Apple ships iPod mini; over 100,000 pre-orders already
Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 08:40 AM EST
Apple today announced that iPod mini, the world's smallest portable music player ever to hold up to 1,000 CD-quality songs, will be available on Friday, February 20 at 6:00 p.m. at the Apple Store(R) (www.apple.com), Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers throughout the U.S. iPod mini is encased in an ultra-portable, lightweight anodized aluminum body and available in a choice of five colors-silver, gold, pink, blue and green. Apple has received over 100,000 pre-orders for the iPod mini which was introduced last month.
"The response to iPod mini has been off the charts," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing in the press release. "iPod mini broadens the market for iPod by competing head-on with flash-based players. iPod mini costs only about $50 more than a 256MB flash-based player, yet it holds 16 times the music, is smaller, is easier to use and provides superior
audio."
Smaller than most cell phones and weighing only 3.6 ounces, iPod mini builds on the success of the original touch wheel with Apple's innovative patent-pending Click Wheel, which combines the ease and simplicity of the touch wheel with five push buttons for precise, one-handed navigation.
iPod mini features the same award-winning user interface as the rest of the iPod family and works effortlessly with Apple's iTunes Music Store, the world's number one digital music service, and the iTunes digital music jukebox software for seamlessly buying, managing and listening to digital music collections. iPod mini uses Apple's patent pending Auto-Sync technology that automatically downloads an entire digital music library onto iPod mini and keeps it up-to-date whenever iPod mini is plugged into a Mac or Windows computer.
iPod mini for Mac and Windows will be available in the U.S. through the Apple Store (www.apple.com), Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers on Friday, February 20 for a suggested retail price of $249 (US). iPod mini will be available worldwide in April. iPod mini comes in a choice of a silver, gold, pink, blue or green 4GB model and includes a belt clip. All iPod minis include earbud headphones, an Apple iPod mini power adapter, a 1.2m 30-pin to FireWire(R) cable, a 1.2m 30-pin to USB 2.0 cable, and a CD with iTunes 4.2 for Mac and Windows computers.
Optional accessories with the following suggested retail prices include the iPod Dock for $39 (US), in-ear headphones for $39 (US) and arm band for $29 (US). Laser engraving is available for iPod mini for $19 (US) and can include two lines of text with up to 23 characters per line.
iPod mini can be charged with either the FireWire or USB 2.0 cable and gets up to eight hours of battery life. iPod mini requires a Mac with a FireWire port and Mac OS(R) X version 10.1.5 or later (Mac OS X v10.2 or later recommended); or a Windows PC with a FireWire or USB 2.0 port, or a Windows-certified FireWire or USB 2.0 card and Windows 2000, XP Home or Professional.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
iPod wanna-bes have some good points
By DAVID POGUE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Even this early in the campaign, the battle for the popular vote is really heating up; the incumbent is being challenged by lesser-known candidates from all over the country. The winner will be the candidate with the best balance of new ideas and appealing looks -- and battery life.
I am referring, of course, to the battle for supremacy among portable music players.
So far, Apples iPod is by far the best seller among high-capacity players. You can't stand in a public place without seeing a pair of those telltale white earbud cords pass by; for once in its life, Apple gets to find out what its like to be Microsoft. The iPod's success has spawned an entire industry of iPod cases, iPod accessories, iPod software -- and now, inevitably, iPod imitators.
The rivals come from electronics makers (Samsung) and from fellow computer makers (Dell, Gateway), as well as from veteran music-player makers (Rio, Creative Labs, iRiver).
Most have the familiar iPod ingredients: a screen, a tiny hard drive and a rechargeable battery, all packed into a rectangular case and accompanied by earbuds. Most come with jukebox software that loads your collection of music files -- which you've either downloaded or ripped from music CDs -- onto the player over a USB 2.0 cable.
The other notable feature of these competitors is a marketing message that's either just like the iPod, only cheaper or just like the iPod, only better.
Now, you're a busy person, so here's the gist: most of these rivals are cheaper -- usually $100 less. But better is another story. The iPod is still smaller, more attractive and more thoughtfully designed than any of the upstarts.
It's also much more than just a music player. The iPod also can display your calendar and address book, serve as a text reader and alarm clock, help you pass the time with a suite of games, and so on. And that's before you tap into the universe of add-on shareware programs. (One intriguing example is iSpeak It for the Mac, which converts any text file, Web page or Microsoft Word document into a spoken-word soundtrack, using synthesized voices.)
Even so, certain audiences will prefer the iPod alternatives. For many people these days, cheaper is better than better. Maybe you crave this bell or that whistle that the iPod lacks -- a built-in FM radio, say, or a built-in microphone. Or maybe your Windows PC doesn't have Windows 2000 or XP -- a requirement for iTunes, the iPods companion software. (The iPod works with both Mac and Windows; most of the rivals are Windows-only.)
Furthermore, if you want to shop at one of those $1-a-song music Web sites, buying an iPod pretty much limits you to Apples iTunes music store. (The Apple store's AAC files play only on the iPod. The other stores, like Napster and Musicmatch, deliver WMA files that work on any player except the iPod.) Of course, that's like being forced to drive a Lexus or limited to staying at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, but you get the point.
Finally, most of the iPods-in-training can run 13 to 16 hours per charge (manufacturers estimates), compared with the iPod's eight. That may be important if you routinely commute from, say, New York to Tokyo, although bigger batteries add bulk.
If cost is your main concern, you'll find that the standout feature of Dell's cleanly designed, very easy-to-use DJ 15 player is its price: $250 for the 15-gigabyte model, $300 for the 20. For now, Dell is even offering an additional 10 percent off at dell.com. (The corresponding iPods cost $300 and $400.)
Unfortunately, the Dell feels half-baked, especially in comparison with the highly polished iPod. For example, its the only player that falls silent when you try to fast-forward or rewind through a song. Incredibly, you can't make it play your entire music collection, beginning to end. And although it has a microphone for low-quality voice notes, the Dell offers no way to copy such recordings back to your PC for transcription or sending to friends. It's a feature in search of a purpose. (Dell says it will fix the latter two glitches later in a revamped player this March.)
Like the Dell, Gateway's 20-gigabyte DMP X20 ($300) is bigger and heavier than the iPod. It features the industry's biggest screen (2.5 inches diagonally); a microphone like the Dell; and an FM radio, which is a logical and welcome enhancement to a music player. (Yes, yes, I know 5,000 songs fit on here -- but what am I supposed to listen to after that?)
The Gateway and the iPod are also the only players in this derby that can play digital books on tape from Audible.com.
But here again, some of these improvements over the iPod seem to have been designed more for the brochure than for the customer. Why on earth, for example, can't you record songs off the radio? (You can on the Samsung YP-910 GS player, and it's a great way to expand your music collection legally.) And to load up the Gateway, it's too bad you have to use plain old Windows Media Player, a clunky program not particularly suited to the task -- and one with no integrated online music store.
The Samsung ($300), by contrast, was designed to sync with the Napster 2.0 $1-a-song service. Unfortunately, the Napster jukebox software is no iTunes; it offers, for example, no way to rip your CDs into audio files for loading onto your player.
When it comes to bonus features, the Samsung gets an A for effort. It can memorize 44 FM stations as presets; record from the radio; and, when you attach the included antenna stick, it can even broadcast its music to an unused FM frequency on your home or car stereo. (Alas, interference prevents this kind of transmitter from working very well, regardless of the player.)
Ultimately, though, the Samsung is just too eccentric. Its button layout is random and illogical, its plastic case feels cheap, and the large neon-blue lights that surround its control pad are just as tacky as those light-up frames people install on their license plates.
Now, most of these machines fall short because their designers have tried to mimic the iPod without fully understanding its appeal. Two of the players exhibit personalities and fresh approaches all their own.
One is the black metal-clad iPod-size iRiver iHP-i20. The price is the same as the iPods ($400 for 20 gigabytes; a 40-gigabyte model costs $500). But you also get an FM radio, a superb built-in voice recorder (with a choice of recording quality and format), an external tie-clip-style mike and two line inputs for recording directly from, say, a CD player or tape deck. Like Apple, Dell, Gateway and Samsung, iRiver provides a wired remote that controls the player in your purse or pocket -- but iRiver's remote has a little backlighted screen of its own that identifies the current song.
The iRiver's crushing disappointment is that it was designed by engineers, for engineers; its menus make the cockpit of a 767 look spartan.
None of the companies who lust for some of Apple's pie can deliver the elegance and convenience of Apple's music trinity: iPod, the iTunes software and the iTunes music store.
But if an iPod isn't for you, you could do worse than buying the Dell for its simplicity and economy, the iRiver for its super-geeky feature list or the Rio Karma for its excellent design and compact dimensions. In this election, at least, there can be more than one victor.
