AfterDawn: News

Apple: 100,000 pre-orders for iPod Mini

Apple announced today that it has so far received over 100,000 pre-orders for its upcoming new portable digital audio player, iPod Mini. iPod Mini will go on sale on Friday in States and costs $249 in the U.S. and €249 in Europe (appx. $320).

The device is Apple's response to cheaper flash-based devices that provide less storage space than original iPods, but cost significantly less. Even that the product isn't exactly cheapest possible on the market, it still seems to fit a niche that wants to have iPod's style but not the price tag that goes up to $499. Obviously the other factor that boosts iPod Mini's sales is the size of the device -- it should offer the identical award-winning user interface that "big iPods" have, but the size of the iPod Mini is only 3.6 x 2 x 0.5 inches (9.1x5.1x1.2cm) and it weights 3.6 ounces (102g).



iPod Mini has a storage capacity of 4GB and comes in variety of colors (unlike the original iPods that come only is "Apple white").

Source: Reuters

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 17 Feb 2004 15:18

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• 7 comments

• pbailey

  Crazy.... Wouldn't you just pay the extra $100-$150 and get the next ipod up, way more hdd space, tho ofcourse it is ridiculously large!! phtt. 4 gig compared to 15gig for not much more, but hey if the idiots are there, sorry, i mean market, than all the best. I would like to meet one of these 100,000 people with more money than sense and laugh at them. Ha!! Or ask for a handout, one of the two, lol ;).
  
  Ok, that's my ramble for 2day.
  
  Bailey

  17.2.2004 16:04 #1

• Ghostdog

  Well the comment you posted doesn´t paint a very intelligent picture of you either.
  
  4GB is already a lot of space when it comes to digital music. I would asume a lot of people just don´t need 15GB of music or more all at once.
  When you add to this the smaller size and the cheaper price, I´m not at all surprised Apple has a few hundred-thousand interested customers.

  18.2.2004 00:57 #2

• nonent1ty

  4Gb = ~1000 songs (at 128).
  
  And the average person;
  
  a) Can't tell the difference between MP3s at 128 and 256
  
  b) Only downloads the odd single, the majority of people still have most of their music collections on CDs which they'll rip to their PC when they get an MP3 player (generally an iPod, because iPods are 'cool').
  
  c) Doesn't have over a 100 CDs.
  
  
  
  Oh, and d) why the hell is ~4 days too little music for you anyway?

  18.2.2004 06:00 #3

• nonent1ty

  e) By your logic everyone should buy the 40Gb iPod because, well, it's only ~150$ more than the 15Gb and you get over twice the capacity. But strangely enough people don't, probably because most people don't have 500$ to spend.
  
  Feel free to construct a similar arguement to the one above, but applied to a comparison between the iPod Mini and the 40Gb (even more compelling no?).
  
  (And my apologies for the double post)

  18.2.2004 06:06 #4

• pcshateme

  sure the ipods are sweet and all but its realy expensive, you can pick up and mp3/ cd player for only $40 and burn 700mb of mp3s to one $0.25 cdr

  18.2.2004 11:45 #5

• GrayArea

  IMHO iPod is a trendy status symbol for those who have lots of disposable income (or wish to appear that way). The actual specs are a non-issue. It just needs to be the *newest* one. Most people who buy them probably rarely used a portable music player of any kind in the past. Once the novelty wears off (next week?) and the next cool widget comes along you'll find lots of good deals on iPods at eBay...

  19.2.2004 07:22 #6

• GrayArea

  Oh, and hopefully when you buy your eBay iPod it will have three or four hundred bucks worth of iTunes left on it! ;-)

  19.2.2004 07:27 #7