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January 12, 2005
Apple is the iPod
And the iPod is Apple.
The SteveNote at MacWorld San Francisco was pretty damn packed with stuff. Jobs, despite having a lot of his thunder stolen the last few days by rumor sites, still managed to wow the audience.
So, the announcements fall into a few categories...
- Productivity Software: iWork, a $79 package of Keynote 2 and Pages
- Home Software: iLife, price bumped to $79 but with updates to iPhoto, GarageBand, iMovie, iDVD and iTunes.
- Computers: Mac mini, the long begged for low cost ($500) Macintosh.
- iPod: Shuffle, a flash memory based iPod to completely dominate the market.
The interesting bit for me in all of this is that the Shuffle, a measly $99 product, was the "headliner". It was the trademarked "one more thing...", not the $500 Mac mini. Why is that? The iPod is the now of Apple. The music sales ($1.25 million a day) and iMac sales are being driven by the iPod. iBook sales are probably getting a boost, too.
The Mac mini isn't being introduced to get current Mac owners to buy another Mac (though, we will). It is being introduced to help move those people who bought iPods to the Mac from the WinTel world. They already have a keyboard and a mouse. And a display, too. Not to mention scanners and printers and cameras and video. Those folks are the future of Apple, and the iPod is what's getting them to the company.
If this works, and I think it will, Jobs could be an even bigger genius that I thought. Or maybe it was Phil Schiller's idea?
Posted by Samer at January 12, 2005 12:56 AM
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