Apple Updates iPod 689
TheRaven64 writes "Apple seems to have quietly updated the iPod Photo and iPod Mini lines. The Mini now comes in 4GB and 6GB flavours, priced at $199 and $249 respectively. The iPod Photo now comes in a 30GB flavour for $349 - only $50 more than the 20GB iPod with a mono screen and shorter battery life."
Discontinued Lines (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I knew it... (Score:2, Interesting)
Apart from the slashvertising... (Score:5, Interesting)
It would, I believe, take the market from PalmSpringSourceOne but also a large chunk of the consumer Windows PDA market (the business market being firmly Outlocked into place).
But... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:iPod Photo (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:When will they update the firmware for old iPod (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I was pretty peeved when I bought an iPod, they shipped a new model a month later and didn't think to add this simple hack. And before you say "Just buy another iPod", no. No thank you. This is software.
A good example of what to do is Blizzard. Every time they release new features its gets updated up and down the board. With the Warcraft 3 Expansion they gave similar functionality to the original game in a patch (without the new units). It wouldn't have killed Apple to do the same.
iPod Camera Connecter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, I can't find this item anywhere on Apple's site. Anyone else have any luck?
No Ogg Support (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:iPod Photo (Score:2, Interesting)
HQ recording ... (Score:5, Interesting)
iRiver's do it. [iriveramerica.com]
iPod's running linux seem to be able to do it. [hackaday.com]
Stupid hardware crippling! It's pathetic!
they saw me coming (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Accessories for New Photo Models? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:One thing the editor left off.. (Score:5, Interesting)
512MB Shuffle: $99
1GB Shuffle: $149
4GB mini: $199
6GB mini: $249
20GB iPod: $299
30GB Photo: $349
** MISSING **
60GB Photo: $449
Archos PMA-400 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This gives them complete price coverage (Score:5, Interesting)
The AV cable, which I believe came with the iPod Photo, is now extra. Same deal with the dock.
The older models came with both a USB 2.0 and a FW cable. The new ones come with only a USB 2.0 cable.
On the plus side, Apple is clearing out the old stock. Check the "Special Deals" page. 40 GB and 60 GB with
Apple Earphones
AC Adapter
FireWire cable
USB 2.0 cable
iPod photo AV cable
iPod photo Dock
Carrying Case
$379 and $479 respectively.
Mini downgrades (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess that they are really looking to get into the windows users' pockets instead of the Zen micro... Its 19 for the firewire cable, and 29 for the power apadtor, so price cut isn't really a pricecut..
For thoose who have USB2 and take their laptop everywhere its a bargain after all..
more interesting is the camera connector:
The new iPod Camera Connector is an optional accessory that enables customers to connect their digital camera to iPod photo and import their photos into the iPod. By simply connecting the iPod Camera Connector and a digital camera*, customers can easily transfer digital images to their iPod photo, providing tremendous storage space so they can take more pictures. Imported photos are immediately viewable on iPod photo's crisp color screen, and can also be brought back to iPhoto(R) on the Mac or various photo applications on the PC. The iPod Camera Connector is expected to be available in late March for $29.
Re:No Ogg Support (Score:2, Interesting)
Here is the list of features I need:
Here are the features I would like but don't need:
The iRiver iHP-120 seemed like the perfect player for me, but they had to discontinue it. The rio karma is close, but I NEED the FM tuner. Right now I have my choices limited to the Nomad Zen Micro and the iAudio M3. I'm leaning towards the iAudio as it has all the needed features, and does very well on the desired features. The micro seems like a great player, but linux support is kind of a hack (and you need windows to update the firmware). Plus by the time you buy the remote, you've spent more than you would on the iAudio.
The only thing holding me back is that I don't know anyone with an iAudio player.
Re:iPod Photo (Score:3, Interesting)
I still have no idea what the purpose of the iPod Photo is. Sure, the better battery life and color screen are nice, but who really cares about carrying their photos around with them for viewing on a 1.5-inch screen?
Very convenient presentation tool. Just google "iPod photo presentation". The top two links in the search results pretty much sum it up:
HOW-TO: Put PowerPoint on your iPod Photo [engadget.com]
ZappTek's presentation-to-iPod photo software [engadget.com]
Re:I knew it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not bad but not as good as it looks either. Note that no iPod comes with the dock any longer, and the iPod photos do not come with a firewire cable either (the older 4G iPods came with both firewire and USB 2.0 - the 20GB still does).
Probably not a big deal for a lot of people, but not having a dock myself I can tell you I wish I did, and as I have not yet been able to get my iPod working reliably with USB 2.0, it's nice to have both cables. (Plus it means I can leave one connected to my PC at all times, then bring my USB cable with me wherever I go and use the iPod as a portable hard drive.)
Apple would charge something like $70 for the firewire cable and dock separately, so you're not really getting that much (if any) value over the old 40GB iPod photo when you also factor in the smaller capacity.
I also sort of lament the fact that with each new revision, the iPod becomes less of a luxury product and more of a commodity... but that's inevitable, I guess.
Re:Where's the 40GB ipod? (Score:2, Interesting)
Got a 40gig 4th Gen iPod. Total cost was ~$70.
I'm waiting for the Aireo 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ipod mini.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The iPod is still cool, but it's too popular to to be hip any more.
Who the hell cares? There's no innovation here. (Score:0, Interesting)
Creative Labs or iRiver puts out a new product, it doesn't even get mentioned. Apple rehashes one of their shittiest players, and introduces something hardly revolutionary for an extremely inflated price, and it makes the front page.
I don't understand.
It's a step up from a storage dump for photos (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a Sony digital camera, just an old 3.2 MP model. On my annual 2-week vacation with the kids to our CO cabin, the pictures still pile up at that file size. Sony's proprietary memory format (did I mention this was Sony?) means memory sticks are pricier than flash memory, and while I have a few I'm not really wanting to load up on them any more, especially because I'd like to switch to a Digital Rebel sometime here.
Personally I don't want to lug my laptop on vacation. That's a leash and something else to worry about packing well. The new 30 GB with a direct camera-to-iPod cable would let me dump photos without the to-laptop (and later to-home-box) deal. Along the way I could hook the little thing up to my relations' TVs and show them whatever little set of images I wanted, mostly of shots from home they haven't seen.
For me the high-res monitor seems a little much, that's mostly redundant to the camera, yep. But as a little utility added to my regular iPod, this makes a lot of sense the way Apple did it up. I have a 10 GB iPod, 3rd generation, right now, and it's not pushed for space, so I think the 30 GB model would take my books on tape (for the long drive) and music along with whatever photos I decided to keep, no problem.
So there you go. Maybe I'm the market. And I didn't consider it before, either; I'm betting the price difference was a killer for sales, at first.
No More 40GB iPod? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:One thing the editor left off.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's getting to the point where, no matter how much money you have, you can buy a complete product from Apple. And the amount of money you have determines which product you buy, too - no pricing collisions, just a steady progression where customers can self-select their position on the Apple pricing ladder...
What about Sony MiniDisc? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:iPod Photo over iPod (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:iPod Photo over iPod (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck, the classic iPod is overkill, too. That overkill is what makes it such a great little device. Think about it--when the original iPod came out, more than a few people were saying "who in their right mind pays several hundred dollars for a glorified Walkman?"
Thing is, though, the iPod really re-introduced us to portable music. Yeah, there were other high-capacity players on the market first, but it was the iPod that really got the ball rolling. Looking back, I'm struck by how non-portable 'portable' music used to be. Now, I have my entire music library with me wherever I go--and I take it for granted that I don't need to lug a bigass CD folder and swap disks to get the music I want. It seems like a small difference, but the net effect is quite significant. With just a slight reduction in the overall space and inconvenience of listening to music on the go, I've found that I'm listening to a whole lot more music--and really enjoying it.
The iPod Photo may just end up doing much the same thing for photographs (and, in another few years, movies.) Right now, my photographs are split between "old" photos in boxes and bulky albums, and "new" photos on a comparatively small laptop. The laptop is nice, but it's still significantly more of a pain to carry with me than an iPod.
It isn't that much of a leap of the imagination to see the iPod Photo doing the same thing for your photo albums as the iPod did for your CD collection. Going to grandma's? Load up the baby pictures on the same miniscule device as the driving music (and 'Bananaphone' to keep Junior happy). Plug it into her TV, and you've got an instant, large-format slideshow that grandma doesn't need to squint at through her reading glasses. Got a slideshow to go along with your thesis presentation? Don't bother with the laptop, just bring your iPod. Hell, just wanna show your friends that fish you caught on vacation? It's already on your iPod, which you'll have on you for the drive, anyhow!
Sure, it's easy to say that it's "overkill"--but then again, so much about the iPod is already overkill. A CD player is perfectly adequate for playing music on the go, after all. What makes the iPod so successful, though, is that this "overkill" is just enough to make a pretty radical change in one's music listening habits. Jobs is betting that it can do the same with your photo viewing habits--and to be honest, he may be right. Luckily for him, even if he's dead wrong, it's still the same awesome music player it has always been--and the added photo functionality isn't likely to turn many people off...
Re:This gives them complete price coverage (Score:4, Interesting)
My wife keeps stealing my iPod Mini (4GB) when she goes to the gym, so I said I was going to buy her one.
She said she would be happy with the iPod Shuffle at $99, I told her we would get least the $149 1GB version.
Now with this announcement, I will just go ahead and get her a iPod Mini (4GB) @ $199, since she loves mine so much.
So, Apple got another $100 out us!
I think Apple is doing a lot of things right lately and I'm about to jump into the Mini Mac wagon once my bonus check comes next month.
If I really like it, I see a PowerMac in my future next year. I will have to give it a long evaluation, since I have used PeeCee's for many years, I want to give them a honest evaluation before judgement. I am a UNIX gearhead though, so I think I'm going to love the new Macs.
The pricing is genius, pure genius (Score:3, Interesting)
Genius.
Apple is my new favorite company (Score:5, Interesting)
Bwah? They changed the price of the iPod? But the 40 gig iPod cost $399. That's just how it is.
So I head over to store.apple.com. What else have they changed? iPod photo? 60gb?! Only $449! Sign me up!
So for only $50 more than I'd expected to pay, I get 20 extra GB, and a color screen.
Apple is my new favorite company.
Off topic, does anyone know where the Apple call center is? Cute accent...
Interesting market share news (Score:3, Interesting)
For the third quarter of 2004, the iPod accounted for 92.1% of the market for hard drive-based music players, according to the NPD Group, up from 82.2% a year ago. Players from Creative Technology and Rio were a distant second and third, with 3.7% and 3.2% of the market, respectively. Market share numbers for the fourth quarter have yet to be released.
So for hard drive players (~60% of the portable digital music player market) that is:
- 92.1% Apple iPod (all non-shuffle varieties)
- 3.7% Creative (all HD models)
- 3.2% Rio (all HD models)
- 1% Other HD players
This is a breathtaking dominance of the market space that serves as an indicator for the related on-line music purchase/subscription market. If 7.9% of the hard drive players are non-Apple, and we assume the larger capacity HD player market space is where the most volume from these services is coming from, then that is a small piece of pie for all the players (Napster, Buy, Wal-mart, others?) to carve up into a successful and sustainable (profitable) business.
Further, Apple's iPod Shuffle is targeting the remaining ~40% flash-based player market. Even if the Shuffle is 50% as effective in market penetration as big brother iPod is, that would leave Apple with a (wildly) estimated ~45% of the flash player market. So again, competition would be nosing for larger nibbles, instead of the crumbs of the HD market, but still a far smaller pie to distribute.
All this points (for me anyway) to an impending consolidation of WMA related service offerings. Specifically, I would look for Napster to end it's offerings after Wallstreet destorys an already paltry stock for the failure of a $30M campaign against iTunes Music Store with the "Do the Math" campaign. Also, I would look for Buy.com to further phase out their download music store in favor of higher margin CD sales as they find even offering $0.79 selected tracks isn't creating market traction. The "hope" for WMA may be in Wal-Mart - the icon of the price elastic shopper - who may prefer $0.89 downloads (and $189 players) to Apple's $0.99, $199 combinatons.
Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why they should be reminded on the front page, so they remember to buy it from Apple. That's the defenition of an advertisment.
If ppl are so interested in Apple's crap, why don't they just look at their website? This is as stupid as those "IE Bug discovered" each time there is a new one,
Re:One thing the editor left off.. (Score:3, Interesting)
New Software (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone notice on the side of the iPod page it says:
Get the most out of your iPod photo. Coming in March, new software lets you:
I *would* say it's an indication of an iPhoto-like app for the PC, but it made no mention of being Windows- or Mac-specific, so maybe it's just some other program or iTunes enhancement that would be more appropriate for managing photos on an iPod photo.
Re:Yawn... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, to the nerd who has been holding off on a music player purchase, the notion of a better deal on ipod (in the case of the color or mini models or the defunct 40gig) is stuff that matters.
Of course it would be better if the headline read (on say, January 23) "Apple to release new ipods in four weeks" but this is useful too.
One man's advertisement is another man's consumer education.