After all the expectancy, and a degree of hype, the very latest offerings from Apple arrived in the United Kingdom this morning.
A handful of selected journalists were led to a briefing room above the computer maker’s flagship Regent Street store in London to be shown first iPod Shuffle and Mac mini to arrive in Britain following their unveiling at the Macworld Exhibition in San Francisco earlier this week
And the thing that struck me on seeing the MP3 music player and desktop computer up close was just how small they really are.
The stripped down iPod, which sports simple, intuitive controls, really is no bigger than a packet of chewing gum and weighs next to nothing. Apple boasts that this means that it is remarkably portable. But it also means that the iPod Shuffle does not have that same gorgeously engineered feel shared by almost all of Apple’s other gadgets.
This morning, Danika Cleary, the iPod product manager, made much of the “cultural significance” of the iPod, but its new incarnation does not feel iconic. It is too lightweight for that – it weighs about the same as a car key. In fact, it feels like it could have been made to be disposable.
Read the complete story @ Times Online
