That's probably the best ad I've seen out of Apple since the 1984 one. If it were alone, I wouldn't say that, but considering the current market position of the iPod, where Apple wants to push sales, and how much room they now have to work with the same concept, I really, really like it.
It's hip, it's fresh, it's clean and stylish, it goes against the visual overload of a lot of youth-targeted advertising to make for a fresher feel, and it pulls a 180 on the sterile white of past ads. Makes it that much harder to keep up with Apple, doesn't it? Every time people start to copy their design, they go somewhere else.
For one thing, most people seem to be forgetting that the iPod is incredibly popular already--the MOST popular portable player, in fact. If people know what they are already, Apple is under no pressure to explain the product, any more than VW has to explain why the Beetle looks like it does.
This particular ad (not all of them) is targeted at a fairly young, hip demographic. Those people know the iPod--all you need to do is push them a little harder to realize how cool it is, and remind them that even if they've got a PC, it works just fine.
If the ad were targeted at a demographic that didn't know much about these things, then you'd want to provide a little more info, and I assume they eventually will, but Apple's not going there yet--they're focusing on continued market dominance in that area, hopefully backed by dominance in the Music Store area as well.
Saturate public awareness with a unique ad--nothing else on TV looks like it--and then, once people have the thing embedded in their mind, you make the sale. Get awareness high enough, and once someone decides they want a music player, the first thing that comes to mind is an iPod.
