The iPod
The advertisement reads “1,000 songs in your pocket”. How can they make that claim? Maybe I listen to really long songs. Or really, really short ones. Either way, I would either get more than 1,000 songs on it, or less.
Sorry, but that was just bugging me. Time to get into the nitty gritty of the new product from Apple Computer, the lame named iPod. (Enough with the “i” names already! Time for Apple to think different, or at least pick another letter for a change.)
Priced at $399, the iPod will sell a hundred thousand units in the first six months. Come Macworld Expo in January, I expect to hear Steve Jobs brag about the early success of the iPod. I envision something along these lines: “Let’s talk about iPod.” (clap-clap-clap) “When we created the iPod, we really thought we had a winner on our hands. Since its release last October, Apple has sold over 100,000 units!” (Louder “clap-clap-clap” from the sheep in the audience. Including me.)
So the iPod will be an early success. No doubt about it. But after the initial wow factor of the Mac faithful wears off, sales will plummet, the price will be cut in half, different color choices will be made available, and it will become compatible with PC’s. And it still won’t sell as many units as Apple had hoped it would. The reason is simple, and can be summed up in one word. Sony.
Sony will soon jump in with both feet with a unit that is small, plays MP3s, will work with a PC and a Mac, and will cost a third less than the Apple unit. You will be able to buy it everywhere from WalMart to CompUSA. There will be ads for it all over the place. It will support RCA audio in to rip CD’s right from your home CD player to its built-in hard drive. (Which will be twice the size of the current iPod.) There will be an adapter for cars, which will broadcast the audio from the Sony model over an car audio system via FM. The adapter will boast the signal, and clean up the music some, giving you CD quality sound.
This is, of course, just my guess. But I think it is an educated one based on current technologies and needs. People simply don’t carry music around with them like they did in the 80’s, via a walkman. Sure, some people do, mostly teenagers, but how many of those teens can buy a MP3 player for $399, providing they are a Mac user to begin with? It is all about Car audio today.
The iPod is a great looking product. It looks like an Apple product inline with their new Titanium theme products, which is a good thing. I actually like the Mac OS system 7.1 style interface to it. I think it is probably the easiest to use MP3 player out there. Unfortunately, Apple is marketing this thing to a VERY small market. (Got an iMac with no FireWire port? Sorry, sucks to be you.) Very few of the installed user base of Mac user can actually use the damn thing, let alone the rest of the computing world.
And again, at $399, this thing is WAY overpriced.
Don’t get me wrong. I want one. I would have already ordered it had the price been reasonable, which to me would be under $150. At the current price-point, however, the only people who will buy it is diehards, those who HAVE to have the latest and greatest from Apple. (Which is usually me.) But even those people will think twice at this price.
All in all, the iPod, as currently priced and marketed, will be a failure. But gosh, I hope I am wrong.
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