The Toshiba drives are not $300. That's retail pricing for the 40 Gig. Apple buys in quantities and probably pays about $75-$90 for it.
A low priced "colorful" iPod would make perfect sense to accompany the purported MacDonalds promotion. You've got kids and teens going to the stores everyday. Get a free iTunes download and possibly win one of the cool new iPods. We'll see.
Yes, $99 is probably too low, too soon. But think about the genius of this for a second. Everyone loves the iTMS, but the knock is that it only works with the expensive iPod.
Apple has always said that it's music service was really a way to sell hardware (i.e. iPods). If a low cost iPod were available, there would be very few reasons not to get one.
Perhaps it's $199 (or $149). Then again, Apple has been pretty good these days and maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised.
First decide how much storage is enough, then whether CF will be feasible.
Would 2-8GB be enough. CF is already in the 2-6GB range -- it's hideously expensive though. But it won't always be. There are people who would rather have <5GB of solid state music and recording than 80-160GB of HDD based storage. Outdoorsy types, for one.
It kinda becomes two seperate markets at that point, when costs allow it. Digital vault or digital player?
being one of the "80-160GB of HDD based storage" preferer types, i'd quite like to see a podStation. hooked up to the hifi, has a dock for the pod, iTunes through a TV screen and given the prices of 3.5" HDDs, this could be done for the £100-120 range.
ah hell, why not throw in a TV recording facility to boot...
the whole discussion about the 1" drives seems totally unrealistic to me. the price point will be too high for the sacrifice in capacity. would i like a small miniPod (2GB capacity) for £250 or a normal iPod (10GB capacity) for £250? hmmm... let me guess.
The Toshiba drives are not $300. That's retail pricing for the 40 Gig. Apple buys in quantities and probably pays about $75-$90 for it.
A low priced "colorful" iPod would make perfect sense to accompany the purported MacDonalds promotion. You've got kids and teens going to the stores everyday. Get a free iTunes download and possibly win one of the cool new iPods. We'll see.
I meant the new 1" Toshiba drives. I believe the 2 GB model is around $275. Anyone have more info?
Yes, low capacity, low price Mini iPods in colors to tie in with the McDonald's promo would be huge. Especially if both are announced side by side at MWSF 2004.
2 gigs that's pointless. Now if they could make a Mini iPod with 5 or 10 gigs, and be under $200 that would be great. $99 would be ideal but it'll be another year before prices get there I suppose.
I agree. Making the same iPod, but with lower prices and possibly higher battery life via 64 meg buffer, is more important than making a new line of mini iPods. However, I DO think they should add back some COLOR in the Apple line, across the board!
as i mentioned here (http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...threadid=34422) a solid state iPod would be nice! size half of an actual iPod (just the screen) , "system" with a little less function (no games, calendars, "external fw harddrive" etc), just 5 gigs of music!. or 2G, which equals?- well, enough music for a walk
a 99$ machine would be the ipod for the rest of us!
btw, pricing: dock, remote control etc is NOT included
colors?? no, iPod is white - you recognize an owner by the white earplugs!
I forgot there's also a Pepsi tie-in coming during Superbowl weekend in February. Another opportunity to promote both iTunes and a new $199 low-priced iPod. A solid state version is interesting but most companies are gravitating towards hard drives. I doubt Apple would go backwards. A 2 Gig iPod could hold up to 400 tracks, plenty for many people.
as i mentioned here (http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...threadid=34422) a solid state iPod would be nice! size half of an actual iPod (just the screen) , "system" with a little less function (no games, calendars, "external fw harddrive" etc), just 5 gigs of music!. or 2G, which equals?- well, enough music for a walk
a 99$ machine would be the ipod for the rest of us!
Um, yea right?
Look around. Any MP3 playes that are $99 are 128MB, 256MB if you can find a special. Not anything close to 2GBs. A 2GB flash card is around $400 retail. There is no way Apple could make and sell a $99 iPod around a 2GB flash card.
I don't see a point in Apple selling a 512MB iPod. 2 GB would be the lowest I see that makes sense, 5 GB seems more resonable. A toshiba 1.8" 5GB HD is retailing for about $180. Meaning in bulk Apple could probably get them from $135 (which is 75% of the retial price). I could see Apple being able to produce a 5GB iPod for $199.
And on a side note, is it just me, or do the latest iPods seem cheaper made than the originals. I don't know, maybe it is because I like to acutally feel the push of a button and such, but when using the latest iPods it just seems like one of those candy cell phones. It just seems fake and cheap.
"Amidst the buzz surrounding the rumored "mini" iPods coming, MacRumors has received reliable confirmation that, indeed, new mini iPods will be announced at MacWorld San Francisco.
The new iPods will be physically smaller than current iPods. The "mini" description reportedly refers not only to the diminished capacity (2GB and 4GB by some reports), but also to the physical size of the units.
The mini iPods will also come in a variety of solid colors as previously reported... but no confirmation on patterns/stripes. At least one of the colors intended is reported to be "Gold" (not plated).
Pricing of the new iPods remains unclear -- with conflicting reports, but is reportedly significantly less than current models."
Cell phone style snap-on covers will look like ASS! No way Steve and Jonathan would EVER do that.
Besides, the way iPods are selling i think people would take them a=in Blue Dalmation if that's all that was available, especially if they're $199, let alone $99.
After looking at all the flash based players at the store yesterday I have tosay Apple has their work cut out for them. It will be more difficult to come up with a winner against the competition that it was with the disk based machine.
At the minimal they will need a 2GB machine and then they will have to find the optimal form factor. My preference would be for thin, something that can be placed in the pocket and not leave a nasty bulge.
I do hope that they continue to improve the iPod disk based line. The flash and disk based products need to be distinguished also as differrent technologies.
Well this seems to be the smoking gun. $50 1.5 GB Micro Drives shipping this quarter.
Start-up brings hard drive to the masses
Last modified: June 3, 2003, 4:00 AM PDT
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Cornice wants to take the hard drive out of PCs and put it into your camera.
The Longmont, Colo.-based start-up has developed a 1.5GB, 1-inch diameter hard drive for consumer-electronics devices that the company says will be cheaper, smaller and hold more data than some other mini-hard drives or flash-memory cards.
And, while competitors are sure to challenge the company, electronics manufacturers appear to be responding favorably at a time whendrives are increasingly becoming important and more prevalent in the consumer-electronics world.
Samsung will release a digital video camera containing the company's drive in the United States in August. The camera, which was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show but not described in technological detail, will cost less than $600 and is "about the size of a pack of cigarettes," Cornice CEO Kevin Magenis said.
Twelve companies so far have plans to release products with the drive. RCA/Thomson, Rio and five other manufacturers will come out with MP3 players with the Cornice Storage Element (SE), and a major U.S. retailer will feature a Cornice-based player from Korea. The first products will hit shelves this quarter, according to Cornice.
"I think it could have a big impact," said Cindy Wolf, an analyst at In-Stat/MDR. "From an audio perspective, it could kind of help spur the market. (Consumer-electronics makers) will be offering a hard-drive player at a lower price than an iPod."
The Cornice drive is essentially a minimalist hard drive that has been shorn of any materials not needed for portable electronics. The drive, for instance, doesn't have its own internal, dedicated pool of memory; instead, it uses the memory shared by the rest of the device to cache data. The SE doesn't have rails, so it can't be removed from the host device; by contrast, the drive is planted on the motherboard, and transfers of files are accomplished through USB (universal serial bus) ports.
"Mechanically, it has about one-third of the parts of a Hitachi Microdrive," which is also a one-inch drive, Magenis said. The drive contains only three screws, compared with 12 in similar mini-drives, he said.
A reduction in components cuts costs. The 1.5-inch GB drive, which has been in volume manufacturing since mid-April, sells for $65 in quantities of 10,000. The company is aiming for $50, Magenis said. By contrast, existing standard 1-inch Microdrives from IBM sell for $219 at retail or more, while 1GB flash cards go for around $200.
The price versus density argument results in an interesting niche, said Susan Kevorkian, a consumer-electronics analyst at IDC. Currently, Flash-based memory players containing 256MB of flash sell for $175 to $200, she said. The Cornice-based devices will sell for less than $200 but come with 1.5GB of storage.
At 1.5GB, the Cornice-based devices will hold far less than other hard drive-based music players such as Apple Computer's 20GB iPod. However, they will cost less and be smaller. RCA's planned MP3 player using the micro-drive is about the size of a sports watch. The iPod and other hard drive-based players, which come with 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch drives, are much larger.
Smaller devices are more popular. In 2003, 1.8 million hard-drive music players will get shipped, compared with 1.9 million flash players and 10.6 million MP3/CD players, according to IDC.
"To date, there has been a real difference in form factor between flash-based players and hard-drive players," Kevorkian said. "Even the iPod is bulkier than the flash players."
Energy savings
Density also will increase, Magenis said. Along with stripping out parts, the company has worked on engineering issues such as keeping energy consumption down. The RCA device will be able to run 12 hours on a single battery charge because the drive's motor shuts down between tasks, Magenis said. Shock-absorbing materials in the drive case will allow devices to sustain the shock from a 1-meter drop, he added.
Although a start-up, Cornice has been able to establish at least some credibility early on with large manufacturers--in part because of its pedigree, said In-Stat/MDR's Wolf. Engineers and executives from Maxtor, Seagate, Quantum and other hard-drive makers largely staff the company. Magenis, for instance, was a vice president of engineering at Maxtor. Cornice's chief technology officer, Curt Bruner, served as chief electronics architect at Quantum.
Some of Cornice's employees came from Dataplay, a once-promising mini-disc start-up.
Established manufacturers also are helping the company. Texas Instruments manufactures silicon for the SE, while the platters are made by Hoya, which manufacturers the small, thin disks for a number of companies. The drives are assembled in a factory owned by SAE, a subsidiary of Japan's TDK.
"Fundamentally, SAE is carrying our working capital," Magenis said. Venture investors include Nokia, CIBC World Markets and Texas Instruments.
Competitors are pursuing the market as well. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, which took over IBM's hard-drive division, is coming out with a line of 1.8-inch drives this year. Currently, only Toshiba markets 1.8-inch drives, and one of the few products that contain the drive is the iPod. The paucity of finished products containing these sort of drives will change soon, said Bill Healy, general manager of the mobile business unit at Hitachi.
Hitachi will come out with a 4GB Microdrive before the end of the year. Flash-memory cards, which now hold 1GB of data, meanwhile, will continue to boost density.
Magenis, though, claims it will be tough to beat Cornice on price. The industry is moving away from flash and toward hard drives for storage, and coming up with a minimalist hard drive takes time.
"It took us almost three years to do this," he said. "Anyone else is literally looking at at least two years."
Comments
A low priced "colorful" iPod would make perfect sense to accompany the purported MacDonalds promotion. You've got kids and teens going to the stores everyday. Get a free iTunes download and possibly win one of the cool new iPods. We'll see.
Apple has always said that it's music service was really a way to sell hardware (i.e. iPods). If a low cost iPod were available, there would be very few reasons not to get one.
Perhaps it's $199 (or $149). Then again, Apple has been pretty good these days and maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised.
Originally posted by Matsu
First decide how much storage is enough, then whether CF will be feasible.
Would 2-8GB be enough. CF is already in the 2-6GB range -- it's hideously expensive though. But it won't always be. There are people who would rather have <5GB of solid state music and recording than 80-160GB of HDD based storage. Outdoorsy types, for one.
It kinda becomes two seperate markets at that point, when costs allow it. Digital vault or digital player?
being one of the "80-160GB of HDD based storage" preferer types, i'd quite like to see a podStation. hooked up to the hifi, has a dock for the pod, iTunes through a TV screen and given the prices of 3.5" HDDs, this could be done for the £100-120 range.
ah hell, why not throw in a TV recording facility to boot...
the whole discussion about the 1" drives seems totally unrealistic to me. the price point will be too high for the sacrifice in capacity. would i like a small miniPod (2GB capacity) for £250 or a normal iPod (10GB capacity) for £250? hmmm... let me guess.
Originally posted by MacsRGood4U
The Toshiba drives are not $300. That's retail pricing for the 40 Gig. Apple buys in quantities and probably pays about $75-$90 for it.
A low priced "colorful" iPod would make perfect sense to accompany the purported MacDonalds promotion. You've got kids and teens going to the stores everyday. Get a free iTunes download and possibly win one of the cool new iPods. We'll see.
I meant the new 1" Toshiba drives. I believe the 2 GB model is around $275. Anyone have more info?
Yes, low capacity, low price Mini iPods in colors to tie in with the McDonald's promo would be huge. Especially if both are announced side by side at MWSF 2004.
I agree. Making the same iPod, but with lower prices and possibly higher battery life via 64 meg buffer, is more important than making a new line of mini iPods. However, I DO think they should add back some C O L O R in the Apple line, across the board!
a 99$ machine would be the ipod for the rest of us!
btw, pricing: dock, remote control etc is NOT included
colors?? no, iPod is white - you recognize an owner by the white earplugs!
Originally posted by k_munic
as i mentioned here (http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...threadid=34422) a solid state iPod would be nice! size half of an actual iPod (just the screen) , "system" with a little less function (no games, calendars, "external fw harddrive" etc), just 5 gigs of music!. or 2G, which equals?- well, enough music for a walk
a 99$ machine would be the ipod for the rest of us!
Um, yea right?
Look around. Any MP3 playes that are $99 are 128MB, 256MB if you can find a special. Not anything close to 2GBs. A 2GB flash card is around $400 retail. There is no way Apple could make and sell a $99 iPod around a 2GB flash card.
I don't see a point in Apple selling a 512MB iPod. 2 GB would be the lowest I see that makes sense, 5 GB seems more resonable. A toshiba 1.8" 5GB HD is retailing for about $180. Meaning in bulk Apple could probably get them from $135 (which is 75% of the retial price). I could see Apple being able to produce a 5GB iPod for $199.
And on a side note, is it just me, or do the latest iPods seem cheaper made than the originals. I don't know, maybe it is because I like to acutally feel the push of a button and such, but when using the latest iPods it just seems like one of those candy cell phones. It just seems fake and cheap.
just have different colored backlights for the buttons.
currently it's red so offer Blue Green orangish yellow and white
Or something to that effect, that would be cooool.
Here's my mock-up
"Amidst the buzz surrounding the rumored "mini" iPods coming, MacRumors has received reliable confirmation that, indeed, new mini iPods will be announced at MacWorld San Francisco.
The new iPods will be physically smaller than current iPods. The "mini" description reportedly refers not only to the diminished capacity (2GB and 4GB by some reports), but also to the physical size of the units.
The mini iPods will also come in a variety of solid colors as previously reported... but no confirmation on patterns/stripes. At least one of the colors intended is reported to be "Gold" (not plated).
Pricing of the new iPods remains unclear -- with conflicting reports, but is reportedly significantly less than current models."
I'm hoping for all white with two fat blue diagonal racing stripes.
Besides, the way iPods are selling i think people would take them a=in Blue Dalmation if that's all that was available, especially if they're $199, let alone $99.
CONFIRMED.
At the minimal they will need a 2GB machine and then they will have to find the optimal form factor. My preference would be for thin, something that can be placed in the pocket and not leave a nasty bulge.
I do hope that they continue to improve the iPod disk based line. The flash and disk based products need to be distinguished also as differrent technologies.
Dave
Originally posted by Ensign Pulver
Yeah, Gold sounds lame.
No, this is a good thing. Gold is bling bling. The minipod would also become the accessory to buy and wear.
Originally posted by naderby
No, this is a good thing. Gold is bling bling. The minipod would also become the accessory to buy and wear.
Gold is trailer trash.
Originally posted by Clive
Gold is trailer trash.
Start-up brings hard drive to the masses
Last modified: June 3, 2003, 4:00 AM PDT
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Cornice wants to take the hard drive out of PCs and put it into your camera.
The Longmont, Colo.-based start-up has developed a 1.5GB, 1-inch diameter hard drive for consumer-electronics devices that the company says will be cheaper, smaller and hold more data than some other mini-hard drives or flash-memory cards.
And, while competitors are sure to challenge the company, electronics manufacturers appear to be responding favorably at a time whendrives are increasingly becoming important and more prevalent in the consumer-electronics world.
Samsung will release a digital video camera containing the company's drive in the United States in August. The camera, which was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show but not described in technological detail, will cost less than $600 and is "about the size of a pack of cigarettes," Cornice CEO Kevin Magenis said.
Twelve companies so far have plans to release products with the drive. RCA/Thomson, Rio and five other manufacturers will come out with MP3 players with the Cornice Storage Element (SE), and a major U.S. retailer will feature a Cornice-based player from Korea. The first products will hit shelves this quarter, according to Cornice.
"I think it could have a big impact," said Cindy Wolf, an analyst at In-Stat/MDR. "From an audio perspective, it could kind of help spur the market. (Consumer-electronics makers) will be offering a hard-drive player at a lower price than an iPod."
The Cornice drive is essentially a minimalist hard drive that has been shorn of any materials not needed for portable electronics. The drive, for instance, doesn't have its own internal, dedicated pool of memory; instead, it uses the memory shared by the rest of the device to cache data. The SE doesn't have rails, so it can't be removed from the host device; by contrast, the drive is planted on the motherboard, and transfers of files are accomplished through USB (universal serial bus) ports.
"Mechanically, it has about one-third of the parts of a Hitachi Microdrive," which is also a one-inch drive, Magenis said. The drive contains only three screws, compared with 12 in similar mini-drives, he said.
A reduction in components cuts costs. The 1.5-inch GB drive, which has been in volume manufacturing since mid-April, sells for $65 in quantities of 10,000. The company is aiming for $50, Magenis said. By contrast, existing standard 1-inch Microdrives from IBM sell for $219 at retail or more, while 1GB flash cards go for around $200.
The price versus density argument results in an interesting niche, said Susan Kevorkian, a consumer-electronics analyst at IDC. Currently, Flash-based memory players containing 256MB of flash sell for $175 to $200, she said. The Cornice-based devices will sell for less than $200 but come with 1.5GB of storage.
At 1.5GB, the Cornice-based devices will hold far less than other hard drive-based music players such as Apple Computer's 20GB iPod. However, they will cost less and be smaller. RCA's planned MP3 player using the micro-drive is about the size of a sports watch. The iPod and other hard drive-based players, which come with 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch drives, are much larger.
Smaller devices are more popular. In 2003, 1.8 million hard-drive music players will get shipped, compared with 1.9 million flash players and 10.6 million MP3/CD players, according to IDC.
"To date, there has been a real difference in form factor between flash-based players and hard-drive players," Kevorkian said. "Even the iPod is bulkier than the flash players."
Energy savings
Density also will increase, Magenis said. Along with stripping out parts, the company has worked on engineering issues such as keeping energy consumption down. The RCA device will be able to run 12 hours on a single battery charge because the drive's motor shuts down between tasks, Magenis said. Shock-absorbing materials in the drive case will allow devices to sustain the shock from a 1-meter drop, he added.
Although a start-up, Cornice has been able to establish at least some credibility early on with large manufacturers--in part because of its pedigree, said In-Stat/MDR's Wolf. Engineers and executives from Maxtor, Seagate, Quantum and other hard-drive makers largely staff the company. Magenis, for instance, was a vice president of engineering at Maxtor. Cornice's chief technology officer, Curt Bruner, served as chief electronics architect at Quantum.
Some of Cornice's employees came from Dataplay, a once-promising mini-disc start-up.
Established manufacturers also are helping the company. Texas Instruments manufactures silicon for the SE, while the platters are made by Hoya, which manufacturers the small, thin disks for a number of companies. The drives are assembled in a factory owned by SAE, a subsidiary of Japan's TDK.
"Fundamentally, SAE is carrying our working capital," Magenis said. Venture investors include Nokia, CIBC World Markets and Texas Instruments.
Competitors are pursuing the market as well. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, which took over IBM's hard-drive division, is coming out with a line of 1.8-inch drives this year. Currently, only Toshiba markets 1.8-inch drives, and one of the few products that contain the drive is the iPod. The paucity of finished products containing these sort of drives will change soon, said Bill Healy, general manager of the mobile business unit at Hitachi.
Hitachi will come out with a 4GB Microdrive before the end of the year. Flash-memory cards, which now hold 1GB of data, meanwhile, will continue to boost density.
Magenis, though, claims it will be tough to beat Cornice on price. The industry is moving away from flash and toward hard drives for storage, and coming up with a minimalist hard drive takes time.
"It took us almost three years to do this," he said. "Anyone else is literally looking at at least two years."