“Everybody likes to predict that Apple’s incredible roll in the audio business will come to an end. Everybody likes to say that the iTunes Music Store’s 99-cent tracks won’t be able to compete with subscription services forever,” Harry McCracken writes for PC World. “Everybody likes to theorize that the music industry will conspire to crush Apple. Everybody might be right in the long run, but I suspect that a signficant percentage of the real everybody that matters–the people who buy audio players–are going to gravitate to the Nano simply because it’s so slick and so different from what Apple’s competitors have. (Side note: If you’re Microsoft, Napster, Real, Creative, Sony, Samsung, or one of scads of other companies that compete with iPod and iTunes, how are you feeling today?)”
“The Nano will shake up the market in multiple ways. All of a sudden, a high-end flash player with a gig of memory doesn’t look very high end. And mid-sized drive-based players that seemed sleek look a bit chunky,” McCracken writes. “But the Nano’s a more expensive player per gigabyte than the iPod mini, at least for now: $249 bought you a 6GB mini, while the Nano maxes out at 4GB for the same price. The iPod mini’s quoted battery life is better (18 hours versus 14 for the Nano… but maybe its lower battery life is due to a smaller battery). And it’s possible there’s such a thing as being too small–a PCW colleague who tried the Nano’s click wheel wondered if a wheel that small may turn out to be harder to use.”
McCracken writes, “Will the Nano have this category all to itself for Holiday 2005? Apple rivals had some warning a product sort of like this was on its way, but even they may have been surprised by how big a departure the Nano is from the Mini. Betcha that some are embarking on rush projects even as we speak.”
Full article here.
Advertisement: Apple iPod nano. 1,000 songs. Impossibly small. From $199. Free shipping.
We bet chairs are flying and f bombs are being dropped, even outside of Redmond.
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