| Thursday, July 29, 2004 |
12:20 - AirPort Explosion
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What? No, I mean the good kind.
Damien Del Russo writes to say:
Just thought you might want to know - I already know 3 people with Airport Express. When I got my iPod back in the day, it took about 2 years until I had 3 friends with an iPod (not I have about 6). Airport Express just started shipping and it is already popular! For one, I credit the iPod - more people are checking Apple products more frequently. I also credit myself, as I mentioned the device to two of the purchasers (LOL).
So what does this mean? Well, for one, it means I am not selling my stock. Beyond that, hell if I know! But I do suspect that the AE is a winner.
On Monday, Kris and I got an urgent smoke signal from our mole inside the Apple campus that the long-awaited shipment of 200 AirPort Expresses had finally arrived at the on-campus store, where the employees get discounts for themselves and their favored confederates on cool Apple gear (including hardware). This store tends to lag the regular retail channel in stocking new items, which stands to reason—Apple wants to get stuff into the hands of the retail customers, not the discounted employees. But finally, they were in stock, and right down the road. So off we jogged. Lo and behold, there they were: a whole display of them, right next to the front door, stacked up in their neat little blue-and-white boxes that look like they've got candy in them rather than networking appliances. Kris and I each picked one up, along with a connection kit (extension cord, analog and optical audio cables), and went home happy.
We happened to be over there again yesterday (Wednesday)... and the display was completely gone. Not a single unit left. We asked the clerk; he said all 200 boxes had been snapped up within a day. As we stood there, other clerks told customer after customer, stacked up in line, that the AirPort Expresses were, unfortunately, sold out.
This thing's flying off shelves faster even than the iPod did. I think Apple's figured out how to hit all the right notes—and they're riding the waves of customer demand, springboarding off each new interference crest with new toy after new toy, catapulting themselves into a lead like they've never enjoyed before.
I've noticed a problem, though: if you hook up the AirPort Express via the digital optical cable, each time you start a new track playing, you lose about one second's worth of sound—it's like the receiver has to waste a fair amount of time auto-synchronizing to the signal format, and the song cuts in about a second after it starts. (It doesn't happen if you hook it up via analog.) This is really ugly, and I've sent in a bug report to Apple—I hope it's something they can fix. I'm sure they can.
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Brian Tiemann
