“Last week, a bearded and chipper Steve Jobs walked through Stanford Shopping Center to unveil a new retail concept for Apple. Located between Nine West and Gymboree, the 750-square-foot ‘Mini’ store, inspired by the Mini Cooper vehicle, looks like G5 heaven with stainless-steel walls and white, seamless ceilings and floors. Jobs gave a brief rah-rah speech extolling the virtues of Apple stores and products before pulling the black curtain down from the storefront, revealing a sleek shop befitting the Cupertino company’s slick, user-friendly aesthetics. On one side, laptops, G5s and other hardware and software; on the other, iPods and iPod-related merchandise,” Todd Inoue reports for Metro.
“It’s only natural for Jobs to devote half his store to the portable music player. The iPod helped push Apple to its biggest quarterly growth in nine years. Two million iPods were sold in the last quarter (compared to 860,000 the previous quarter). And with Christmas around the corner, holiday demand could make the mid-’80s run on Cabbage Patch Kids look like child’s stuff,” Inoue reports. “‘We’ve taken our best guess, and we’re building a lot, but the demand may be even larger,’ said Jobs, perched on a stool in trademark jeans and black mock-turtleneck shirt. ‘So if you want to be sure to get an iPod this holiday season, I’d get one soon.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The article is mainly about independent record stores and features a quote from Marc Weinstein, an owner of an independent record store who says he’s “never downloaded anything in his life, but has friends who own iPods. The idea of lugging around a cigarette pack-sized player instead of a stack of CDs is appealing. And though he admires the format, he says it lacks the human touch: no big artwork, no liner notes, no lyrics and, most importantly, no soaking up an album’s worth of music and ideas at one sitting. ‘I’m too much of a record guy,’ he says. ‘I’m a big fan of the format and package. And I’m a fan of the LP where an artist can curate a number of songs and present them as a group.'”
The quote is strange, but unsurprising from someone who doesn’t own an iPod. We listen to full albums as assembled by the artist and presented as a group in the intended order on our iPods all the time. True, on iPod itself there is currently no artwork, but most people who listen to records do so at home, not on the go, so they can look at the artwork (there is no size limit, except for monitor size) with iTunes at home just the same as always. Some people are luddites, they like things to stay the way they are and the way they’ve always known them. And that’s okay. We like that they’re still there spinning and selling and buying vinyl. We just want to say that our music experience is vastly richer with iTunes, iPod, and the Internet than it ever was with vinyl disks in cardboard sleeves, cassettes, or CDs. You can still have big artwork, liner notes, lyrics and soak up an album’s worth of music and ideas at one sitting with iTunes, iPod and the Internet.
you can do both!
I have over 65 records on vinyl, and over 120 some CDs (and yes I’m under the age of 25)
But i also have a 20 gb 3g iPod with almost 2300 songs on it.
A user can appreciate both formats for their respective purposes.
Plus vinyl is cheap as hell!
no, no the guy has a point…buying an album is fundementally different than buying A song. If you buy CDs and rip them into iTunes, i see no problem with the iPod, but i shudder to use iTunes…
Are you saying you were an active record buyer 20 plus years ago and have many albums with attendent artwork? You always blow hard but not as hard as this.
Update from Canada on the Pepsi iPod an hour give-away. They obviously learned something from the US Pepsi song contest. The product is on the shelves, and even in school vending machines!
The only problem is that I have not won an iPod yet. 🙁
Mike
mark,
People can buy an entire album via iTunes Music Store and listen to it as assembled by the artist, in the order they intended. I do it all the time.
Click the link “vastly richer with iTunes, iPod, and the Internet” in the MDN Take above and look around the site to which MDN has linked. MDN are right – the music experience is vastly richer with iPod, iTunes, and the Internet than it ever was before.
iPod sales are tiny compared to overall portable music player sales.
Re John’s curious comment: iPod sales are tiny compared to overall portable music player sales
Uh, yeah. Tiny as anything. As anything over 70% anyway.
John deserves the Nobel prize for pointing out that Discman sales dwarf iPod sales..
How much does a Discman run for? $49 USD?
The iPod can hold 10,000 songs. Different Market.
actually, the record store guy doesn’t have a point – using an iPod is not intrinsically linked to using iTMS, thus the buying vinyl vs download experience does not apply to using an iPod.
As noted by others, none of the music reasons he states are unavailable on an iPod. Buy vinyl, digitize it. Enjoy the vinyl experience & enjoy hearing your music on the go.
I concur with Vinyl, I have digitalized a large part of my 200+ vinyl records. I can listen to the iPod, looking at the artwork on the album, all the while sitting wherever I want in my house. No need to get my butt out of the rocking chair to change sides. No need to clean the disk thoroughly before listening. Plus, the records have no wear. Listening to vinyl records today is something akin to a Japanese Tea Ceremony: it’s fine for those who appreciate the ceremony, but it’s not necessary for the uptake of fluid.
There are certain exemptions, of course. I have a couple of direct cut LPs, classical music stuff. With those, I still perform the Vinyl LP Ceremony with the antistatic dust brush and all.
What! You can’t tell me this sales guy they quoted has never bought or sold a “single” before ??
Sounds like a guy who just needs to buy one of these
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I like the ability of iTunes to select genres and bands and listen to any of their music from anytime in a quick click of my mouse.
Stuff you can’t find in the record stores.
I can do it when I want, anytime I want and have the full songs on my computer in a simple click.
I miss cd’s and album covers a tiny bit. But using a special command I can download iTunes videos to my computer, which is a much richer experience than and cd can offer.
In fact if you want to go iTunes just click here.
And suppot Team Mac OS X it’s us against the PC world and we are kicking butt!
Nope. MDN are wrong. Much as I like my iPod, it’s not about a ‘vastly richer musical experience’ at all. It’s about convenience.
The music itself is still the king, the device is not. Without the music, the device is nothing. Without the device, the music is still the music.
I get vastly more pleasure from choosing an album from my modest collection of vinyl, cleaning it, making sure there’s no dust on the needle and hearing the thunk as the arm descends, then sitting down in a nice comfy armchair with m eyes closed, absorbing the music. Or reading along with the lyrics on the dust sheet.
The iPod adds very little to my enjoyment of music. It simply adds to the convenience of being able to carry more of it with me without having to choose which tape or CD I take with me.
Having so much music available can detract from the music too. The convenience of having all tracks on random is very tempting, and usually gets used above choosing a whole album to listen to in the right order.
Now this is simply an opinion. This is my experience of the iPod. I still say MDN are wrong because they’re stating it as an irrefutable fact. And it’s not. It’s just their opinion. Music, and everything associated with it, will always be subjective.
To me, it is still about the quality of sound. I’ve quit buying downloaded songs because I have been totally unsatisfied with the sound quality when played through my home stereo. I also like liner notes. I will say that I do love the convenience of downloading music though. Hopefully, someday soon the best of all worlds will come together.
Hywel.. respectfully.. the iPod is the platform.. it’s the thing that’s going to connect all your CPU content with the rest of the world.. through peripherals by 1st and 3rd parties.
Other music players don’t come close to this level of flexibility and ubiquity. In much the same way that PC parts are ‘cheaper’ than Mac parts, iPod repairs should ideally be ‘cheaper’ than say, Zen Touch repairs (something no one mentions, because.. of course.. the iPod is the only player the average reader knows by name).
The only drawback I see is that the iPod is SO good.. that it does create a level of elitism.. I mean.. seeing some girl on the bus fumble with a little MPIO player or some Dell piece of junk (scroll-log).. I feel disgusted with myself that I am actually looking down on these people. These are PC users terrified of Apple. Armed with this ignorance they stumble through the 21st century cursing under their breath.
Think of the iPod as a platform for digital media and you’ll start to see why the Samsung Player is a bit off.
In this case, it’s not JUST about the software. In fact, the software is pretty much a commodity. All these players use about the same software ..(on the tiny display).. but the hardware.. the CE.. that can’t be a commodity, unfortunately for Michael Dell
“it’s the thing that’s going to connect all your CPU content with the rest of the world.. through peripherals by 1st and 3rd parties”
Well, that’s just nonsense.
The iPod is a portable music player. I don’t disagree that it’s the best one. I have one. I love it. It’s just that what’s important is the music, not the player. iPod excels at convenience and ease of use. But it’s the same music at the end of the day. And listening to music while you take the tran to work or while you work out at the gym is not the same as really listening to music at home in a proper environment. Music is increasingly becoming background stuff and devalued. iPod contributes to that, which I think is a shame, but I can’t get away from loving it despite that.
i have to agree – music on itunes/ipod is not the same experience, somehow the music is less important without all the extra packaging, imagery and information. when i’d buy vinyl or cds, bringing them home was something special, it was an occasion and i became more attached to the music because of it – maybe keeping the album or cd on the deck for days and playing it repeatedly. now when i buy music on itms i might listen to it once and then sometimes not all the way through in one sitting, and then the music instantly sinks into my collection… having said that there are many reasons for having an ipod… smart playlists and shuiffle mode being just two…
Remember too that this is just the beginning of iTMS and the iPod. Apple will incorporate way more features, and someday buying an album in iTunes will actually be a much richer experience than buying a physical CD.
Until then, buy the CD and rip it into iTunes and you’ve got the best of both worlds!
“The iPod is a portable music player”
Not only. I carry my presentations on it, it serves as emergency backup as well. Quite handy. Not to talk about calendar and contacts.
Another music player would probably be just that: a music player.
“You can still have big artwork, liner notes, lyrics and soak up an album’s worth of music and ideas at one sitting with iTunes, iPod and the Internet.”
Really? And where and how does one get them? Being a buyer of classical music, I am accustomed to rather extensive notes, often in booklet form. When I purchased a classical album from the iTunes store I did not see any options or instructions explaining how to obtain any notes for the album. I think the store should provide clear instuctions for this if it is in fact available.
“when i’d buy vinyl or cds, bringing them home was something special, it was an occasion and i became more attached to the music because of it”
Ahhh. The joys of consumer society. People love to unwrap stuff. Doesn’t matter what it is. You could sell empty packaging and people would be happy to buy it at one end of the store, unwrap it through the store, and thow it away at the other end of the store.
While the iPod can add to the music experience, it cannot ever replace the overall music experience. Much like the difference between a digital book and picking up a physical book. While a digital book may perhaps be more convenient at times, nothing replaces the experience of picking up a physical book, dusting it off, and turning its pages. Yes, things are sure to get better with iTunes and the iPod, but that just means more things are going to become digital instead of physical, tangible objects.
In such a fast-paced, convenience-first society, we are losing touch of some of the arts of our humanity.
OK. The iPod is more than ‘just’ a music player, but it’s primarily a music player.
Most other HD based players can carry those presentations for you too.
In a similar way, the move to CDs was a compromise of convenience. Smaller packaging meant less satifying artwork and arguably poorer sound too. But you didn’t have to flip the disc and you could easily skip to the start of tracks.
Now we’re going to compressed audio, people are finding that they are willing to sacrifice some sound quality for convenience.
When ‘progress’ is also a compromise, the person left ‘behind’ is not necessarily a Luddite. It may be that they are simply more discerning and willing to invest more time in order to achieve higher standards that the rest of us care to aspire to.
I really like my iPod, I thin they’re great, but a part of me would prefer to have a huge collection of vinyl instead.