Slashdot Mirror
A Brief History of the iPod
antdude writes "MacSlash mentioned MLAgazine's article on a brief history of the iPod. It all started on October 23, 2001 with the release of one of the most important products from Apple in its history."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I also talked with a Mac-enthusiatic buddy of mine, and he hated it. I don't know why, but he thought it would bring down Apple another notch on the finance scale. Guess he was wrong. Along with some that said "no wireless. Lame."
I find it the most indispensable tool in my life. Backup, file transport, music and calendar. With a huge harddrive.
... sometimes I fly with the white swan to my Liffey home.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Since its inception, Apple has always been willing to gamble more with new products than most other companies
Granted, they flopped with the Newton... but they came out with the mac, the powerbook, peer2peer file sharing out of the box, the trackpad, the powerbook duo, speech recognition integrated on the OS on the 90's, quicktime, and the list goes on... (I would like to give them the mouse and the interface, but as with everything they also have a dark side)
It is good to see they are ripping the benefits of believing in something completely new... ( As they believed in a portable media player by some bogus guy who was rejected by other companies)
Kudos to Apple
Guaranteed: At least a dozen times prior to Apple releasing the iPod, large technology company middle managers refused to approve designs for competing devices, claiming with absolute certainty that no market existed for portable digital music players.
As those ass-molded-to-chair managers know, it's always easier to be a skeptic. The numbers of jobs and revenue lost to those WRONG decisions must be staggering.
Here's a brief history of the iPod:
First, Apple designed the iPod. One day an engineer came in succinctly blitzed and designed the horrible "I-ain't-seen-this-shit-since-Intellivision" circle navigation wheel thingy. The hippie fruits at Apple all applauded.
Then they bought usage rights to some second-rate cheap ass songs that never got played on the radio anyway, and used them to promote the thing. Said no-name bands became more famous because of the constant never-ending barrage of commercials. "Honey, if I do say so myself, this Black Eyed Peas song is rather good! I absolutely hated it the first 48,000 times I heard it but now it's starting to grow on me!"
Then Apple deployed their proven strategy of making the device look better than it actually performs, thereby luring thoughtless dimwits and college freshmen with enormous piles of high interest credit cards that they somehow "needed" one for Christmas.
Then when people realized that the music they were downloading for free was somehow supporting terrorism, and they were probably going to be castrated in town square, they needed another method to fill up the bottomless hole that is the iPod (seriously, who the hell needs to have that many gigs of mp3s with them at all times?). But wait, Apple was here with a solution! You can download the songs for a low low price, and it's legal! Oh...and the artists still get fucked! Yay! The RIAA can rest easy. iTunes is here.
And a legend was born.
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
I know this is off topic, but I see they call the iPod one of the most important products in Apple history. How does one value their individual products, and how would a list of importantness lokk like? Like this?
1. Apple I for starting the whole thing?
2. Apple II for making Apple a business?
3. Macintosh for paving the way to the future?
4. iMac for saving the company?
5. iPod for attracting buyers outside of the crowd of believers?
Can Steve Jobs be called a "product" these days, and thus earn a place on the top 5?
didn't see any Rios or Dell laptops, though--go figure;>
I find it interesting that every "iPod killer" attempts to add more features and make it cheaper. Unfortunately this has the side effect of it having a horrible design or uses cheap materials which makes it feel horrible to handle.
Personally I believe that if something looks and feels good, then people will buy it. As soon as a company accepts that there are people who are perfectly happy to pay more for something that looks and feels good, then they might spend a little more on the hardware and less on trying to get it's sales price as low as possible.
I fear that at the moment the only real competitor to Apple was Sony, but then they dropped the ball with a limited hard drive (no 40 gig option?) and the stupid requirement to convert to ATRAC. Creative have never produced a product that remotely looks like it's worth the money that was paid for it and iRiver (whilst being technically very good) needs to seriously review some of their design choices (ruggidised black and a stubbly joypad doesn't appeal to many and definately not to women).
Of course, everyones opinion is different. I know people who think the Creative one is beautiful and the Apple one horrible. But the market has clearly shown that they are in the minority.
More style, more class, less about the price point and someone could actually make it vaiguley close to having an "iPod killer" on their hands.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
"It all started on October 23, 2001 with the release of one of the most important products from Apple in its history."
Uh, no. It started when Tony Fadell had the idea of creating a digital music player and tying it to an online music store a few years before the iPod came out. Inside Look at Birth of the iPod on Wired News covers the stuff that happened before the iPod came out.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Slashdot has never been revolutionary. It's never really on the cutting edge of anything. Most of the editor's comments end up being incendiary or show that they are profoundly out of touch with reality.
I think, therefore I am an Atheist.
Apple was not the first to make a hard disk portable player. They were the first to ship one with a 1.8" hard disk, which hardly makes everything else a clone - they just got there second. Nobody was really taken by surprise, and the major MP3 companies were already well into designing their own.
Apple was also not the first to make a mini hard disk portable. They were the first to ship a 4GB 1" hard disk player, and then only just. They were beaten by many companies to ship a 1" 1.5GB HD player (including where I work) - but they had a supply of 4GB drives before everyone else. In fact, Rio even managed to announce and demonstrate their own 4GB player hours before Job's keynote speech. Spot how he deliberately missed the comparison of the Mini iPod to the Rio Nitrus (a 1" HD player), and instead picked a Rio 256MB flash player as a convenient strawman.
It's slightly irritating that Apple's reality distortion field now makes it possible for everyone to claim that all other players are "clones".
Agreed. For a tech-oriented site, slashdot is very quick to decry most techonological advances.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Oh, wait...
You must think in Russian.
I'm the webmaster there. Does anyone have a mirror site that we can host the images off? My server is my home machine, a PII 266.
It's been a long, long time since I've been enticed by any piece of consumer electronics.
I'm not a gadget freak anymore, really.
But dammit! Apple have created an object of sheer desirability in the iPod - and especially in the iPod mini.
Despite my (iBod) nickname, It's been many years since I've owned an Apple product (the last was the ill-fated Newton).
I think Apple really understand which buttons to press to get hip, design-aware customers longing for their products (not that I include myself in that demograph). When they've got the trendsetters, the rest will follow.
Credit and kudos where it's due. Apple have a killer product that is even making iPod buyers switch from PCs to Macs, allegedly.
IMHO there will be no 'iPod killer' because nobody understands the intended market for these devices better than Apple.
No self-respecting kid will thank you for getting him/her a 'no-name' MP3 player this Christmas instead of an iPod.
Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...
...
...
...
:-D
Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port
Raise your hand if you have both
Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device
There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod.
~LoudMusic
October 23rd, 2001. Priceless.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.