Apple Ships New iPod Mini

Apple® today announced that iPod mini, the world’s smallest portable music player ever to hold up to 1,000 CD-quality songs, will be available on Friday, February 20.

iPod mini is encased in an ultra-portable, lightweight anodized aluminum body and available in a choice of five colors—silver, gold, pink, blue and green. Apple has received over 100,000 pre-ordersfor the iPod mini which was introduced last month.

“The response to iPod mini has been off the charts,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “iPod mini broadens the market for iPod by competing head-on with flash-based players. iPod mini costs only about $50 more than a 256MB flash-based player, yet it holds 16 times the music, is smaller, is easier to use and provides superior audio.”

Smaller than most cell phones and weighing only 3.6 ounces, iPod mini builds on the success of the original touch wheel with Apple’s innovative patent-pending Click Wheel, which combines the ease and simplicity of the touch wheel with five push buttons for precise, one-handed navigation.

iPod mini features the same award-winning user interface as the rest of the iPod family and works effortlessly with Apple’s iTunes Music Store*, the world’s number one digital music service, and the iTunes digital music jukebox software for seamlessly buying, managing and listening to digital music collections. iPod mini uses Apple’s patent pending Auto-Sync technology that automatically downloads an entire digital music library onto iPod mini and keeps it up-to-date whenever iPod mini is plugged into a Mac® or Windows computer.

Pricing & Availability
iPod mini for Mac and Windows will be available in the U.S. through the Apple Store (http://www.apple.com/), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers on Friday, February 20 for a suggested retail price of $249 (US). iPod mini will be available worldwide in April. iPod mini comes in a choice of a silver, gold, pink, blue or green 4GB model and includes a belt clip. All iPod minis include earbud headphones, an Apple iPod mini power adapter, a 1.2m 30-pin to FireWire® cable, a 1.2m 30-pin to USB 2.0 cable, and a CD with iTunes 4.2 for Mac and Windows computers.

Optional accessories with the following suggested retail prices include the iPod Dock for $39 (US), in-ear headphones for $39 (US) and arm band for $29 (US). Laser engraving is available for iPod mini for $19 (US) and can include two lines of text with up to 23 characters per line.

iPod mini can be charged with either the FireWire or USB 2.0 cable and gets up to eight hours of battery life**. iPod mini requires a Mac with a FireWire port and Mac OS® X version 10.1.5 or later (Mac OS X v10.2 or later recommended); or a Windows PC with a FireWire or USB 2.0 port, or a Windows-certified FireWire or USB 2.0 card and Windows 2000, XP Home or Professional.