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Birth of the iPod
b00le writes "There's a little story over at Wired about the genesis of the iPod from the point of view of Ben Knauss, a former senior manager at PortalPlayer, the company Apple Computer approached to help develop its player.
There's some nice gossip about The Steve's involvement in the project, the extreme secrecy and so on, but for me, the kicker comes at the end: 'Knauss stayed on until near the end of the iPod's development, but quit shortly before it was released because he had no confidence it would be a success. "It was probably a mistake, but then you have to go with what you think at the time," he said.'
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"It was probably a mistake, but then you have to go with what you think at the time," he said.' "
This is a dilemma all entrepreneurs (and software developers) face - if you wait until a product is absolutely perfected before taking it to market, you will likely lose your opportunity. At some point, you have to get it out there and gauge public opinion (which should help guide further development), lest you burn all your resources in R&D.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Although he is kicking himself right now, you can't really blame the guy. Even the most successfull people in our society do things that they regret in hindsight. Warren Beatty, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, etc...
It's strange that after so many years of making great computer hardware Apple's niche is almost redefined for them via a glorified walkman. No, that's not flamebait, but merely an oversimplification. Still, this is part of Steve's overall 'digital hub' theory, so the Macs still fit in, it just feels like they're getting a bit more out of focus compared to the extranious hardware.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
would you want Bluetooth headphones? So your music is compressed further to the point where it sounds like it's filtered through a waterfall? There are other kinds of wireless headphones out there that work better than Bluetooth. They aren't included with the iPod because they're expensive enough to cut into the profit margin.
This reminds me of when the cheif designer for Banyan-Vine's streettalk went to Microsoft - viola, Active Directory, which very closely resembes Streettalk!
Same-old microsoft play. Take the idea someone else creates and call it innovation when you include it in the OS that 95% of PCs use.
Although Jobs' influence seems to have helped the iPod become the force it is, I find it odd that he would be so influential on the sonic quality - being that he is partially deaf. I am partially fat (oh, who am I kidding - "totally fat"), so I should not be a contact for bicycle seat design.
Business is relentlessly cynical. I would guess that the iPod was constantly ridiculed during development, and that there were numerous attempts (all driven by office politics, no doubt) to cancel the project.
Nothing will work. Nothing will make money. Nobody wants to buy it. Nobody cares. Everything sucks. It's so hard to make money (announced in a $3 million conference room) It'll never work. What makes you think people will buy it? What makes you think you're qualified to work here? Blah blah blah.
It's so predictable any more it's almost comedy. It is truly amazing that anything new is developed at all. Try taking a new product to a bank for a loan to manufacture it. I can hear the whining already. Every single word is predictable. After a while it becomes truly redundant and very difficult to listen to.
Oh, what wonders have been lost to society for office politics and lack of capital.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
No offense taken.
Size is important (gentlemen, start your double entendres); The iPod is physically small enough to put in your pants pocket comfortably. It doesn't sound like it's that much smaller than a Nomad Zen or Dell DJ or Archos Jukebox, but the in-person difference is astounding. Those other players would only fit in a pair of those ridiculously baggy jeans that hang below your ass.
The UI on the player is great. Read some of the review about what it takes just to play a signle song on, for example, the DJ. Assorted menu navigation plus three or four clicks on the choose button, which is located, IIRC, obscurely on the side. Now, it can take a lot of menu navigaion to play a PARTICULAR song on the ipod, but one can start the music playing by basically mashing the center button until they hear it.
iTunes: This is what brings it all together. It's what helps a lot of computer non-lits use the whole package quickly and easily. I wouldn't have a problem using a device that mounted and transferred as another drive, but a lot of people do. And iTunes treats the iPod as a synced device. Anything that has changed playlist or song-wise is instantly updated (over firewire, no less), making the whole process simple and easy.
It's a beautiful device, both physically and in the UI. Even my parents, normally very gadget-phobic, started gushing about it when they saw it.
The capacity is big enough to store all the music you're likely to need - no constant swapping around of mp3s. This was, in fact, the sole reason I didn't buy an MP3 player for a long time. Nevertheless, it's small enough to fit in a pocket.
And it was pretty much the first to achieve all three; and the advertising has been spot on - so it has defined the market, and become fashionable in the process. It has a number of competiting products these days - but it is only the iPod that has a presence outside the geek sector.
Jacked the price up tenfold? I see why you'd assume that, but HD MP3 players are actually quite comparable in pricing. I've actually been shopping for an MP3 player lately, and the iPod has been a strong contender, even though I'd prefer iRiver's 20 gig player for the ability to mount it as a drive. With the recent price drop, the 20 gig iPod is actually significantly (c$70) cheaper than iRiver's product, and even before the price drop, the price was within $40 or $50.
You just have to use one for a bit. The user interface is just great. Nothing gets in the way of the user just trying to play some tunes. I have a 15GB 3rd-gen and I use it every day. It's just amazing.
Products from Apple generally have that quality that you really cannot comprehend until you use it and hold it. It's that sometimes nebulous concept of quality and design perfection. Sure, you can compare price, storage, battery life kind of quantitative measurements between the iPod and other players, but there's more to the iPod than just those numbers. That's why I cannot even respond to people here on Slashdot that go on about Nomad or Sony players with "better numbers".
Sorry, but some of us care about design.
--- witty signature
mindisc WOULD kick ass if it wasn't crippled with DRM and compatible only with Sony's crappy windows software. The hardware is awesome, small, light, runs forever on one AA battery. But its severely limited. The software sucks ass. Sony is shooting themselves in the foot on this one.
sudo eat my shorts
Seeing that your nickname is NYTrojan, I assume you live in New York. I suggest you go to one of Apple Stores. There are many in New York and try it yourselves. While you are there, play with Powerbooks, Powermac G5, etc.. At the end, you may realize what it is that drives Apple fans nut about the company. It's about little things that add up to a pleasure using their products. Most of them are non-expressible by number and yet endearing the products to the users. E.g. pulsing power light when sleeping, the use of a wheel instead of buttons, simplicity, how they arrange menus and buttons. Even some of the things you dont see: using spring-loaded screws (unlike Dell which will try to reduce costs by using less screws). After all things, how much are you willing to pay to get that pleasure? We know that many people will pay that extra cost.
Not all things are about numbers in dollars, GHz, GB, songs, playlists, screen size, etc..
I think you're missing a third reason why some of us happen to use macs:
They're better. style? yeah it's nice, but i don't *need* a pretty computer. Necessity? I could code on linux/windows just as easily as the mac. No, i use it because it's a better operating system. It gets out of my way. I know some people don't like to admit it, but every market has a high and low end. BMWs and Toyotas aren't really in the same class of vehicle. Think of it like this: The person who has the means to purchase a BMW never really considers purchasing the Toyota. Likewise the opposite, the Toyota buyer never really considers the BMW as it's too far out of a comfortable price range.
basically what i'm trying to say is apple's niche is perfectly fine -- high end quality computers. Sure there is a market for the low end. a rather large (95%) market, but that's not apple's target. It would be silly for BMW to market towards the toyota buyers. i think that's why apple's switch compain wasn't very successful
apple's profits are still vastly in desktop/laptop sales. so your "focus on the music products" as a longevity argument wouldn't really hold much water. If apple lost 50% of it's desktop/laptop sales in the next few years, it would really hurt their profits. they can't self sustain themselves on a low return item like the ipod, at least not at the moment. (low return in the sense that you might profit $50 off an ipod and $500 off a powermac).
at any rate, as i said before. apple's doing just fine. sales are way up, and the highest in 8 years as the last quarterly report says. we might have the ipod to thank for increased media exposure/switchers, but by no means is it the company's saving grace at the moment as a cash cow.
- tristan
Don't forget, Jef Raskin was working on GUIs before Jobs visited PARC. And Xerox got a very lucrative investment opportunity in exchange for said visit.
But don't get on at me for how it would effect the ipod's battery life, the ipod *could* be a little bigger to take a bigger battery and then we could all be happy.
I think the battery life issue is exactly the problem. You assert that everyone would be happy with a bigger iPod, but I don't know what you base that on. I know the iPods diminutive stature was one of the biggest selling points for me. And I think that the phenomenal sales of the iPod mini (despite its seemingly lackluster price per gig value) shows that the size does matter (wang jokes aside).
Furthermore, I like not having to charge my headphones.
Also, let's not forget that the bluetooth transmitter and receiver would take up additional space in the iPod and headphones, respectively
This would also be much more likely to lock me into Apple's headphones, rather than buying a generic, better-quality set of headphones I can connect via a standard jack
Others have talked about the compression issue, I won't rehash it here.
The biggest thing though is that the headphone connecter and earbuds probably cost all of $2 for Apple. A BlueTooth setup would be significantly more
I know that there is a geek tendency to use cool tecnologies just because they're there, but I don't think this is a good application of BlueTooth. Someone on Slashdot said a few days ago that Slashdotters tend to overestimate the public's appetite for their pet technologies. I think this is very valid. I just don't think there would be a market for this, given the tradeoffs.
However, I could be wrong. Market an iPod-BlueTooth headphones set as an accessory, and we'll see. There's certainly a market for iPod accessories out there, if you're right about the desire to own such a thing, you could rake in the big bucks. However, I think the continued absence of just such a peripheral indicates that there's no real demand.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
There are several (large) companies who have tried, most notably Sony, whose players are lambasted above. I believe the reason Apple built a music player by which to measure all others is that the specs weren't polluted by outside requirements. Steve had the vision and, more importantly, the authority to make it what he knew it to be (doesn't hurt that he is very good at what he does).
At Sony, there are forces with competitng agendas. The "DRM crippling" comes from their ownership of an RIAA member. (Note in the article the clues about AAC DRM being forced on Apple). Other Sony products, like cameras and non-HD players, suffer from input from the group that does the Memory Stick (==insert Memory Stick rant here==).
It is VERY hard for companies to resist this effect, each of the factions is headed by people with years/decades of stored up political capital.
Arguably, Apple was the only one who could have created such a product. They are independent enough to make the business idea their own, but substantial enough to bring it to market and to deal with the media companies.
I for one, applaud loudly. "WELL DONE"
For those of you who shelled out the big cash for this thing, what makes it so special? Why sets the iPod apart aside from slick marketing?
:). I've complained before about how people talk about mp3 jukeboxes which they don't own and make factual mistakes about their capabilities. While everyone cites "reviews" to back up their opinion, I've seen lots of reviews which go every which way. There are zillions of them out there, and it's probably not too hard to find one which supports your pre-existing point of view :). Not to mention that many reviewers, even the ones at big-name publications, aren't necessarily all that accurate, e.g. they may have been given a half-hour to play with the device, or may be biased towards whatever device they used first (implicitly comparing everything else to it and inevietably finding other players wanting).
I have a theory that most people have only used one type of mp3 player (e.g. just an iPod). They buy whatever looks best at the time, and if it breaks, they buy another.
If I'm right, most of the commentary on the relative merits of various mp3 players is really worthless. The commentary tends to be the same every time: "whatever I bought is cool, and other stuff sucks." Probably more cognitive dissonance going on there than anything else
I think a better question would be this: what type of person would buy a certain type of mp3 jukebox? Who, for example, would buy a Rio Karma? They're ugly, that's for sure. But they're also small, relatively cheap, packed with features, and supposedly have a great UI. Perhaps a good player for someone who wants a relateively cheap mp3 jukebox and who doesn't care about looks, but isn't willing to sacrifice features?
Partly the blind spot comes from critics being a)reactive and b)assigned to review individual products alone.
With the iMac, Apple was aiming to put out a sweet little appliance home computer, with all those ease of UI advantages, designed for internet-able homes. The idea was that swapping files by floppy would be obsolete because they'd be too small for modern files and everyone would be networked to everyone else. (Look up. We live there.) Critics reacted by saying iMacs wouldn't fit the old model, in which computers were isolated islands (or island chains, in LANs) and you had to carry those life rafts from one slot to another.
iPods were definitely an extension of the whole "digital hub" idea. They weren't bigger, badder mp3 players, because Apple wanted to sell them as a complete system built into the whole "hub" idea. Critics saw the price and compared them to other mp3 players. They didn't see how Apple was positioning the product.
In both cases, Apple was thinking about -- cue usually bogus businesspeak -- new paradigms, and the critics were reviewing just the individual product, without appreciating how it'd fit the bigger picture.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
You make some valid points that I failed to consider. Namely, that maybe Apple does rely a lot more upon desktop sales than I had original assumed. I stand corrected.
...and then I lead into my final point, which is my criticism of your claim that Apples are "better". This, my friend, is a completely opinionated statement. They might be better, for you. My personal computer is used in majority for gaming, and I think you'd be hard pressed to convince me that gaming support on an Apple is the same as it's going to be on a Windows machine.
However, I have to say outright that I think you're reasoning behind Apple as a "niche" market is completely flawed. You use an example of a high-end/low-end market, but the fact is you are comparing apples (no pun intended) and oranges. The example you use of a BMW vs. Toyota might work if we lived in a world with 2 different types of roads, say "performance" and "economical". The performance-minded buyers would be the ones with a large amount of income to spend on a luxury car, while the economical drivers would purchase whatever gets them form point A to point B and be satisfied, and both buyers would drive on their corresponding roads. However, the fact is that we live in a world with one type of road, and you buy what you can afford and what you need to get the job done.
This isn't meant to be an attack on your character or personal philosophies, but something I think you need to analyze is the reality that not all people use computers for the same thing. You may use computers to a degree that, for you, they all are capable of the same task. However, some people, such as myself, use computers for reasons that are a little less balanced, and thus have to make choices within a certain set of criteria.
For example, my brother is an aspiring sound engineer/music producer, so when my parents suggested they buy him a laptop for Christmas to assist in his endeavors, they asked for my input. My answer, without hesitation, was to buy him a Powerbook. The software and toolset for recording and audio production are unmatched on an Apple, so I went and ordered the thing myself. He's had it now for six months. He's been completely satisfied, and therefore so am I.
Don't get me wrong, you make some very valid points, but in the end your argument boils down to simply a matter of preference. I know this is slashdot, and I shouldn't care, but I'm actually rather offended that my initial post gets modded "Troll" while a rebuttal that boils down simply to "they're better because I like them" gets modded up as insightful. I have no problem that people enjoy using an Apple because it suits their needs; I'm glad you've found something that gets the job done. But please, spare us the whole "quality" spiel.
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Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
...or maybe people who praise the iPod are willing to "pay extra for the particular features which the iPod has" and don't give a shit what anybody else thinks.
But I understand how that might contradict your notion that anybody who disagrees with you must be overly susceptible to marketing hype.
"I was under the impression that when it comes to most products, cheapness rules"
Manufacturers like Ferarri, Bang & Olufsen, and Rolex disagree with you. So do their customers. There certainly is a market for the cheapest available object that (allegedly) accomplishes a task. There is also a market for quality products that actually DO accomplish the task (which are often purchased by people who got burned on the first set of objects). And there is also a market for luxury goods, where really top-drawer industrial design is more important than low price.
Like the Dell DJ? Great. Go buy one. If it suits your needs, I think that's dandy.
The rest of your post is just wanking, trying to fit the facts as you (mis)percieve them to your preconceived notion that "success in marketing is the key". You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I happen to think it's bollocks.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!