24 February 2005 0:15 GMT / By Kenneth Henry
We said we'd keep you posted and now they're here. Early reports whetted our appetite last Friday. Now the world's patience has been rewarded with two new iPod mini digital music players. Apple intends to cover both ends of the market for those rejecting the sprawling 30Gb or cavernous 60Gb of the full-sized iPod photos, which were also respectively launched and repositioned just a few hours ago.
The new models sport 4Gb and 6Gb respectively, with a start price of $199 (UK£139) for the smaller model and $249 (UK£199 approx). Anti-skip protection is rated at 25 minutes so that should please the gym and jogging crowd. The best new detail is that retaining the mono screen, the smaller storage and more research has allowed battery life to increase to 18 hours on both models. Even though the disk is smaller, if it can hold 1,500 songs at maximum (1,000 on the 4Gb model) there will still be several CDs' worth of listening on hand if you decide to increase the encoding rate.
All the synchronisation, Garageband creativity and playlist manipulation of the bigger iPods, also remains available on this new generation - if you've got the time to try and be the next Bono in the rush to transfer your favourite music.
It's all good news (especially for Apple), but potential new buyers will just be happy there's one casing colour that's close enough to functional black (if you don't believe Apple's website claim that music is the new black). Whatever Creative and iRiver have in response to Apple's latest salvo, it needs to be good to try and catch up again. The customer who hasn't bought anything yet, is sure to be the ultimate winner, spoilt for choice in 2005.
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