Keynote Thoughts
As I'm sure most people are aware, Apple announced new G5 Xserves, some iLife updates and a new iPod mini today. I'm glad to see the new Xserve stuff - it shows how aggressively Apple is going after the enterprise market - traditionally one of their weakest spots. It's also very nice to see iPhoto get a kick in the pants, and I can't wait to grab a copy. Although I'm no musician, GarageBand (or GrajBand, as Jobs calls it) looks like a fun toy as well. There were a few "Jagwires" and a sprinkling of "ooo-tomatically"s too, which makes for a fun Keynote Drinking Game.
But the iPod mini - I dunno. You can now pay $249 for 4 GB of storage or $299 for 15 GB of storage. One of my biggest complaints with the original iPod is that I didn't think it was priced aggressively enough for the storage you got - something Apple fixed fairly quickly. Likewise, I just don't think $250 for 4 GB of storage is competitive enough to go after the market Apple claims it wants. The low-end is traditionally very price-sensitive, and Apple is traditionally very averse to competing there - a principle the new iPod mini seems to demonstrate very well. We'll see - hopefully Apple will at least hold their own.
After Beth finishes showering, we're gonna head over to the show floor and check some stuff out. I'm hoping to talk the MacSoft guys into giving me a copy of Halo, which hopefully should be easy, given that I did some work on it back in the day. :-)
Comments
The mini-iPod price might be expensive but it's now more just a Digital Music player than a Hard Disk. The product size is also interesting unless Steve's hands are huge. My first thought was also it was too expensive but the competition is not that cheap too. It might work.
Posted by: Anonymous & Coward | January 7, 2004 03:33 AM
The size might be compelling enough for some people; one reviewer recently picked a competitor over an identically priced iPod that held many times more songs, simply because of size. But I'll be much more interested in the minis once the price creeps down. The good news is, with the mini I can see the price coming down significantly in the future. It's just not there yet. But like the original iPod, there will probably be a surprising amount of demand even at the high price.
Posted by: Matt Diamond | January 7, 2004 11:11 AM