BW Online | January 7, 2004 | A maxiPrice for Apple’s miniPod
Yeah, I can see the argument here:
Here are the hard numbers. The new miniPod will cost $249. That’s about $100 more than the rumor sites had posited. It will offer 4 gigabytes of capacity on its hard drive. By comparison, the entry-level iPod now costs $299 and has 15 gigabytes of disk space. The miniPod’s cost per gigabyte is $62.50. In the entry-level iPod, it’s about $20.
So Apple is asking customers to pay three times as much per gigabyte. I have one word for that. Ouch.
But again, with Apple products, design — both look-and-feel and functionality — is the intangible that moves boxes. Not everyone prices the individual components of the stuff they buy and the iPod is more than just the storage it comes with.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, of course. I’m not sure a *smaller* iPod was what the market was clamoring for, but then if Apple is planning to make video a component of future devices, this may not be the only form factor variation we see.