[RacerX]

Bleh. I'm glad I have 2 3G iPods. Love them. This mini-thing is ugly and doesn't offer value. I echo others in saying change the colors and lower the price!

As a recent happy owner of a 12.1" 1 ghz Powerbook, I was going to purchase some shares of Apple stock - guess I'll buy more XM Satellite Radio instead.

Sigh.

 

[DigDub]

the ipod mini looks small and that is a problem. the iriver ihp feels just the right size in my hand. the smaller ipod mini might slip out of my hands. and the original ipod's bigger screen, which was one of it stronger selling points. i don't know how the screen on the ipod mini will look like, but i bet it will be less readable than its bigger brother.

this thing is targetted at women? apple forgot most women carries a handbag, and size probably won't matter to them. and most women i know likes to listen to the radio, which sadly is missing from all the ipod line-up.

the price is too expensive for your average 'college girl'. and your average head-fier would probably find the 4gb too little amount of space to store your high quality high bitrate audio files. and the proprietary software needed to transfer files to and from a computer makes it practically useless for a portable hard drive, unlike iriver implementations.

and....oh sorry. did i bash it too much?

 

[Jazz1]

Quote:

Originally posted by NewSc2 Personally, I've stopped using Kazaa for anything other than music previews. I love buying my own albums and ripping them myself. Isn't $249 x 2 ( - discount) a bit much just to get your daughters to be honest? $500 buys a lot of albums ---- other than that though, the miniiPod looks great, and looks like something the female crowd would definitely love. Man, too many bills to take care of. Shure E3c, mini iPod, GBA SP, better subwoofer amplifier ...

Your right, but other than sitting at their computers, and listening to music, they are mostly mobile in their listening habits. Carting around CD's isn't going to work for them. iTMS downloads and iPods just naturally go together.

Sad that they probably won't discover high end sound while I'm still above ground

Do you think I could ever get them to sit still and listen to my AKG K1000 hooked up to my modest big rig, or to my ProAcs (with their own music)? Nope, they won't do it.

At least with iTunes we "share" our music over Rendevous via our three Macs, and they can hoot at my taste in music. I make appropriate noises about their taste in music.

Once in awhile I like something they like, and that just drives them crazy. Again, this kind of give and take would never happen unless we were sharing via the network or iPods.

 

[hempcamp]

I have an idea... let's all rush to judgment on a product before anyone's actually seen it in person or heard it!

--Chris

 

[lindrone]

I was able to go down to Macworld today (right after work) and play with the mini ipods for quite a bit... it's clear that they've been the hot item all day, most of the batteries has run down to almost nothing. So here's a few things I noticed:

The metallic surface is not as sleek as the original iPod's design, but the matte finish to the aluminum also doesn't leave finger print & grease like the back of the current iPod cases. Quite a few colors are actually a bit striking, lends a bit of personality, and much better looking in person than in any photographs I've seen so far. Not a day and night difference, but definitely the difference between appreciable beauty and bizarre choice. The silver case is by far, the worst looking. The red & bluish/green one is quite cool looking.

The iPod Mini sits quite a bit deeper in the dock, it's a little harder to take them out and plug them back in. Quite sturdy, nevertheless. This is neither an improvement nor digression, just different.

Even though physically it doesn't seem that much smaller, the combination of the way it feels in my hand, combined with the weight, makes this device quite impressive indeed. The weight and the feel in your hand makes it really feels much smaller than it really is. Feels like half of the iPod, even though it's not.

The screen is of the same quality, the new wheel is a touch control + mechanical control. You press down on it to do the normal 4-button functions like the iPod, and just glide along for the wheel operation. It's quite more intuitive than I had thought at first (I thought there might be problem with the clickiness being too sensitive and such).

The one detraction though, I had my E5c with me, so I got to test it out right away. The headphone output is generally the same quality, but it's quite a bit less powerful. It required about 10 to 12% more volume to achieve the same level of volume as I do with the regular iPod. This could mean that to power more inefficient phones, it might be even more problematic.

Overall, I still think it should've been cheaper. Once again though, it's one of those thing like iPod. When I first saw it, I definitely didn't think I would've ever owned one. After using one in real life though, I couldn't wait to get my hands on one.

 

[Spad]

The marketing point of the mini is the size of the player itself, not the capacity of the drive. Even if the price were the same as the 15GB iPod, it would still find a ready market.

I don't plan to call my broker as a result, but I'd be willing to bet that it goes over very well with a certain discriminating, fashion conscious segment of the market. For the rest of us the original iPods may remain a better choice.

I hope the Mini's scroll wheel makes it to the next iPod generation, assuming it's as well implemented as it appears to be.

 

[etys rule]

Well, first off, I was in the Apple store on Greene St not five hours ago. Didn't see a mini in sight. Didn't see a stitch of advertising in the store. What I did see were 20 & 30'ish girls and guys spending big money on electronics. Which leads me to my point. Instead of appealing to the young and hip aka metrosexual, they SHOULD HAVE:

1. Increased battery life
2. Designed a line out within the unit. The ol' file swapping excuse is getting old.
3. Improve the firmware ie. UI

That's it. Save the capital it takes to launch a new product with a limited market, tweak the almost perfect product, and continue to leave the closest competition in the dust. I'd be hard pressed to find one iPod user who wouldn't agree.

And BTW, when I asked the metrosexual at the counter about a Apple-made line-out ie. imp, he looked at me as if my etys were sticking straight out of my head. which they were...so much for that.

perfect the product. scrap the 4G'er. after you add the accessories, you could buy yourself a 15G'er. It ain't cheap.

Well, we'll see...my bet is that it sells well. But I think it just put off any improvements we all would like to see.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[hempcamp]

Quote:

Originally posted by lindrone I was able to go down to Macworld today (right after work) and play with the mini ipods for quite a bit...

Thanks for the informative post, lini. More like yours would be appreciated.

--Chris

 

[karmypolitics]

bleh.

Too bad the rumors didn't pan out. If they were true, omg, there would be a revolution akin to the original mac.

at least I didn't act quickly enough to buy stock! *runs off to buy creative stock

 

[Trance-Fusion]

I don't know why everyone thinks the minipods are over priced.. guys look at the competition first.. i mean it's competting against flash players it cost around 200 bucks for a 256mb flash player, 50 dollars more gives you the mini pod, that's 16 times the storage, and another 50 will give you the 15 gigs. Though most people who are looking for a flash player either don't have enough songs to fill it or just don't have the money so i'd doubt they would pay an extra 100 for the full 15 gigger, than the mere 50 extra...

p.s. if someone already wrote this, sorry i didn't read other pages.. i mean there are 6!!!

 

[karmypolitics]

hey guys, on metrosexuals...

did you know that the guy who invented the term is a homo? lol, and he's taunting straight men who "accessorize" as being effeminite!

 

[DJ Fusion]

Interesting. Who invented the phrase?

 

[EyEPoD]

first time i heard it was on some crappy episode of south park

 

[Frenchman]

I see you just looked at APPLES idea of "competition", aka choose the competition that makes you look the best.

The Nitrus can be had for 185$ on Amazon right now. Yes, it's smaller in disk capacity, but it holds a significant price advantage.

Then consider that we were on the verge of seeing an influx of new flash based players that will take advantage of new innovations in flash memory and the drop in flash memory prices that have come as of late.

Apple tried to capture the small size market, and snazzed it up with colors as a fringe benefit. For the size market, they failed. It was too late to capture the market early, and too early to take advantage of new technology. Sure, they'll sell well by Apple standards, but I doubt we'll see them taking over the "high end flash market".

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

Originally posted by austonia deleted because stupid comment. haha

You? A stupid comment? In this thread? No way.

Anyways...

Considering the competition (other 4GB players), I think it's fairly priced, especially when you consider that, battery life aside, it has WAY more features (FireWire disk mode, games, contacts, notes, calendars -- all the features of the normal iPod). That being said, $175-$199 would have been killer; at that price, it would have flown off the shelves (then again, maybe it still will, who knows). The problem with a $250 price point -- and this is true for the Nitrus as well -- is that for $50 more you can get a 15GB iPod. (Which says more about how expensive flash players and 4GB players like the Nitrus and iPod mini are than anything else.)

As for the product itself, I saw them in person today. The colors aren't that bad, actually. In fact, the one I thought I was going to like the least, green, was actually one of my favorites. It looks much better in person than the photos on the Web. And the scroll button/disk is VERY cool -- I wish my "normal" iPod had one instead of the over-sensitive buttons. The scroll button/disk, the screen, the iPod interface, and the solid (aluminum) body, taken together, make the Nitrus look like a cheap plastic toy. Unless you absolutely need the ability to listen for 15 hours without a recharge, the iPod mini is simply a better product overall, in my opinion. (Funny how no one knocks the Nitrus for it's 3-month warranty, when the iPod, which now has a one-year warranty, got trashed left and right for its original short warranty.)

Again, though, the biggest problem, to me, is that I think the $250 4GB player market is dead. There's just not enough demand, IMO, when you can get a 15GB or 20GB player for $299.


Quote:

Originally posted by lindrone The one detraction though, I had my E5c with me, so I got to test it out right away. The headphone output is generally the same quality, but it's quite a bit less powerful. It required about 10 to 12% more volume to achieve the same level of volume as I do with the regular iPod. This could mean that to power more inefficient phones, it might be even more problematic.

Keep in mind that although this could be because of a weaker output, it could also be due to different scales on the volume control. The "big" iPod, for example, is not linear -- 1/2 volume is actually around 3/4 of the way up the volume dial. You can't judge the output by how "high" you have to turn it up.