Digital Trends

Apple iPod Mini 4GB July 26th, 2004 | by Larry Chen

Introduction

“A thousand songs in your pocket!” screamed Apple's ads for the original 5GB iPod when the company first introduced its revolutionary product into the consumer electronics market back in 2001. After more than two years of constant design improvements and a whirlwind marketing campaign, Apple has succeeded in making iPod the number one digital audio player on the market. In January 2004, Steve Jobs announced the impending release of a new little sister for the iPod — the iPod mini — a tiny device capable of storing that same thousand songs in your pocket, but smaller, lighter and more colorful than a regular iPod.

The biggest question, and perhaps also the biggest disappointment that people who watched Steve's keynote have is the relatively high price point Apple has set for its new product. The iPod mini is currently priced at $249, $50 higher than what critics had rumored, and for another $50, you could get the 15GB 3rd generation iPod, which holds about four times as much music as the mini. Did Apple set the price right? Is the mini going to sell? The answer came in mid-February, when the company announced that more than 100,000 iPod minis had already been pre-ordered at its online store since Steve Jobs' announcement. New orders placed in mid February are estimated to ship in mid to late March. Critics finally realized how hot the mini is. Apple makes no secret of the fact that the iPod mini is targeted toward those consumers who are considering buying a flash memory based MP3 player. While a potential customer can buy a 256MB or 512MB flash memory player for under $199, by spending $50 more, which is acceptable to most people willing to shell out $200 on an MP3 player, he or she could get the iPod mini with 4GB of storage space. Although another $50 would buy even more space to hold music, statistics show that most people are not willing to go that extra step, and many consumers simply don't have enough music to entirely fill up their iPod. Putting all that aside, a business-card-size iPod that comes in five different styles, Silver, Gold, Blue, Pink, and Green, is probably the coolest thing on Earth.

We were lucky enough to get our hands on the relatively rare “green” iPod mini for this review. According to iPodLounge.com, during the Feb. 20 6:00pm iPod mini launch, each Apple Store received “approximately 70-100 of Silver, 20 each of Blue and Pink, and 4 units each of Gold and Green” available, and all sold out the same night. Keeping that in mind, let's meet the iPod mini in person.