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.' "

Comments

Re:Honest Question

[texasbat]

You are correct. It's all about marketing. The one with the best hardware does not necessarily win in the marketplace. The tough part is not designing a better mp3 player or other device, but making the marketing relationships to get your product in the various channels for mass consumption, along with spending vast sums on advertisings. Believe me - it's not easy going up against an established player in an industry but it can be done.

Re:Apple becoming a music company

[Mitleid]

Well, as "revolutionary" as you seem to think Apple is, their computer systems have a pretty marginal user base. They've been around for quite some time now, and it doesn't seem like they've made any leaps and bounds in regards to getting more and more people to use their computers. From my experience, there are two types of Apple users; those that use them because they are the best tool for the job, and those that use them out of style. The people who use them out of necessity usually could care less what kind of machine they're using; it's got the tools, fine. The people who use an Apple computer based on style seem to drool all over everything, no matter how trivial, Apple wants to release (computer or otherwise).

The userbase trend seems to only be getting worse, and as far as company longevity goes, it's probably best for Apple to concentrate on music products like the iPod. It seems that often times, people neglect the fact that Apple is a company, and thus wishe to make as much money as possible; Apple could care less about their "loyal" userbase. It's like some Apple users consider their purchase of an Apple a donation or something; Apple, like all other companies, only desire a profit and could care less about their users and their philisophical or moral reasoning for buying their machines.