Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

On My Blog Menu:

InstaPundit
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Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
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Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue

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Wednesday, March 27, 2002
18:16 - The Pod People are multiplying...!	(top)
The iPod population of my company doubled over the weekend. (Only a couple weeks ago it had doubled for the first time-- from one to two.) Kris bought one, and so did John, our Web marketing guy. They ordered the devices on Friday, and they were waiting in the entry foyer on Monday. John is in his 50s, and remarkably with-it when it comes to geek stuff. He analyzes things until those listening to him start to get short on breath just absorbing everything he's saying. He's been waffling back and forth lately between the iPod and SonicBlue's Rio Riot-- he had a Riot on order, in fact, and canceled it while it was still pending shipment so he could study the differences still further and pick my brain as to the potential of his proposed setup: a 60GB USB external hard drive plugged into his daughter's iMac, full of songs which he would organize through iTunes (only when the drive is plugged in, natch), and the iPod plugged in the other end. I couldn't see any good reason why that wouldn't work. But he still wasn't entirely convinced-- after all, the Riot has a 20GB drive, works with Windows (his primary platform), etc, etc. It's big, but he says he would just keep it on his desk like a radio. It's USB, so filling up 20GB would take forever, but he says he would just fill it up once and then never need to swap files on or off it, so that's no big deal. Would the iPod handle hierarchical playlists, so instructional CDs showing multiple versions of the same song could be grouped usefully? And so it went. Everybody was waiting to hear the Macworld Tokyo keynote, to see if the iPod would get a price reduction (to $299) or anything. Well, it didn't-- and if I may editorialize for a moment (as though that's not all I do here), that's fine. They sold 125,000 units in two months, and so there's no need to lower the price, is there? Keeping the price at $400 through the Christmas season probably netted them a huge cash windfall which they could use to build up the rest of the company, and since they still have to fight to keep the things on shelves, why lower the price? The supply/demand curves put the optimal price point right where it is-- lowering the price would get some more demand, yes, but probably not enough to offset the profit they would have made on that extra $100 per unit that they're getting at the current price. So, smart move, Fred Anderson-- and I'll bet the Japanese market will just gobble up the new engraving option (which is specifically aimed at Japan-- where the Macworld attendees gave a standing ovation at the news of the option). They know exactly what they're doing. So anyway, the iPods came in on Monday, and both Kris and John seem happy as clams with theirs. Yesterday, in fact, John came around to our cubicles to fling a grin in all directions and talk about how well XPlay works, even in its alpha state. (He's decided that he will use his iPod with his Windows 2000 machine, running XPlay, storing the songs on a new 120GB USB2.0 drive.) "You plug in the iPod, and XPlay opens it up like a hard drive-- it has folders for Playlists, Songs, Artists... I just dragged in some songs, and it worked. Flawless." He couldn't say enough good about it. It may just be the buyer-of-expensive-toy justification mindset, but he certainly seemed glad he hadn't gone with the Riot after all. The infiltration continues...