APPLE'S NEW MINI HAS BIGGER FEATURES
Apple's iPod continues to be one of the most successful selling mp3 music players on the market. This past holiday season, Apple stores in some of the bigger cities kept running out of them. They're compatible with both Mac and Windows. The three available models boast large storage capacities of 15 (the 10 gigabyte model was just upgraded), 20 and 40 gigabytes and sell for $299, $399 and $499 respectively. They're directly compatible with Apple's wildly successful iTunes online music stores, and they feature the award-winning user interface that lets you drill down to any desired selection within seconds. So how do you make something so popular even bigger? Make it smaller.
Apple's current iPods let users store literally thousands of songs. That's achieved via a combination of mp3's compression technology and that the current line of iPods all store their music on high capacity hard disk drives. But not all of us need to take 10,000 or even 5,000 songs along with us. In fact, many of us would be happy with oh, say a thousand songs. A whole lot of music lovers don't even own a 1000 songs in their entire collection of CDs. And if they do, they don't usually want to lug all of them around. And that's part of what Apple's banking on with their newest introduction to their iPod family, the iPod mini.
There's a whole class of portable mp3 players out there that store their music in computer memory. These devices typically come with 32 megabytes of non-volatile flash memory that can hold around 20-50 titles. Adding additional memory cards lets you increase the capacity or interchange the music selections. Trouble is that you have to remember which memory cards hold what songs.
 According to Apple's CEO Steve Jobs in his keynote at the recent Macworld convention in San Francisco, Apple realized that other mp3 players that used computer memory to store their songs didn't hold enough music. And they were expensive, especially if you bought more memory cards to increase the capacity. And most of these players in the $100 to $250 range can only expand to 256 megabytes. To take things to the next level, the iPod mini fits the same solid-state category, but weighs in at just 3.6 ounces and has a capacity of 4 gigabytes which translates into the ability to hold 1000 songs. According to Apple, this makes it the world's smallest 1000 song player.
The iPod mini is the same size as a standard business card. Since music is stored in memory, you can shake it up without any skipping due to shock. Placing it into the optional arm band ($29) while jogging is proof enough of that claim. Since the device is so much smaller, there wasn't room to place the four buttons over the Touch Wheel. So Apple has integrated those functions by placing them at the North, South, East and West positions directly on the Touch Wheel. Pressing the wheel at those points clicks the wheel and initiates the function. Otherwise, the Touch Wheel operates in the same manner with the select button in the center. And yes, like the bigger model, it comes with games, calendar, contacts and notes functions.
Apple has learned a thing or two from it's initial iPod experience. The iPod mini sports both Firewire and USB 2.0 interfaces and comes with wiring for both. Another lesson learned is that this device will charge directly via either connection. The optional mini dock ($39) lets it charge and synchronize. The included ear buds can be improved upon with Apple's newer in-ear headphones for an additional $39. You can also personalize it at no additional charge with an engraving of two lines of up to 23 characters each. Check out the Apple web site for other available options.
As one who enjoys music, I never felt the need to bring it along with me. After all, there's always the car radio. But after looking at the iPod mini, even I am tempted to go for one of these. It can easily slip into my shirt pocket, and did I mention that unlike it's bigger brother, it comes in five colors? Take your pick: silver, gold, blue, pink or green.
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