iPod uPod!
So Apple announced its new little gadget today: the iPod. My first thought was that it was a bit pricey at $399. But then as I thought about it more, it actually isn't that bad in the scale of other products out there. First, it has firewire. This rocks because it means you'll be able to download music to it pretty quickly. Second, it's got a 5 gig hard drive in it that stores songs and can also be used as a portable hard drive. Third, It's got great battery life. Fourth, if you look at devices that have similar form factors, the higher level Rio costs $250 and only has 125MB in it. There are devices that have larger hard drives in them, but none of them are at the size of the iPod. So the question remains, would I buy one? If I had $400 sitting around, I might think about it, but I don't, so probably won't get one.
I just wanted to add that there's something else that I think makes this different then other mp3 players out there. It seems to be targetted at the person who isn't a big computer type user. It's set up to integrate with itunes, the mp3 program that comes with the mac. You can basicly plug it in and go. While that's been true of other devices, I don't think their target audience was computer users in general. It was still much more of a kind of 'geek toy'.
