Tight supplies of the tiny Hitachi hard drive at the core of the iPod mini forced Apple to delay increasing manufacturing (and worldwide availability) until July. “We’re actually consuming just about all the 4 gigabyte, 1-inch drives they make. As they make more, we’ll get more,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of hardware product marketing. Hitachi expects to boost production to meet customer demand, Hitachi Storage Technologies Chief Executive Jun Naruse told Reuters. [Editor’s Note: Neither party has confirmed Hitachi makes the iPod mini drives, but the company is the sole commercial maker of 1-inch drives with 4GB storage capacity, and Apple uses such a drive in its iPod mini.]
