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Apple updates the iPod shuffle line

Yesterday, DailyTech reported that price cuts are in store for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch. We reckoned that it would be nice for Apple to also consider dropping the price on its lower-end players as well.

It seems as though Apple has answered our wish with at least one product line: the iPod shuffle. Apple today dropped the price of its 1GB iPod shuffle from $79 to a more manageable $49. The price cut is sure to give sales of the tiny, display-less player a boost.

In addition to the price cut for the 1GB iPod shuffle, Apple also introduced a new 2GB model for a low $69. Pricing the new 2GB iPod shuffle under the previous price point for the 1GB model is a great move on Apple's part and is sure to anger a few customers who purchased shuffles in recent months.

"At just $49, the iPod shuffle is the most affordable iPod ever," said Apple VP of Worldwide iPod Product Marketing Greg Joswiak. "The new 2GB model lets music lovers bring even more songs everywhere they go in the impossibly small iPod shuffle."

The 1GB and 2GB iPod shuffles are be available in silver, blue, green, purple and (PRODUCT) red.


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...
By Sora on 2/19/2008 10:15:45 AM , Rating: 3
Nice but its still more expensive than a lot of other 1GB players.




RE: ...
By daftrok on 2/19/2008 12:23:56 PM , Rating: 2
I agree. You can get a 2GB Creative Zen Stone for $49.


RE: ...
By Zensen on 2/19/2008 8:54:58 PM , Rating: 2
how is this news worthy? The shuffle is a waste of time and money

I'd rather one of those zen stones or the sansa clip that does more and its simple, lightweight and cheaper. It amazes me that they are still able to sell these at a higher price. arrogant... do they ever sell anything cheaper than the competition?


RE: ...
By daftrok on 2/20/2008 12:31:12 AM , Rating: 1
The Mac Pro and Xserve are competitively priced for the specs, its just you can't dial the specs down to bring it down to a more reasonable price. There is such thing as overkill.


RE: ...
By ebakke on 2/19/2008 1:43:55 PM , Rating: 5
Why does everyone insist on pointing out that Apple isn't the low-price leader? That isn't their strategy, and it never has been. Of course there are lower priced players - that isn't a market Apple is trying to take.

It's like going to Whole Foods, seeing a box of Cheerios and saying "Nice, but it's still more expensive than a lot of other grocery stores."


RE: ...
By Omega215D on 2/19/2008 2:00:32 PM , Rating: 2
But since the iPod shuffle is competing with the Zen Stone Plus, which has a screen and better sound quality (I've tried them both), this is their market and Apple relies on people who'd rather have anything iPod thinking it'll be better than anything out there.


RE: ...
By Ryanman on 2/19/2008 3:18:28 PM , Rating: 3
people who buy Apple stuff don't care. If it's inferior and costs more but it has white apple on a stainless steel case it's going to be purchased.


RE: ...
By ebakke on 2/19/2008 5:40:19 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
But since the iPod shuffle is competing with the Zen Stone Plus


Competing - yes. Competing on price - no.


RE: ...
By Zensen on 2/19/2008 9:07:47 PM , Rating: 2
yeh the snob market ;) Im all for that. Justifying their prices for a mediocre product. classic.


RE: ...
By Gul Westfale on 2/19/2008 10:36:07 PM , Rating: 2
2GB worth of songs on that thing... that's gotta be fun scrolling through the playlist with no screen, huh?


Still not interested...
By CrazyBernie on 2/19/2008 10:18:07 AM , Rating: 2
I'm pretty satisfied with my Zune Flash 8GB... got an open box one for half off... ^_^




RE: Still not interested...
By mondo1234 on 2/19/2008 2:05:22 PM , Rating: 2
The Zune is nice, but I dont like the idea of MS giving money to the Music companies as thier "cut" of the Zune sales. If I am going to support the Music Industry, I will buy the music and not support them with the cost of the player.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/technology/09mus...


RE: Still not interested...
By clovell on 2/19/2008 2:27:23 PM , Rating: 2
From where?


By Techno Pride on 2/19/2008 4:01:56 PM , Rating: 2
You know how tech magazines like to use feature matrix tables to compare products. You have a feature, you get a tick. The product with the most ticks win, or at least it's supposed to.

I've a 2nd gen Nano (color screen) and a Sony player (FM radio), but I still go with the 1st gen Shuffle most of the time. Because it's plenty easy to use and sounds pretty good. Sometimes, the number of ticks doesn't matter.




This player have no features
By kb9828 on 3/4/2008 2:54:33 AM , Rating: 2
I hope Apple to add more features instead of entering the price race.




News?
By Operandi on 2/19/08, Rating: -1
RE: News?
By eye smite on 2/19/2008 9:12:20 AM , Rating: 4
I've honestly never understood the craze behind the ipod. Is it an in crowd thing or a sheep(no offense intended) type situation? I've got so many other ways to carry mp3's with me and listen to them I've never felt a need to get an ipod or like device, God knows there's enough copy cats of it out there.


RE: News?
By oab on 2/19/2008 9:21:35 AM , Rating: 3
When the iPod first came out (and was available for PC), it was just about the only media player that could hold more than 50 songs and didn't have 50 quadrillion buttons on it.

The Creative Nomad was out at about the same time as the iPod, and well ... the iPod was a better player out of the box. Now, since then, lots of other players, 'better', players have come out to try and compete with the iPod. Less expensive, more features, etc. But Apples early lead (despite late entry), plus a series of great advertisements, won them a solid market by the time the 4g was released.

So despite that you are able to play songs on your MP3 phone, or your windows mobile PDA, the iPod was better than both when it was released. It was much, much easier to use, it was stylish, attractive, and marketed to just the right segment, in a way that would offer universal appeal.

Having said all that, you don't NEED an iPod anymore, lots of other players that are 'better' (my Creative Zen 8gb is better than the comparable nano in everything except for the bundled software and the user interface), something which still counts a lot with non-technical consumers.


RE: News?
By themadmilkman on 2/19/2008 10:26:56 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Having said all that, you don't NEED an iPod anymore, lots of other players that are 'better' (my Creative Zen 8gb is better than the comparable nano in everything except for the bundled software and the user interface), something which still counts a lot with non-technical consumers.


Tell me exactly why a 'technical' user has to put up with a poor UI, and a good UI only counts for non-technical consumers?


RE: News?
By xsilver on 2/19/2008 10:45:51 AM , Rating: 2
a technical user can put up with a poor UI because its balanced out by other redeeming features. Very specific / advanced / or even hard to use but cool features.

Non-technical consumers however have no interest in this kind of stuff so a bad UI is basically going to spell doom


RE: News?
By oab on 2/19/2008 1:00:16 PM , Rating: 2
Like the ability to play divx files without conversion, which the Creative player can do, and an iPod can't.

Example:

Zencasts (these are just podcasts) - Putting non 'zencast' podcasts under the regular 'music' menu, but it puts 'zencasts' under the 'video' menu. Why not just have a menu called "Zencasts"? The installer gives me a seperate program called "zencast organizer" anyway, why not just brand ALL podcasts it fetches as zencasts?

Another example:

Divx videos. yes it plays them, but unless you just copy the files manually to the device, it tries to covert them all to WMV, using one of the SLOWEST conversion programs I've ever seen (it's almost real-time, for SINGLE-PASS ENCODING). They work just fine as long as you don't use the programs synch utility.

Two examples of which a non-technical user would be quite confused about where there files had gone/why it was converting something that it should play already.


RE: News?
By kmmatney on 2/19/2008 11:40:13 AM , Rating: 2
When I demoed MP3 players about a year ago(I had BestBuy gift cards, so my choices were limited) I thought the nano was the best of the bunch. Back then, Creative and Microsoft didn't have any competitive flash-based offerings, so the coice was between the 8 GB Sansa and 8 GB nano. The Sansa felt cheap (plastic disk spinner), so went with the Nano, as I think most people would who were in my position. The Nano was the best flash-based player I could get.


RE: News?
By kmmatney on 2/19/2008 11:49:05 AM , Rating: 2
I can also say that I'll probably "hooked" into Apple for some time. When ripping my 200 CD collection to Itunes, I used AAC as the format. If I switched now, I'd have to re-rip all my CDs, or convert everything with some quality loss.


RE: News?
By oab on 2/19/2008 12:46:52 PM , Rating: 2
Or just get a player that plays AAC files, such as, any modern Creative player (like the credit-card sized Zen)


RE: News?
By Hare on 2/19/2008 1:08:30 PM , Rating: 2
The iTunes store also had an impact.


RE: News?
By adiposity on 2/20/2008 12:25:03 PM , Rating: 2
All of this is true, but it doesn't explain why a lot of people get iPods now. Thanks to the early win for Apple, the accessory market became a de facto iPod market. Now you can buy one of 30-40 different speaker docks for the iPod at electronics stores like Fry's. Several cars have iPod integration, and after-market iPod integration is by far the easiest (and usually the only one that supports true stereo integration). So at first it was the reasons you state, but now even if a Creative zen is 100 times better than an iPod I still can't hook it up to my Lexus. So I get an iPod.

-Dan


RE: News?
By pomaikai on 2/19/2008 9:45:08 AM , Rating: 3
Having had an ipod the great thing about it is its user interface. It is unmatched and so simple to use. I currently have a zune(ipod hard drive crashed after about 14 months) and even though it is has so much better functionality I miss the ipod wheel. It was really easier to use. After my ipod broke I was not gonna buy another hard drive based MP3 player, but I could not pass up a 30GB zune for $79.


RE: News?
By michal1980 on 2/19/08, Rating: 0
RE: News?
By Wightout on 2/19/2008 6:54:57 PM , Rating: 2
The itouch is kinda lousy for an mp3 device. Horrible for car use as you have to wake it up every time you want to simply skip one song. It is workable as an MP3 player, but the classic is defiantly a better player.

I have both the touch and the "classic" (lol like coke... le sigh). The touch is amazing for web use, email, writing in contacts, taking quick notes, keeping a calendar up to date, and watching podcasts (though they really need to make it so you can manage your podcasts straight from the device once you are online). The classic is simple... though more and more features are being added.

I just want a player that will play audio (and only audio) easily and at a relatively high capacity. So should I ever find a need to go out and buy another device it will most likely not be something from apple unless they change their ways.

I don't care about movies on the nano. Who in their right mind does? as of right now apple lacks a good running buddy that has a screen, IMO. The nano in its previous state was a much better device.

Just my $0.02


RE: News?
By Operandi on 2/19/2008 11:50:52 AM , Rating: 2
I'm not putting down the ipod or apple (I have an ipod and really like it) but passing this off as "news" is what I don't get.


RE: News?
By Kougar on 2/19/2008 4:33:42 PM , Rating: 2
Dailytech has always posted news of price cuts and product lineup changes for popular tech, that is nothing out of the ordinary. Or do you also think they also give lots of free publicity to Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo too?


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