I recently celebrated a Significant Birthday, and celebrated by ordering myself a 30 GB video iPod. Shortly thereafter, I cancelled that order and purchased a refurbished iPod mini.
My reasons say something about selling to baby boomers, a demographic that has marketers salivating because of its size and presumed affluence. The initial impetus for my buyer’s remorse was a search to find ways to import DVD video to an iPod. After finding out it might take a weekend to convert a feature length film, I began to wonder what was wrong with watching a film on my computer or even (drum roll)… the TV.
It also occurred to me that at 4 GB, the iPod Mini has space for all the tunes I am ever likely to listen to. I was attracted the renowned reliability of the Mini and also some potential redundancy—my wife already has a Mini and I like the idea of making use of her various docks, chargers etc.
So. Here we see a Baby Boomer who is attracted by simplicity, the very idea of not doing something he could. That represents a real turning point for me, who has always bought the buggy 1.0 release of everything. Simplicity also means the confidence something is going to work as it should, nothing more and nothing less. That’s also something you don’t get with the newest cutting edge product. The Mini is in fact a long-discontinued product, yet still popular on eBay and occasionally available at the Apple outlet.
By the way, this new iPod is replacing an iPod shuffle which is a great product when you recognize what it actually is: a competitively priced USB thumb drive that comes with a free MP3 player, software and headphones. My only problem with the shuffle is that I want to quickly locate the track I want to play. “Surprise me” is also not a pleasing concept to the baby boomer. My daily life has had plenty of surprises. Give me simplicity and predictability, and my wallet opens like a May flower.