January 13, 2004

iPod Mini vs. The Pretenders

I know I'm still harping on Apple products, but I never posted anything more on the bitter reactions to the iPod Mini. Here's another link courtesy of Anil Dash's daily links page, this time from the Business 2.0 blog:

Mini Pricing

Apple isn't pricing the Mini to compete against the lineup of its own products. It's pricing the Mini against rivals, just like it should. The little machine is squarely in the same entry level price cluster as the Nomad MuVo2 and the Nitrus Rio (both the 1.5 and 4 GB versions).

The accompanying chart should be required reading when Macheads bitch and moan about iPod Mini pricing. If I had the money this instant, I'd be in possession of the li'l bugger this weekend. Hell, I may get it anyway, bills be damned (or delayed really).

In an earlier post, the stuff of wet dreams:

Build Your Own iPod

The San Jose Mercury News has finally let the cat out of the iPod bag.

Santa Clara audio chip maker PortalPlayer, which made it possible for Apple Computer to quickly design its iPod music player. Using the template that PortalPlayer designs, just about anyone can design a music player. Then they can take that design to Flextronics to have it built on short notice.

We agree, and reported on this trend earlier in "The Rise of the Instant Company."

I already have a dream about assembling my own Mac (no one builds a computer, they put the shit together like a jigsaw puzzle!). If I could somehow do the same with an iPod-like device... Man oh, man!

Posted by ronn at January 13, 2004 11:45 PM

Comments
Remember the short lived days of the Mac clone? You literally could build your own Mac from scratch.It's mainly just the software that's proprietary. And what's the iPod but a teeny hard drive, a few chips, and some proprietary software to access it? Posted by: don on January 19, 2004 01:26 AM
don: With the recent rebranding of the iPod by HP, I wouldn't be surprised if Jobs/Apple will do the same with other products. Hardware cloning may not be in the picture, but iTunes and QuickTime will both worm their ways into the hardware of Windows-based PCs starting this summer. I hope this will spur some of them to try out Apple products and come over to the other (i.e. Good!) side. Posted by: ronn on January 19, 2004 06:31 PM
I don't think that Mac cloning is a good idea in the way they did it before but I would like to see a possibly co-branded Mac by HP that wouldn't conflict with the existing Apple lineup. What I have particularly in mind would be a $499 system like the vectra for the corporate market, for that matter, maybe only even sell it to the corprorate market. If, and this may be tough, if HP could get pricing on MS office low enough to bundle with a $499-$599 slim form factor desktop, there may be a ton of companies that would go for it. Posted by: Dale Cosby on March 20, 2004 11:05 AM
Dale: I think Mac would harm its brand recognition with another cloning deal. But like you, I think the future of the company needs another HP deal. Of course, Jobs must make sure they get something out of it. By having HP place Mac software on their systems in exchange for the co-branding, they may get a few more switchers; at the very least, Windows-based PC users will be using Mac software. Let's just hope Apple is smart enough to be forward thinking and timely. Posted by: ronn on March 20, 2004 09:18 PM
ipod is great i dislike ipod mini. if turned upside down is pod! check it out Posted by: briana on January 3, 2005 01:55 PM