My newfound interest in podcasting led me to my local Best Buy recently, where I took a lesson from one of the employees on iPods. Of course, my children have been telling me that "all of my friends have iPods," which holds absolutely no sway in terms of buying iPods for my children, though it did pique my curiosity. So as I am pondering the prospect of dropping $300 to $400 on this little gadget, the clerk says, "If you decide to buy it, you really should get the service plan." Well, I never get the service plan, but as I was anticipating my "free magazine" offer, he added, "The batteries are internal, and they only last about a year. If you get the service plan, you can bring it in and exchange it for a new iPod when that happens." Hmm.
First of all, that doesn't sound like a "service" plan at all, so I was far from confident that whoever would be standing behind the Best Buy counter a year from now would remember this little conversation. Second, does everyone know that the iPod a disposable toy? Or is this guy just doing a hard-sell on the service plan?
I decided to consult an expert. I marched over to the service counter and asked whether they get a lot of iPods. Two of the technicians, in unison, exclaimed: "Whoa! You could say that!" One of them said that he had recently made calls for pickups after service was completed, and 9 of the 10 calls were for iPods! They offered all sorts of possible explanations -- people were too rough on their iPods; the iPods were made in California (?); more people bought iPods than other brands, so naturally they would see more in the service department. One of them owns an iPod, and he is happy with it. The other recommended Dell's mp3 player.
That was almost like Miracle on 34th Street.
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1. Posted by kristine on March 31, 2005 @ 8:07 | Permalink
All iPods come with a 1 year warranty and, if your battery craps out before your year is up, you can just take it back to the store and get a replacement (the Apple store, that is. I have no experience with Best Buy on this).
If you're out of warranty, you can pay Apple to replace the battery ($99 I believe), or you can investigate a third-party service that will replace the battery with a longer-life one, for less money (they run from $39 to $79, last I looked). The way I think of it is, I spent $X to buy this thing, I got some good long use out of it, and now I'm going to upgrade the battery. If that keeps it running for another couple of years till I'm ready to buy the latest and greatest, terrific.
2. Posted by Gordon Smith on March 31, 2005 @ 8:36 | Permalink
Kristine, The accountant in me -- a part of my personality that I often suppress -- recognizes that you could look at all depreciating assets in this way. The source of my surprise was not that iPods wear down (or become obsolete), but rather that they wear down so rapidly.
I didn't mention that the Best Buy technicians said they have hardly any problems with other mp3 players. Obviously, the Apple engineers are very clever, but if the experience at my Best Buy is representative, someone seems to have dropped the ball on quality control.
3. Posted by kristine on March 31, 2005 @ 9:14 | Permalink
Perhaps the other MP3 players are not brought in as often because they are not as expensive (few are as expensive as the iPod) and so are viewed as more disposable? I'm thinking particularly of the smaller, flash memory players that run about $100. I imagine Best Buy won't see many iPod Shuffles, either. They're inexpensive enough to be considered more disposable.
In the higher price point market, the iPod is really the only major player. It's closest competitors (Creative Nomad, for instance) are not nearly as popular due to their bigger size, more confusing interface, etc. (My husband has a Nomad, so I'm not just blowing air here.) I think Best Buy would see more iPods because there are more of them out there, which one of them mentioned as possibility, but also because people are more attached to their iPods—they're shiny, attractive, useful, and it's desireable to keep them running.
4. Posted by Nathan Nelson on March 31, 2005 @ 10:07 | Permalink
To add to your iPod posting, check out:
http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/.
Enjoy.
5. Posted by Gordon Smith on March 31, 2005 @ 10:22 | Permalink
Nathan, Wow! That is very funny. Or pathetic. I haven't decided.
But seriously, why not just engineer it with a replaceable battery? Surely that had to be the least complicated hurdle in creating the device.
6. Posted by Tom Bozzo on March 31, 2005 @ 10:58 | Permalink
Just a couple cents to add to Kristine's and Nathan's comments.
The iPod accounted for 75-80% of the hard drive-based MP3 player market last year. So if all players were equally reliable, you'd expect the vast majority of players coming in with problems to be iPods.
I suspect that there's something to the abuse theory. As portable devices, some rough handling is almost inevitable. I popped my newish (and so far rock solid) iPod photo into a slightly protective case almost immediately upon getting it, but would guess I'm in the minority in doing so.
You can do the battery (or any Li-Ion battery, actually) a big favor by fully charging it before use. I also expect that step is skipped by a lot of impatient purchasers. A compartment for a replaceable battery presumably would have compromised the packaging to some extent, though the latest mobile phones seem to have made great strides in that department.
As for the manufacturing locale, my understanding is that iPods are mostly made in China (PRC) by a couple of contract manufacturers.
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