The 11GB Divide

This entire editorial rant on my part is in response to this post over at MobileWhack, and is cross-posted in the comments there. Here it goes:

The iPod mini:
I just think it was a poorly thought out product launch. I mean, just before announcing the iPod mini for $249, they announced that they were bumping up their $299 model of the regular iPod to 15GB. That makes for an 11GB gap and only a $50 gap in price. Bad math and marketing on Apple's part. I mean, yes, it is smaller and cuter than its big brothers, but the regular iPods are still small and cute themselves.

I think everybody who I've read as being anti- the new mini iPod have focused on this discrepancy. Strangely, all those who are pro-iPod mini have used this "rumor site rhetoric" as I like to call it, trying to overlook this 11GB for $50 gap and how it cripples the iPod mini's marketability, and instead focus on how everybody is slamming "the miniPod because its pricing didn't match what the rumor sites had predicted". I don't care what the rumor sites said. As a conscientious consumer, the math for the iPod mini just doesn't add up for me. I disregard 99% of what the rumor sites say, but I have to tell you, they are an interesting place to examine speculation about what Apple customers would like to see. Apple would have been better served with the iPod mini, had they kept the 10GB iPod (making the $50 divide only 6GB) and introduced a set of iPod mini's starting at 1GB heading up to 4GB and with a nice variant in price. That would have made more commercial sense. Will people buy the mini iPod? Sure. But not nearly as many as would have had Apple produced their usual combination of style and technology. The iPod mini misses the mark for the technologically savvy who are forced to work with a budget, and it misses it because of an 11GB divide that Apple created the day of their announcement of the product.