Here’s how I did.
Apple two days ago introduced the iPod mini, a business-card sized, 0.5-inch thick, 4 GB version of the popular iPod mp3 player.
I really only made a single prediction, and that was on the price of the device, which I expected to be higher than the original analyst-consensus of $100, as well as higher than the later street-consensus of $150. Well, it was higher than that. Weighing in at $249, it was higher than my $200 prediction, too.
But here’s something I didn’t expect: by combining the iPod’s operational buttons with the scroll-wheel, Apple essentially preserved the much-lauded iPod user-interface in the iPod mini, but smaller.
Right now, the general consensus is that the device is far too close in price to the 15 GB iPod, which is just $50 more. But as Daring Fireball points out, it takes a lot of money to miniaturize products which are already small. And they’re betting there’s a lot of people out there who’d love to have an iPod, but just figure it’s too heavy/too large to carry around.
While I’ve got no problem carrying around my brand new 40 GB iPod (woohoo!!), Kai’s first comment was, “Wow, so heavy!” (for the record, she was shocked it held 40 GB). 🙂 So…. at least from my experience — Daring Fireball’s assertion is correct.

The forest floor at Oscar Scherer
So here we are, on the morn-before-a-SteveNote: wherein Apple CEO Steve Jobs gives the keynote address for the (usually) twice-annual MacWorld Expo tradeshow, often introducing neat new products (such as the original and flatpanel LCD-based iMac), the super-small 12 and gi-normous 17″ PowerBooks, and so on.
This time around, the rumor-mill started about two weeks ago, when a bunch of paid Apple watchers (“analysts”) got together in a room and decided to release a joint press-release over Reuters saying they expect so-called “mini-Pods” — new, low-cost portable music players, based around the iPods — at this expo. The device(s) would cost about $100, use Flash-based memory instead of hard drives, and would help make the iPod as ubiquitous as Sony’s Walkman in the early 1980s.
While I agree that the timing for such a device is correct, I am having trouble reasoning out how Apple would be able to make it for $100. As As The Apple Turns noted recently, it seems unlikely Apple will be able to hit such a price-point.
However, as Cam pointed out to me in the car-ride to work this morning, there was an announcement yesterday on the availability of tiny, cheap ($70 each in quanities of 100,000/year) 2GB hard drives. This adds some much-needed credibility to the notion of a “miniPod”; right now, 2GB of Flash RAM for consumers is about $445; unless the profit margin there is gigantic, I can’t see Apple being able to produce a device using Flash RAM for under $250.
Earlier this morning The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about the rumored low-cost iPods. Unfortunately a subscription is required to view the whole article, so I’ve only read the blurb on MacMinute — but it looks like they’re expecting a $200 device.
I’ll agree with that. Any more expensive (and with an appropriate feature set), and Apple will start cannibalizing their current iPods; any cheaper, and they won’t be getting the profit margins they need to continue production.
As for what it will look like: I’m sorta stuck on this one. Apple is notoriously protective of their branding, so I can’t imagine such a device would look the same as the current iPod. But get much smaller, and you’ll need to redesign the user-interface, which to this date has won much praise for usability. So I’m not sure what we’ll get.
I’ll be taking score in my next post, stay tuned 🙂

I just wanna say: Tilex Mold and Mildew Remover is a product of the gods. It does a better job than my scrubbing ever did, and in 1/5th the time. Seriously. This stuff is awesome.
The four day weekend was good fun. Friday saw me downtown to make good on my resolution of reading more, and got distracted by a bridge 😉
Saturday I was rudely awoken by Amy (okay, okay, it was 11:15am, I probably should have been up anyway 😉 inviting me to join her and Erik’s family on the beach at 2pm. Darren and I carpooled down there with Melissa, and we explored a local state park beforehand, which, despite almost getting lost, was a lot of fun. The beach — Siesta Key — was packed. It’s been ten months seen it that full. We mostly threw the disc around… the heat was definitely oppressive. I’d have a couple pics for you, but I accidentally left el camero at Jeff’s place tonight.
Speaking of which, today, after a small pickup Ultimate game at GT Bray with Cam and Melissa, we headed over to Jeff’s with Kemp for a margarita/BBQ cookout/NHL2004 night — and man, was it just what I needed. Thanks Jeff, Cam, Melissa .. man was the food good. :: stretch ::
[Oh, would you look at that? Miracle of miracles! The backlight on my flatpanel LCD monitor seems to have fixed itself again. For those keeping score at home, from Dec 21st until five minutes ago, the top half of my display has been about half as bright than the bottom half. I’m starting to wonder if it’s just a wire that’s gotten loose. I would have called it in for service this weekend, but I left all my warranty info at work.]
Hope you’ve all had a most excellent and relaxing weekend.