ipodhead.com

Macrumors points out that a company called Cornice "has been producing 1inch 1.5GB Hard Drives since mid year that go for $65/each in lots of 10,000. Cornice was reportedly trying to get these prices down to $50."

The CNet article they refer to describes the technology as follows:
"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." link

This is truly getting interesting. As readers have pointed out, 2 GB in flash cards would make the new iPods cost prohibitive as they would be even more expensive than the current ones. Using this technology though, Apple could pull it off and still reap in quite a substantial profit per unit while creating a new form factor and price that would make the iPod even more attractive to potential buyers.

According to a story in today's Guardian, a UK newspaper, Apple is investigating if they should lower the iPod mini price in Britain.

"The iPod mini will go on sale next month in the US for $249 - which would translate to a UK price of £162 including VAT if today's exchange rates were applied. Yet Apple's UK arm announced on Tuesday that it plans to sell the device for £38 more, at £199, immediately sparking an outcry from the company's European customers.

Now a senior Apple executive has said the company will review its pricing outside the US, and blamed the high pricing on the continuing weakness of the dollar against other currencies."

According to a CNET story, Apple has agreed to let HP sell iPods in "HP blue" that will feature the same design as the current (big) iPods, but will not bear the iPod name. The deal will go into effect next summer.

"'The way we look at it, HP will be reselling an iPod device,' said Schiller, who noted that the device will display the Apple logo at start-up and will work with all of the accessories made for the white-hued Apple varieties.'
HP will also ship all their computers with iTunes pre-installed. If Apple can sell 2 million iPods in two years (730,000 of which were sold in the last quarter alone) this new deal should do wonders for iPod sales. Apple seems to be very aggressive in keeping their player the number one digital music player on the market.

After a month long hiatus due to partially technical, partially 'real life' related problems iPodhead.com should resume normal updates this week. Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement whole the site was down. And please feel free to drop us a line anytime you feel like it.

It's a week since the Super Bowl ads appeared on TV in the US (available in quicktime here) and the first numbers are starting to trickle in.

MacMinute links to a Hollywood Reporter article: "If online traffic suggests a successful Super Bowl commercial, though, no ad topped erectile dysfunction drug Cialis, as traffic to Cialis.com scored an 1,868 percent increase for the day. Apple iTunes, which advertised that it was partnering with Pepsi to give away 100 million free songs, was second with a 593 percent increase to its site. Percentage increases are determined by taking the average of the four Sundays leading to the Super Bowl and comparing that number with traffic on Super Bowl Sunday." link

Bearing in mind that it was Pepsi, not Apple that shelled out the millions of dollars to produce and air the spot, it seems Apple is a clear winner in the deal.

Maccentral reports that today's SEC filing by Apple lists several ongoing class action suits involving iPod battery life as unexpected expenses:

"Apple's most recent 10-Q filing with the SEC was published on Tuesday. The quarterly report provides a glimpse into some of the company's business and financial machinations, as well as a possible look at what Apple may do in the future. Of particular interest to iPod users is Apple's acknowledgement that it's involved in five separate class action suits regarding iPod battery life." More here

Short but sweet. This just in according to MacRumors: " First stock of iPod Mini's should start appearing in Apple stores on February 16th

Jef Raskin, the creator of the Macinotsh's graphical user interface, briefly commented on the iPod in an interview with MacMinute:

"As for the iPod, he foresees it as a success for a while, "but the race to the cheapest implementation has already started, and Apple will be hard-pressed to keep up (or down) with the competitor's prices." Finally, Raskin does have some advice for Apple, especially in its development of the Mac.

David Pogue investigates what alternatives there are to iPods in today's New York Times. Why on earth somebody would want something else than an iPod is unclear (aside from saving money, of course) but the article gives a fair overview of what is out there and what features the models, well, feature.

The article also has such gems as this: " Speaking of vehicles, the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra is the sport-utility truck of MP3 players. At this moment, it's the only player available in a 60-gigabyte model ($400). That's enough to hold 900 hours of WMA-encoded music - an important point if you're selected for the first manned mission to Mars. (To make that prospect even more realistic, Creative Labs blessed this model with a removable battery, so you can pack a bunch of spares in your astro-luggage.)" link (free registration required)

This just can't wait till Monday. (wouldn't want you guys to camp out in front of the store and then blame us, right?)

Macrumors says, "Despite limited supply arriving at Apple Stores for the iPod mini as early as Feb 16th... the new Minis will reportedly not go on sale until February 20th at 6pm.

Some Apple Stores are taking reservations for early orders at this time.

Apple may be hosting some sort of event/launch party at that time, but details are yet unavailable.

Mike Wendland posted a video interview of the iPod mini to his Web site. He sums up his impressions by saying, "In terms of coolness factor this iPod minis is pretty hard to beat."

Watch the quicktime video here. It looks truly impressive.

MacFixIt reports that an iPod charges faster when connected directly to the firewire cable rather than through the dock.

They also report that there is a known issue of an iPod's battery draining if it is connected to a Mac while the Mac is in sleep mode.

"After over a month's worth of troubleshooting with AppleCare technicians and two round trips to Apple Dispatch to fix a problem where my docked 30 gig iPod would fully discharge overnight while my QuickSilver G4 was in sleep mode, I finally got a tech to admit that there is indeed a 'known software issue' (or perhaps firmware, he wouldn't elaborate) that Apple is trying to fix

CNET posted a pretty well balanced iPod mini video review. Definitely worth a look.

This Winamp plugin allows files to be transfered to an iPod under Windows. Although we fail to see why anybody would want to use Winamp rather than iTunes, this definitely is good news for Winamp users that previously could not use an iPod with the software.

The plugin can be downloaded from Winamp.com.