Archive - Jan 6, 2004

Ok, am I the only one who thinks Apple is going slightly loonie. So they unveil the "iPod mini"... great, a machine that holds 1,000 songs (4GB) and is the size of a business card. But the pricing is funked up man! The smallest iPod before today was 10GB and was priced at $299US; the new "mini" weighs in at $249US. They want to use this to go after the "High-end flash player market". Okay... I'm sorry, but this thing while being light and small and sexy does not satisfy the low end that everyone thought it would. This thing is for people who want to go running... and that is it. Pay $50 more and you get twice... oh wait, they upgraded that 10GB to 15GB, make that nearly 4 times the storage capacity! Am I completely lost?

I was just reading this article on CNET.com,Moving beyond monitors. It made me stop and wonder which direction we are going in. Are consumer electronics going to move down towards PCs in terms of margins and lower times between versions? Or are we going to see PCs become higher margin objects with fewer versions.

Whadda ya think?