Apple’s innovation in industrial design spills out to the rest of the industry.’
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Why are the Mac and Mac OS X not recognized by analysts as innovations that they would hope would spill out into the rest of the personal computer industry? Why is the iPod achieving for Apple what the Mac can’t seem to do? Perhaps because the general public has not been shown effectively by Apple what Mac OS X is and what it can do? Hopefully, the iPod’s halo effect will open more eyes to Apple quality and lead people to consider buying a Mac for their next computer. If Wintellites like their Apple iPods so much, they’d absolutely love Apple’s Macintosh computers running Mac OS X. Unfortunately, Apple is treating Mac OS X as some huge secret for some unknown reason. Will Windows computer users/iPod owners make the leap on their own without Apple giving them a push to Mac OS X?
IF more people really wanted Macs, would Apple even be able to supply them? Apple has notoriously been bad at providing products in a timely manner. Even now with the iPod Mini, Apple is having a tough time keeping up with demand. For an item that is primarily for entertainment and status, a 6-week wait might be OK. But for something which you depend on to make $$, 6-weeks is way too long.
finelinebob actually makes an interesting observation that is more wide-reaching and subtle than many would realise.
Apple’s strength is that it engineers ‘solutions’ which are constructed out of numerous parts to form a greater whole, but at the cost of providing a wide range of choices for consumers: the counterpoint to this is that the so-called ‘choice’ purveyed by MS and its fellow travellers are just bits where the customer or user has to work out how to make the ‘whole’ operate in the manner intended.
Some examples:
iTunes/iPod/iTMS: a complete solution for music management, including import, legal download, sharing and media burning and control of a personal player. Compare with numerous Windows-only ‘products’ where the user/customer has to combine a jukebox app with a burning app, with IE, with Windows Media, etc.
iSync/iCal/Address Book/Bluetooth: Why Apple doesn’t make more of this, God alone knows. Probably the only computer in the marketplace to ship with ‘out-of-the-box’ sync capability. I recently attached a cheap knock-off BT adapter that, according to the original owner, didn’t even acknowledge the existence of the Mac on the box. Panther recognised it within 30 seconds, and I was communicating with a friend’s SE T610 within a minute.
That same friend has spent around a day trying to get a Sony laptop, to communicate with a Sony Clie, and his SE T610 and it still doesn’t work because adding BT to a Windows system is a different adventure every day. Compare and contrast: one day (unsuccessful) vs one minute (successful, using generic hardware).
Xserve/Xserve RAID/Xsan: SANs the way they should work for less money than the competition.
iLife/Superdrive: A DVD burner, with software that makes a DVD burner useful. As well as 5 bits of software (iTunes/iPhoto/iMovie/iDVD/GarageBand) each designed to do a specific job well and to work with each other. I would suggest trying to do this with Windows, but only to people I don’t like very much.
iPhoto and any supported camera: I ‘switched’ a friend who could barely believe how seamless this was in comparison to Windows. And he’s a network support manager working in the oil industry in Algeria, so he’s not stupid or easily swayed. Likewise, iMovie and any supported DV camera.
Mark: I’m not really sure it’s as clear cut a problem as your describe. Apple set a target for iPod mini for around five months sales, and achieved that target in around six weeks.
Short of increasing the cost to regulate demand, Apple couldn’t do anything given that the cornerstone component – the drive – is new and only exists from one supplier who was ramping up following acquisition of the product from IBM. There’s no point in saying Cornice, like a start-up would have better capacity than a major Japanese combine. And there’s no point in saying Toshiba, as they don’t have a component shipping that allows the iPod mini form factor.
All in all, the fact that people are willing to wait six weeks is actually more of a problem to the competition, because it indicates that their products have no mindshare or appeal to the market and that price and availability does noting to alter that position.
Mark: Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Maybe you should endeavor to acquire some? To start, just read MCCFR’s post above.
The key to moving macs and Mac OS X.
Apple should give the developers of Darwine: http://darwine.opendarwin.org//
a blank check.
If apple announced that the new version of OS X could run existing windows apps, macs would fly off the shelves.
Some have said that no developer would make mac software if this were the case, but that is already the situation. That is why apple is creating all of the cool apps for Mac Os X.
My humble two cents
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Just to add to MCCFR’s point:
The problem with iPod shortage is due to critical component shortage. The problem with Mac shortage is usually due to missed prediction of demand, although sometimes, it’s due to chip suppliers’ inability to ramp up. You need to understand though that at one point, Apple had too many product lines with months of inventory which they had to dump away when introducing new products. When Jobs came back, Apple tried to emulate Dell in inventory management. While they are successful most of the time, sometimes they underestimate the demand of a product. True, they lost some sales, but it’s better than having to dump months of inventory or delay the intro of a new product. The shortage has nothing to do with Apple’s inability to manufacture, but it’s Apple’s inability to get accurate prediction. Most of the manufacturing are contracted OEM’s in Taiwan or Ireland anyway.
As far as chip suppliers’ shortage, it happens with a new process sometimes, but once it’s a go, IBM or Motorola can ramp up easily. It’s nothing different than Intel or AMD.
Atomic Bomb: no need to be rude. I’m very well educated.
Overall, I’m in total agreement with everyone. For the iPod mini, there is a critical shortage of hard drives. And on the Mac side of things, there has historically been a problem of getting the right chips in a timely manner.
The point still is, that due to either supply issues or a misunderstanding of demand, Apple has had difficulty in providing the products that the public desires.
It’s worth remembering that even when Moto had Intel over a barrel with processors like the 68040 (which used to be pitched against the 486 to my memory), the problem was getting enough chips out of the fab as well as constrcting enough mobos given that Apple was still relying on ‘non-standard’ components like NuBus, ADB and AppleTalk.
Of course, then the problem changed at some point in the late-nineties when AltiVec came on the scene: Apple became reliant on it for performance, Moto provided, IBM wasn’t interested. Result: single-source breakdown when new designs didn’t arrive on time and Moto had its mind elsewhere.
Hopefully, Moto’s spin-out of Freescale working out of a cutting-edge fab managed in partnership with others will ensure that Apple gets two sources for processors. And of course, the mobos are now built from a greater proportion of commoditised technologies like PCI, USB, FireWire and Ethernet which helps to mitigate risk as well.
Of course, freak events can happen: personally I hope that when a 976-based ‘dual core’ system system ships, we see a six-week waiting list for that as well – for about a year – and it still sells over a million units in a year.