John D. Mitchell's Blog

Apple Flashers

Luckily for us, Steve Jobs debuted the iPod mini in his MacWorld 2004 conference keynote. It's tiny and very slick. Even better, the control felt pretty nice. Alas, in all too typical Apple style, the $249 price tag is just plain silly -- they should have hit the $199 price point.

Apple does get the Best Revisionist Video Award for reshowing their seminal 1984 TV commercial with an iPod digitally inserted onto the body of the running woman. Alas, I must say that the giveway of a poster of the ad was a big let down.

Long-term, there are two other announcements that I think are much more important. First off, Jobs also debuted the new G5-based Xserve and Xserve RAID servers. It seems that Apple is finally starting to actually put in the serious enterprise-class features like EEC memory and "dual" everything. I'm going to have to actually consider them now.

The biggest announcement is the new iLife '04 application with the non-i name... GarageBand. GarageBand is basically a music making program. Now, I'm no music software geek but the demo with Jon Mayer was very impressive -- especially supported guitar instruments. Create a garage band without the garage or the band (or any talent :-)! Mayer said that if he had this when he was 13, he would have never left his room.

Comments

• iPod Mini is hard drive based, not flash based
  While it doesn't make anywhere near as catchy a title, the iPod mini is hard drive based, not flash based. See http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html

  Apple's pricing is always claimed to be too high, but they are still selling iPods like hot cakes, so I imagine that the $250 price point is probably ideal.

  Posted by: ajsutton on January 06, 2004 at 11:57 PM

• iPod Mini is hard drive based, not flash based
  And if it was flash based it would cost even more, so the armchair quarterbacks are even further out-of-line than usual.

  Considering that the hard-drive based Rio Nitrus 1.5GB was going for $220 and the newly announced 4GB version will sell for $249 I think you can see that the iPod mini is a steal, since you get all the usual Apple extras at the same price as the competition.

  Now, if the argument was that Apple should have somehow produced a lower spec iPod, perhaps a 1.5GB version in order to steal the low-end market then that's somewhat reasonable. But if they're expected to release the iPod mini as-is but with $50 off the price then that's simply ridiculous.

  Posted by: bawjaws on January 07, 2004 at 07:55 AM

• iPod Mini is hard drive based, not flash based
  Thanks! Indeed you are correct -- the specs say it's a hard-disk based device. Jobs pitch was so focused on the high-end of the flash-based device market that I must have mis-interpreted. Mea culpa.

  Posted by: johnm on January 07, 2004 at 07:59 AM

• Extras?
  I'm a bit confused by your mention of getting all of the usual Apple extras. The dock is an extra cost for the iPm and so are the higher-quality "in ear" headphones.

  Posted by: johnm on January 07, 2004 at 08:06 AM

• Extras?
  I think he meant the more intangible Apple extras, like a slick UI design, style, seamless integration with iTunes and high quality. Basically, all the little things that Apple fanatics go on about. :)

  Posted by: ajsutton on January 07, 2004 at 01:36 PM

• Disagree on iPod pricing
  "Alas, in all too typical Apple style, the $249 price tag is just plain silly -- they should have hit the $199 price point."

  And throw away $50 of pure profit? Why? They already have the #1, #3, and #5 best selling MP3 players in the world, so I think they know what they're doing when it comes to pricing. Lowering the price to $199 would lower the margin (or eliminated it altogether) and for what, so it can cannibalize sales of the $299 iPod? At $249, you have to think seriously "should I get it, or pay the extra $50 for 15GB?" This is pricing GENIUS - it MAKES the customer seriously consider the more expensive product.

  What I think you meant was "it would be silly for ME to spend that much on an MP3 player" but you can bet they'll sell a bazillion of them.

  Posted by: kdenehy on January 08, 2004 at 02:32 PM

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