iPod Mini in the Media and on TV?

[MacRumors]

A week after the introduction of the iPod Mini's, the initial furor appears to be dying down. While several have argued concerns about the price, one Wall Street Journal Column (Paid) offers an alternative perspective:

We don't want to sound like some annoying old relative, but these critics missed the rather elementary fact that different people care about different things. For every buyer of an MP3 player who cares about capacity, there's another one who cares about size. Or style. Or both.
.....
And for plenty of music fans there's no real difference between 1,000 songs and 3,750 -- they're both "enough." As one Slashdotter who saw the light wrote, some people "can't justify $299 just for space, but might justify $249 for style."

Apple does appear to be committed in promoting the new Mini which will be appearing in several television shows in the next 6 to 8 weeks, according to sources.

Regardless, time will tell if Apple has further success with the iPod Mini. Readers are reminded that negative initial reactions are common. Some quotes from the initial iPod Release in October 2001:

- "I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player?"
- "All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field™ is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off."
- "Better bring that price down or you wont sell any of these babies"

[jwhitnah]

Score 5 stars. Insightful.

[yoman]

this is why i enjoy visiting macrumors

[MGnards]

I love this topic... Those three reviews on the bottom made me laugh out loud-especially considering all of the posters probably have iPods by now...
Definitely good points raised... those of us who need space for a few thousand songs can be happy with our iPods, and go on our merry way. But 249 for everything the mini offers is a hell of a good deal, compared to everything else out there.

[andyduncan]

28,567th sign of the apocalypse: a slashdot comment makes it into the WSJ.

Score -54: troll

[ibjoshua]

Originally posted by MGnards
I love this topic... Those three reviews on the bottom made me laugh out loud-especially considering all of the posters probably have iPods by now...
Definitely good points raised... those of us who need space for a few thousand songs can be happy with our iPods, and go on our merry way. But 249 for everything the mini offers is a hell of a good deal, compared to everything else out there.

ditto
i_b_joshua

[~Shard~]

Yep, I agree - it's funny to read those 3 posts on the original iPod, and then realize that so many simliar comments have been made so far about the iPod minis. Oh well, time will tell. I for one never expressed any negative feelings towards the minis, and from the get-go I thought that they were pretty cool. But, different strokes for different folks, just as the article says - diifferent people have different priorities and different tastes, and I appreciate that.

[fearless]

Dead right. The iPod mini is a music product with a side job as a file storage device, pure and simple. People will decide, and if they want it, they'll buy it. They won't be worrying about whether the big one holds another 3,000 songs, nor will they be strapping a 120GB drive to their backs and jogging with that because it holds their music, their girlfriend's music, their friend's wedding video, and 5 eps of The Simpsons at a lower price per GB. Unless you're crossing the Antarctic, 1000 songs take longer than I care to exercise most days.

And as long as they have iTunes, they won't be listening to Microsoft bleating about their standards being the only universal ones. They'll be happy at $249 or a bit less - as they've been with anything MS put on their PCs, because it was there and it seemed to work OK. If I add up the money I've spent on lost 128MB USB keydrives, a strap-on iPod is a bargain. It's cool, it'll sell.

[pyrotoaster]

Boy, can you believe Apple bothered making an mp3 player? Like that would ever catch on?! It's been two years and what do they have to show for it? Just a 30% market share with 2 million devices sold?! Come on!

[NavyIntel007]

If you look at the market, the ipod mini is priced competitively. Unfortunately, right now it doesn't look good in the line up at that price point. $199 would have been better but then again there are mac fanatics that would buy anything new Apple comes out with even if they hated it (you know you're one of them).


I would still like to see a small removable SD flash AAA powered ipod that I can take to the gym for $99.

[punter]

Originally posted by pyrotoaster
Boy, can you believe Apple bothered making an mp3 player? Like that would ever catch on?! It's been two years and what do they have to show for it? Just a 30% market share with 2 million devices sold?! Come on!

very funny! Yeah the mini ipods are a solid product. Although they are more expensive then I'd like to pay, as my boss always says "after you set the initial price, it can only go down from there".

Lets hope that by next ski season they are 50 or 80 bucks cheaper, and then i'll own one for sure!

PS good work arn. I echo the posts above.

[ChrisH3677]

The story of Apple's life....

- "I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about a <<Insert product name>>"
- "All that hype for a <<Insert product name>>? Break-thru <<Insert Technology type>> device? The Reality Distiortion Field™ is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off."
- "Better bring that price down or you wont sell any of these babies"

Two things never change: Steve hitting the mark and fools predicting he's missed it.

[idkew]

Originally posted by NavyIntel007
I would still like to see a small removable SD flash AAA powered ipod that I can take to the gym for $99.

This os offered by several other companies, why does Apple need to make it for you? iTunes (at least it used to) has support for 3rd party mp3 players, so I don't see the point. (unless you have a lot of iTMS songs...)

The new miniPod (as I like to call it) is in a very roomy niche at the moment, unlike the dense flash based mp3 player market. This will allow it to easily dominate the niche. An Apple branded flash mp3 player might have a harder time breaking through all the clutter.

[Tulse]

Although I thought the mini was interesting, I didn't see the appeal until I really read the specs. Then it hit me:

The mini is roughly the size of a credit card.

The mini is the thickness of 16 stacked credit cards, or 8 pennies.

So tiny, and yet it can hold 1,000 songs.

That is the appeal of the mini.

[Brock]

Originally posted by ChrisH3677
The story of Apple's life....

- "I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about a <<Insert product name>>"
- "All that hype for a <<Insert product name>>? Break-thru <<Insert Technology type>> device? The Reality Distiortion Field™ is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off."
- "Better bring that price down or you wont sell any of these babies"

Two things never change: Steve hitting the mark and fools predicting he's missed it.

Haha, I agree with you guys, but Steve Jobs is not untouchable you know, Apple has made plenty of mistakes in their time. And just taking a look at the keynote, you could see that the iPod mini is no where near the brilliance of the original.

For those of you who watched the expo: Steve jobs lined up the stats of the mini against a comptative mp3 player. everything was good (16 x the music/space, better interface, etc) untill he got to the bottom and said "and its only $50 more". If he had said "and we are offering it at the SAME price." it would be unstoppable, but that $50 makes a big difference. Most of the mac enthusiasts ive spoken to without ipods or with first generation ones say they would rather spend another 50 to get the 15 gig.

But i havent said anything htat hasnt already been said 1000 times, so forgive me.

[NP3]

Originally posted by Tulse
Although I thought the mini was interesting, I didn't see the appeal until I really read the specs. Then it hit me:

The mini is roughly the size of a credit card.

The mini is the thickness of 16 stacked credit cards, or 8 pennies.

So tiny, and yet it can hold 1,000 songs.

That is the appeal of the mini.

Very true. Those 10 foot high posters really do it a disservice. Even the apple.com pics threw me at first.

steve is still way ahead of all of us

excellent job macrumors.

[G4scott]

Although I haven't seen them in person, I can imagine the appeal of the iPod Mini. If you have a normal sized iPod, you know that although it's small, it doesn't exactly fit in a front shirt pocket very comfortably (or at least for me it doesn't...) Just as Steve said, pocket space is very valuable, and every tiny bit they can shave off is worth it. Although the iPod mini doesn't have the biggest amount of space, no HD MP3 players get near the size of the Mini, and any flash player with the capacity would cost over $1000, and I doubt it would still be as small...

The iPod Mini is almost a completely different product. I'm thinking about getting one to replace my 10 gig Gen 2 iPod. Even though my iPod is completely full, I would be willing to organize my playlists so I could scale down to 4 gigs of space, just because I like the size of the iPod Mini... It's smaller than my cell phone. I really see the market for this thing. Sure, it's be great if it costed less, but to me, at least, it seems like a good deal for something that size...

[vitaboy]

Apple needs to have ads showing people holding the minis. Maybe they can use J.P. Prewitt (the world's most famous hand model from the movie Zoolander). :P

[Matrix9180]

(this post is -1 Offtopic)
I guess the iPod Mini answers the question "Where'd all the colors go" M&M is asking... Apple stole 'em.

[Daschund]

Finally somebody got it... The iPod is for people that want storage. The iPod mini is for the rest of the world. People don't seem to remember that not everybody is a computer geek that needs 40Gb of space. And that is probably 90% of the people out there. The other 10% can choose from the other 3 iPod models...

Daschund

[ChrisH3677]

Anyone who is prepared to criticize the iPod mini better check out the reaction to the original iPod first.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...=&threadid=500

Have a read, it is quite funny to see how sure people were it would flop. Timek where are you now??!!

Yes Steve has had some failures:
The Cube....ummm... Lisa...others?

Successes:
Apple II series
Mac
iMac
iBook
iPod
OSX
iLife apps
FCP/FCE
TiBooks/AlBooks

etc

I'm sure in 12 months mini iPod and GarageBand will be on that list

[arn]

Originally posted by ChrisH3677

Yes Steve has had some failures:
The Cube....ummm... Lisa...others?

Apple III ? (not sure Steve's involvement in that)
NeXT as a hardware company...

But I think it's a big short-sighted to attribute everything to one man (successes or failures)... it takes a town to raise... oh wait... takes a whole company.

arn

[DTphonehome]

Wow, those posts on the original iPod thread are hilarious! I would love for some of the naysayers to let us know what they think now. $150 million in profit later...

I think the mini has it's place...I thought it when I saw how small it was. The WSJ article is right on. Just because a device with a higher capacity is available, doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will want it. If that were the case, the only iPod that would sell at all is the 40GB, because if you're spending 299, you may as well pay the extra 100 bucks for the carry case, remote, dock, and extra capacity. And if you're already paying 399, you may as well go ahead and pay the extra 100 bucks to get double the capacity.

With the clip, and included USB cables, and after the edu discount, the 229 mini is a great buy. It has its market. And after it gets a foothold, you can be sure Apple will introduce a lower price, higher capacity model to increase the mini's value.

--DT

[frankly]

Originally posted by Brock
Most of the mac enthusiasts ive spoken to without ipods or with first generation ones say they would rather spend another 50 to get the 15 gig.

1) People without iPods haven't bought one at all so why would they buy the larger one now??? Yeah, that's the people's opinions that make a whole heck of a lot of difference.

2) Those with first generation models paid $399 for 5GB of storage space and yet they wouldn't pay $249 for 4GB of space??? Yeah, that makes a whole bunch of sense as well.

Later, Frank

[Count Blah]

Originally posted by Macrumors
...For every buyer of an MP3 player who cares about capacity, there's another one who cares about size. Or style. Or both. ...

I'd like to see a statistical source for that. If Apple is trying to get the high end flash market, then what is their appeal? They can't claim it's the HD size, since their approach seems to be what this quote is saying. Can they claim the physical size? There are smaller MP3 players out there. Is it the ability to work out with it? Flash based MP3 players are MUCH better for working out(no moving parts). They are selling their Name and the iPod name, and they are charging a premium. Sure, some will buy. But you can just turn Apple's own argument around to buy other MP3 players(either classic iPod or smaller flash based players that are better for working out). Obviously Apple wants you to go the iPod route, so they priced the iPod mini so that you would be an idiot to buy the mini versus the classic.

If you are going to compete against something(high end flash market) it helps to be in the same market(<= $199).

I said it before and I'll say it again - Instead of Apple going after the middle third of that keynote piechart, they just made their 95% of the high end market($250+) go to 97% with the iPod mini.