Tram Town
Thursday, January 08, 2004
| Category: iPod-- Steve Jobs was, by all accounts, quite excited when he was announcing the details of the new miniPod. It's chief virtue, apparently, is that it is smaller... in every respect. The screen is virtually unreadable, it is physically able to slip down between the cushions on a sofa, its price is all of 20% less than its predecessor, and, most remarkably, its capacity as a firewire disk drive is half that of its predecessor. Our good friends at BusinessWeek Online noticed all of this and more... Less music in a device marginally smaller at about the same price. Get it? I didn't, and few others will, either. In fact, while I was watching Jobs give his spiel, my mind replayed the infamous scene from the cult classic mockumentary Spinal Tap where the dim rock band tries to explain that dials on their amplifiers go to 11 -- and that's what makes them louder. I was left with the same sense of befuddlement after watching Jobs show off the smaller but much wimpier miniPod.And Indeed, the miniPod is likely to win some design awards and deservedly so -- just like the Cube. But shrinking the form factor and the capacity without a corresponding shrinkage in price will put Apple's fetish product street cred to the test. That could lead to disappointing sales.To be fair, it does pass the Diana Fisher test in that it comes in five different colours. My bet is that they repeat the original iMac shemozzle and force retailers to place orders in batches of five - one of each colour. eBay will go ballistic with aesthetes playing the colour arbitrage. You may now return to your regular Jobs Arse Licking... (I was inspired by Mark Latham there!) |
