There's a phone too, but that's not important.With the entire internet in a frenzy over the past few days in anticipation of today's Apple conference, the aftermath seems slightly less than rewarding. There has been much speculation in the past few months over an Ipod that would play back video, support bluetooth, include a replaceable battery, have an internet browser, a camera, GPS, and save the free world in general - today's release of the Ipod Nano, marks something slightly less interesting, but significant nonetheless.
After summarizing the existing iPod product line, Jobs explained that the iPod mini is what all of Apple's competitors are aiming for. Apple is "going to do something pretty bold," he said. Apple is "replacing it with something new."Jobs calls the iPod nano "an entirely new ground-up design, that also has 1000 songs in your pocket." The white device features a color display and can support photos, uses a grey click wheel to navigate, and is 80 percent smaller in volume than the original iPod -- thinner than a number two pencil, said Jobs. The iPod nano weighs 1.5 ounces or 42 grams.
Compared to the iPod mini, the iPod nano is half the thickness and 62 percent smaller by volume. It uses a 30-pin dock connector, so the iPod nano plugs in to existing iPod accessories, and can also connect using USB 2.0. It features a 14-hour rechargeable battery. It achieves its small size by eschewing a hard disk drive in favor of flash memory.
The iPod nano also features a new graphical clock, games, stopwatch and lap timer, and a screen lock that uses the click wheel like a combination lock.
"White is our signature color for the iPod ... but we decided to so a second color, and we tried it because it looked so cool," said Jobs, "so we're doing a black model as well."
The iPod nano ships today in 2GB and 4GB configurations for US$199 and $249 respectively. Apple is also offering customized iPod nano accessories including a $29 dock, $39 lanyard with built-in headphones, color-coordinated armbands for $29 each, and "nanotubes" -- green, purple, blue and pink slipcases, sold in boxes of five, for $29 each.
Despite the fact that Apple has sold millions and millions of Ipods, (in all variations) there are still millions of potential buyers waiting patiently to hop on the bandwagon when a product comes by that meets their specific needs. Right now, it doesn't look like the Nano Ipod is going to be that Ipod for very many people.
The Nano, as svelte as it is, doesn't deliver anything that there isn't already an Ipod to do. People who need something small for working out have turned to the Shuffle. Do they need a color screen? Not really. People with lots of music who may or may or may not want the neuteured photo viewing functionality have gone to the larger Ipods. Teenagers on a quest for rugged individualism have stumbled across the colorful Ipod Miny by the millions. The Nano looses some of its attractiveness right there because its only offered in two colors!
Undoubtedly, the Nano will still sell millions and further tighten Apple's lock on the audio player market because as it stands, there isn't a direct competitor, and the thing, as usual, looks darn cool.
I am one of the few who is patiently waiting for a real Ipod that fills in the gaps (such as gapless) with the players audio portion, and adds functionality (removable battery etc) in general. With no Steve Jobs keynote planned for the end-of-September Paris conference, it looks like we will have to wait yet a while longer still.
Article Link: Apple unveils iPod nano, ROKR phone, iTunes 5
Apple Introduces New Music Player (2005-09-09)