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To much if you ask me, $50 more and you get the 15 Gig.
But I think they will drop and bigger iPods are on the way.


Shaggy

Yes, the 4GB model is the only mini iPod right now.  And it is NOT a flash-based player.  It is a HD player per the specs on Apple's iPod page.  The flash comes from Steve's comments at MWSF that the iPod needs to have something to compete with the flash memory based players.  Apple chose to compete with them in size, and to some extent price, but not in medium (ie. they stuck with hard drives).

My guess is, some marketing guru determined that $249 was the max price for that category (flash-based players) people were willing to pay, so they slapped that price onto the iPod.  I too would opt for the 15GB iPod, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people would look at it like getting an iPod for $50 less.  I think that is the "thinking" Apple is counting on.

Agreed.  'Too much' was the first thing I thought of when I saw the specs for the mini ipod.  They should have dropped the disk space to about 1-2GB and tried to bring the price to under $200.

....Three words: Backup boot-drive...

trust me, it comes in REALLY handy...

Hey, thanks, TimLynch...maybe it'll be so rare it'll become a collector's item!  $1000 on ebay in 2006!

(Already got a 40GB FW drive for backups and emergencies...way way cheaper than a 40GB ipod...so I don't need one for that.)

Seriously, to each his own.  Have fun with your 15GB ipods, guys.

It amazes me that people don't have a slightest concept for how the pricing on hard drives works. The drive in this mini is a 1" drive not the 1.8" drive in the bigger brother. That form factor alone is going to make the price per gigabyte dramatically larger. Some people like me can always use more gigs on their ipod but most of the people I know (well, of the people other than college students) never use more than 3 gigs on their ipods. What you are paying for here is the fact that this thing is MUCH smaller, half the weight, just as capable, and more in a couple ways. (charging from usb 2.0 and comes with a belt clip) Yes for most people like me the big ipod is small enough for me and the much larger space is worth it, but if I could live without the gigs, I would much rather have the mini iPod. Who knows, they might make an 2 Gig ipodmini soon for $175 or something.

Also all the microdrives I know of use a CF Type II slot to connect.  IF Apple is using a standard microdrive, they are sitting on the opportunity to move into the flash market with smaller and very inexpensive units.  I know that Jobs said he wasn't planning on moving to the the flash player market...but still....

For the last time: THE IPOD MINI IS NOT FLASH-BASED! IT USES A 1" HARD DRIVE, NOT A MICRODRIVE!

....Three words: Backup boot-drive...

trust me, it comes in REALLY handy...

Careful, that is not supported or recommended by Apple.  The iPod was designed to keep the HD spinning as little as possible.  When it is constantly spinning it heats up, dramatically.  This can damage the LCD and other components of the iPod and since using it to boot from is not supported, even the AppleCare endowed would have a hard time getting Apple to replace a melted LCD.

On that Note, I sold my 30 Gig I was using 2-3 Gigs for music and rest for Data.  I plan to get an iPod Mini, it is smaller and lighter and cheaper (even if ONLY by $50) and get a real portable hard drive, and for $250 I can get a faster 5400 rpm 40-Gig bus powered HD that won't damage itself when you are booted from it, or doing any other intense activity that would keep the HD spinning...

Believe me when it first came out I thought it was over priced, then I really thought about it.  Compared to Flash it KILLS price wise, and someone here made a great point, SMALLER = MORE EXPENSIVE in the tech world, of course a smaller 4 Gig might not be that much cheaper than a larger 15.  For a good example price portable bus powered FireWire Drive and then desktop ones that need to be plugged in.  You can get a Full size 160Gig FW HD for like $260 at apple.com, the same price a 40 Gig portable.

Love it or hate it, it IS cheaper, and by no means a bad deal.  If you are going to use more than 4 Gigs, then Yes, it would be silly to buy the Mini, but for many of us, 4 Gigs is more than enough.

Apple is using the 1" Hitachi drive in the iPod mini.  The drive is fairly new and tightly constrained.  I doubt they are making much on each mini early on, but they are establishing a spot on the market as well as giving people a reason to buy a conventional iPod (marketing suggests you need to move people to products through a ladder of products each with a good reason for a jump ... $50 for 11GB is a good reason for many people)

That said the mini seems to be appealing to many.  Almost every woman I know really wants one and my wife has already ordered.  The small size and color may be more important to some people than size (I doubt my wife has more than 2GB of music - all ripped legally from CDs she owns) in her iTunes library.  The mini really is a different product class.

Back to Hitachi ... EETimes is reporting the drives are in very tight supply until some time in Q2 of this year.  It is better for Apple to regulate the supply with a price a few are willing to pay (although I know about 10 people who have pre-ordered, so there may already be a supply issue) than to disappoint many.  The supply should open (and the hard drive price drop) around the graduation/father's day sales period.  Maybe we'll see a lower price then - maybe we'll see bundling - maybe both.

Remember that Apple has sold 10GB iPods for $100 ... to university students this past fall if they bought a Mac at the same time.  My guess is we will see this marketing in the future.