The iPod vending machine

Another Infinite Loop special: There really are vending machines that sell iPods Here's Jacqui Cheng on the phenomenon:

So is anybody buying these things? As it turns out, they are, and "they" are buying a lot of them too. Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is reporting pretty good sales from their electronics vending machines, which happen to include iPods (among other things, such as headphones). A single vending machine in Concourse A of the airport has made $55,000 worth of sales in just one month.

The company that makes the machines, Zoom, says that customers seem to have no resistance at all to buying multi-hundred-dollar items out of a vending machine. The company's executive vice president, Mark Mullins, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "We put in some iPods and found we couldn't keep them in stock." And so a star was born.

Just last week, I was at the State Street Marshall Field's Macy's in Chicago and saw an iPod vending machine in the Men's department. iPod nanos were completely sold out.