Apple Introduces iPod Mini
Apple’s iPod mini to cost $249, hold 1,000 songs
Steve Jobs rang in the new year and Apple Computer’s 20th anniversary on a tidal wave of consumer interest in legal downloadable music.
The Apple chief executive gave his annual MacWorld keynote address, with a particular emphasis on Apple’s digital music devices, to an estimated 60,000 Apple users and fans Tuesday at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.
The big news of the day was confirmation that Apple is introducing iPod mini, a compact and slightly less expensive version of the company’s leading digital music device.
The anodized metal half-inch-thick player is business card-sized, has 4GB of memory, holds 1,000 songs and is priced at $249. The price is about $50 cheaper than Apple’s previous least expensive model of digital music’s most popular product.
Although the Expo crowd applauded the mini, many analysts and Macintosh aficionados had predicted that Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple would debut a music player for as little as $100.
Jobs said Apple has sold 2 million iPods since the original device was introduced.
According to data through November, Apple has 31% of the total market, making the iPod No. 1 in both units sold and total revenue. The iPod mini is Apple’s attempt to ward off stiff competition it faces from lower-end flash-memory-based music devices.
Apple also has further expanded its iTunes digital music interface. In an effort to spur additional song sales and ultimately move more iPods, iTunes now features Billboard Hot 100 charts. Users can review Billboard charts by year and search through the decades to recall when a favorite song charted.
“It will give (iTunes users) a handy resource to point them to their favorite music that they might not have thought of otherwise,” Billboard director of charts Geoff Mayfield said.
More than 12,000 classical tracks have been added to expand the iTunes offerings to more than 500,000 tracks, making the Apple Music Store the largest online legal music store in the world that is not subscription-based.
Apple and Pepsi have joined to promote iTunes by giving away 100 million songs legally. Pepsi will offer 300 million yellow-capped bottles of its drink, of which one in three bottles will offer a free song through a winning code in the cap. The 60-day promotion will kick off with an advertisement during the Super Bowl.
Apple offered few enhancements to its popular line of professional applications, instead focusing on touting its success in the consumer music space.
But Richard Kerris, senior director of pro applications marketing, did take the stage during the keynote to give a live demonstration of Final Cut Pro 4’s RT Extreme, a real-time architecture with more than 200 filters that includes real-time color correction. Used on a dual-processor Power Mac G5 system, RT Extreme reportedly handles as many as seven streams of uncompressed SD video.
Jobs also introduced upgrades to the iLife software suite, which includes iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes and iDVD. ILife ‘04, which will debut Jan. 16 for $49 (and will be included for free in new Macs), will feature GarageBand, a highly anticipated software program that turns a computer into a recording studio capable of making original songs, back-up tunes or mixes.
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