The review has to be looked at in its context. If the sales figures on Wikipedia are correct, the device he reviewed sold just 236,000 units in Q1-Q3 of 2002. Apple didn't sell more than a million iPods in a quarter until 2004, at which point the full-size device had 4x the storage, a click wheel, support for Windows, and a color screen (optional); the Mini was then in its second generation.