Rumored iPod Flash Leaked 511
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently a -->detailed design of the new Flash-based iPod--> has been leaked. It doesn't have a screen and is this size of a cookie!" With size estimates ranging from 256 megs to a gig, it will have a much lower price point, and can be worn around your neck. Assuming it's not just a rumor. Update: 12/07 19:31 GMT by M : Temporary working link.
True purpose of the flash iPod (Score:4, Insightful)
New Music Distribution? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if it wasn't used for single album released, boxed sets (a la U2's recent release) come to mind.
And of course, DRM would become very interesting. Knowing Apple, you'd be able to transfer the files to your computer but only to iTunes.
Price points (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you are working out you really don't want the screen, and you only need an hour or two of music.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my $.02...
It's All Part of Job's Plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Evidently his plan is working. Last week that report came out showing about 6% of iPod users had switched from PCs to Macs and that another 7% plan on buying a Mac. The halo effect is boosting Apple's revenue.
So the iPod rules the HD-based market. Now it's time to take over the flash-based market and make sure no other company erodes Apple's dominance in the player market. I see this as yet another opportunity...people that can't afford an iPod will buy the new flash-based one. Money for Apple. When these people can afford it, they'll buy the big iPod. It's like the gateway drug to Macs.
Re:Daring Fireball covered this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:*Phew* (Score:2, Insightful)
No, I'm not talking about those annoying sites that flash and blink and play horrible noise, but the work put out by real flash design studios.
For example, the next generation of cell phones put out by Motorola / NTT Docomo will have Flash UIs. It's a nice looking, very flexible technology that's easy to embed and capable of accepting the industry standard tools.
Re:Sexist (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Younger people tend to be more technically savy, or at least more comfortable using technology for its basic purposes than older people. THere's no great mystery there. They grew up with the technology. I knew how to program my VCR when I was five. My mother still struggles with it. She didn't have any such device when she was at the oh-so-impressionalbe age of five, when you sap up knowledge and skills like a sponge.
2) Men tend to be more gizmo-happy then women. We like our toys. We like to know how things work. We like to MASTER our devices, and tweak and play aroudn with them. This is why there are more male mechanics. This is why there are more men in IT. We're not any more capable than women in the tech field, just generally more interested in it. It's probably because we've been socialized to have more of a leaning toward tech, but I wouldn't doubt there's some evolutionary biological component to it to.
That being said, there are plenty of technically competent, older women out there. I'd venture any reasonably intelligent woman of any age who makes an effort to understand tech could do so. But they're not the norm.
And for that matter, 48 is a reasonably young grandman. I'd wager your grandchild is still, just that, a child. The audience reading the article is, at the least, composed of people in their teens. Many are adults. Their grandmothers are 60 to 70 years old, or more. Mine's nearly 80. When she was my age, MP3 players didn't exist. Neither did CD players. Neither did computers. She grew up in an age that didn't give her an inclination to these sorts of things.
So stop being so sentitive.
Re:Daring Fireball covered this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Daring Fireball covered this (Score:2, Insightful)
I do not buy hd players because moving parts fail.
If Apple were to launch a flash iPod, I'd give it a look.
Re:Daring Fireball covered this (Score:2, Insightful)
You should hold one once. They don't feel disposable. Build quality is much better than a disposable.
Batteries are replaceable, too.
If you'll spend $150 on a flash player, why wouldn't you spend the extra $100 on an iPod?
Except (Score:3, Insightful)
1. A selection effect. The Macintosh and the iPod both target the same group-- people who are willing to pay more for a pleasant experience with their electronics. If someone buys an iPod that means they're okay with paying a bit more for a device that might not have quite as much functionality or disk space as some of the same-price-range alternatives, due to a perception that the thing they're buying will look cooler or be nicer to use or make them happier. This means this is the ideal person to make some sort of iMac sales pitch to. If you make a cheap minimal flash player you lose this selection effect; you are now targetting the budget market, where the halo effect is less likely to be effective because these are the people more likely to just go buy eMachines or whatever it is they make these days with a minimum of fuss.
2. The reason people are convinced to buy macs from the iPod is that after using their new iPods, they basically just think, I am really enjoying my iPod. If their music players are this nice, wouldn't their computers be even better? And start looking into getting a mac. So in order for the halo effect to kick in from the iPod the person has to be really impressed by the iPod. Being really impressive, even for the lower cost, is going to be a heck of a lot harder with a device without a screen or such. So the halo effect will be much harder for Apple to attain via the iPod Flash, if it's real.
Re:Daring Fireball covered this (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So, is this how Apple Marketing Works? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you kidding me? How rediculous. Apple scratched their PDA(recently, this is within the last couple years under steve jobs) and NO valid leaks were ever made. Most of Apple's best stuff doesn't get leaked, but given how GOOD it is, people are much more likely to try and leak it against apple's wishes...
Do you get all worked up over the new HP desktop tower? No? Well how about the dual-proc g5 tower when Apple released it? Apple's hardware has higher expectations for an initial WOW factor, thats all.
Re:Except (Score:5, Insightful)
We could debate this forever, but until we know exactly what Apple will come out with, it's a moot point. If they put out something cheap that gets lost in the shuffle (which would really really surprise me), then I think it would be a big mistake on their part. My guess is that they'll come out with some new player that makes all the other flash-based players look like cheap toys you could pick up at any gas station along with a bobblehead doll with any fill up.
Re:iPod mini #2 (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not just his opinion, it's the opinion of a lot of people.
And you apparently don't know a lot about marketing if you think that Apple "could not produce enough". There are such things as manufactured shortages.
I've searched high and low for honest to goodness iPod Mini sales numbers, including through Google, Apple's investor relations site, and my E*trade account (where I can get company research that would otherwise be unavailable to the general masses). They just don't seem to break iPod sales down by model; they only release total numbers, and I doubt that's unintentional. I don't think anybody would dispute that the iPod Mini has sold fairly well to early adopters but I've just never been able to find any real data to back up your claim about Apple selling a "shitload" of them - anybody can underproduce an initial shipment and then claim demand is so high that there are shortages.
If someone's got some real and up to date sales numbers of the various iPod models, let's see em and compare. My guess is after the first wave of Apple die-hards buys in (which should have happened by now), the regular iPod will outsell the Mini by about 10 to 1 - it's just a much better value and I think most people know it.
Pricing does matter when you're taking about the mass market. Despite the iPod's overall success, I think Apple's still stuck in this idea of pricing things for their little hardcore niche. I don't think it's going to work in the medium- and long-term with the iPod Mini, and I'm not sure it's going to work at all with a flash-based iPod (I don't think there are millions of Apple faithful out there waiting for a $200 flash-based iPod, and there certainly isn't a mass market for such a thing).
Then again, I was surprised at the original iPod's success at its price point, so I've been wrong before - but that player was blazing a trail where none had gone before. Flash-based mp3 players are a dime a dozen so it's not as if Apple can come in and convince a bunch of people that their player is worth a premium of 100% or more over every other player on the market.
Usability (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps Apple can make a usable MP3 player. Both of the flash-based MP3 players I owned before my iPod had clunky interfaces that were torture to use. It was easy to just play, but setting up playlists, suffling, etc. was a process that took a long time. The PC software sucked, too.,
The digital watch sized buttons were also a pain. I frequently had to pull one out of it's nylon holder to squint at the tiny screen and manipulate the tiny buttons.
If I were still in the market for a player, I think Apple's intergration with ITMS and the usability factor might influence me to give these a look. If they exist
Re:Sexist (Score:1, Insightful)
So I was ok when you said "Men tend to be more gizmo-happy then women." but then you went on and on about how women aren't tech savvy it got to me. Trust me I'm a woman and I'm easly the most tech savvy person in my family and I own as many gizmo's as anyone I know...and I can tell you how they work (I'm an electrical engineer). The only limiting factor on my gadget buying is my fiance who won't let me buy all the gadgets I want. I know many women that have many gadgets.
The two biggest problem with women getting in to the tech field are sexist people like you and a lack of female roll models. For a long time women have been oppressed and not allowed in the professional world. For example Emmy Noether was a female mathematition in the early 1900. When she tried to go to a university to learn about math she wasn't allowed to take classes. After only being allowed to audit classes she eventually tested in to the doctoral program. She was a brilliant mathematition but no one would hire her for only one reason, she was a woman. She worked under her father, unpayed, for many years publishing papers. Eventually she became one of the leading mathematition in the world but still could bairly find a job teaching. When she left Germany during WWII the only job she could find in the US was as an assistant professor at a women's college. This was not because she lacked teaching ability or experience but because she was a woman.
The only evolutionary componant is that men are physically stronger than women and as a result were more able to physically control women.
Re:Daring Fireball covered this (Score:3, Insightful)
Hint1: Why do you think iPod Mini comes with a shoulder strap?
Hint2 [marware.com]
Hint3: Not every part of your body is shaking equally vigourously when you jog. If you have been using a belt clip, it's time to try something different. Cured skips on my 3G iPod like a charm.
I don't know how you can jog with a flash-based player though. Never decide you don't like your original playlist and want to select something different in the middle?
Re:So, is this how Apple Marketing Works? (Score:3, Insightful)
No screen = not all bad (Score:3, Insightful)
I use my flash based player when I go for a jog and I don't think I've ever looked at the screen. Actually the screen has so much dust on the inside of it (brilliant Creative construction), you can barely see it anyway.
$5 says that the Apple Marketing Machine calls this the iPod Sport.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
iPod announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on, there are a ton of mp3 players, including these CD-MP3 players which are the wave of the future. And $400? Another Apple lunacy that won't sell!"
iPod mini announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on, it's $250! And a third the capacity of the $300 version! I'd pay $50 more to get three times the capacity! Another Apple lunacy that won't sell."
iPod flash announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on! It's $200! And the market's already saturated with flash players! I don't see the point. Another apple lunacy that won't sell."
It's
Look, I sympathize. I've twice in my life looked at products my own company was developing and said "that's stupid, it'll never sell!" The first time was when working at Berkeley Systems and looking at the first You Don't Know Jack demo (you know, the only product originally made by BSI that's still around to one degree or another?); the other was at Macromedia, looking at Dreamweaver "Oh come on, anyone who really wants to code HTML uses vi/emacs! Who'd pay $400 for another WYSIWYG HTML editor when they can get hotmetal for free?" Turned out? A ton of people who wanted a good one.
Face it -- we're just not very good at predicting market success for some products
Re:Sexist (Score:1, Insightful)
If I were to say "women tend to be more likely to major in elementary education than men" would I be sexist? The elementary ed. program at my school was over 80% women.
statistical trend != sexism
anecdotal data (Score:5, Insightful)
you don't find teenage girls walking into best buy, picking up a rio mp3 player and saying "ooh it's so cute, i want pink!" "yuck becky, pink is so last week, i want gold. that's hot." but you do see that in apple stores. and then their mom comes in behind them and says, "ok, but you're not getting that louis vuitton bag for christmas!"
i'd like to see a breakdown by ipod model as well, but anecdotal data says the ipod mini has cache among markets that other mp3 players don't even address. other tech companies are trying to market to the slashdot crowd, with gee-whiz features and more storage for less money. apple's realized the rest of the world is a much bigger, less fickle market and now they're getting paid for it.
My father-in-law bought one (Score:3, Insightful)
Figuring out how to plug the usb cable in took another minute. The cable signage is bad, so you can't tell which orientation is right until you try.
Well actually, Apple wasn't blazing a trail in disk-based mp3 players either. It wasn't blazing a trail in the 4gb market, and it won't be blazing a trail in the flash market.
Well, it depends on which mass market you're talking about. The iPod is hardly a niche, given that it basically owns its category. The iPod mini is hardly a niche, given that also owns its category.
In fact, Apple owns the market. What kind of niche are you talking about?
What you probably mean is "Apple needs to drop the price down even lower to broaden the iPod market."
Value depends on what the consumer is looking for. My father-in-law values size more than capacity. He doesn't have a lot of music to begin with, so the mini was fine.
You're making the classic mistake of thinking that consumers are like you in their value judgements. They aren't. Consumers buy for all sorts of reasons, and a lot of those reasons don't appear rational to disinterested observers.
Re:So, is this how Apple Marketing Works? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have one thing to say to this stupid idea.
"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
No screen? Why not (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the article discussion complains that leaving out the screen is a bad move, but is that necessarily the case?
Maybe not.
In the essay What have we got to lose? [douglasadams.com] (as anthologized in _The Salmon of Doubt_), Douglas Adams gives a fascinating overview of all the cases where a clever new product was born not by adding some dazzling new feature, but by identifying properties that could easily be dispensed with.
So... an iPod with no screen. Well why not? How often do you actually look at the screen? Probably not very -- most of the time the device sits in your pocket, and a lot of people just control the thing through Apple's remote control, which of course has already dispensed with the screen, and has in fact left you with something that looks a lot like the device in the article's photo [apple-x.net].
But okay, some of the complaints are right -- browsing through even a modest music collection can get tedious when the only controls you have are to skip forward & back by a track. Being able to see what's going on is nice, but do you have to be able to see it when every iPod listener is already ipso facto listening to the device? Think about it: this would be an excellent place to use some kind of audio / speech interface, and Apple certainly knows how to design a system that way, having had a speech interface built into Macs for many years now.
That may or may not be what Apple is up to here, but it seems like an obvious future direction for the suite of products. It wouldn't surprise me at all if, for example, a future version of the bundled headphones doubled as a microphone somehow, so that you could control the device by just saying "iPod, shuffle playlist Beatles", and it would go forth and do your bidding, and you didn't have to dig it out of your pocked or your backpack or whereever you keep yours stashed.
Re:Daring Fireball covered this (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Face it -- we're just not very good at predicting market success for some products
That's because of a fundamental difference between slashdot geeks and normal people. Slashdot geeks love technology for the sake of technology. Regular people love technology because it does things for them or makes them do things quicker/better. A product like dreamweaver is unattractive to a slashdotter because it hides the underlying technology, adding a layer of obfuscation. At the same time, it's attractive to a normal person because it lets you put content on the internet quicker.
If you want to build software that sells, this is the way to do it:
1) Find a common task in any particular market that can be optimized.
2) Write software so users can do that task as easily and quickly as possible, not impeding any other tasks they might have, thereby saving them time and effort.
3)
4) Profit
Re:Does it have radio, FM broadcast, recording,etc (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course only an AC troll like you would assume you need to "overpower whatever station", when there's already a blank frequency available for such devices. (DUH!!)
Yes, I do enjoy my MP3 player. Gee, I say MP3 player, not "TV/VCR/DVD" or 'TV/VCR/DVD/MP3' or 'TV/VCR/DVD/PVR/DVD-R/WATCH-RADIO-SCUBA-GEAR'. Did you read that, troll?
So how about you just STFU and stop being a waste of internet bandwidth, lameass troll?