iPod Video Dissection

alaswhatever writes "HowStuffWorks has gutted an iPod Video and taken pictures of everything.The article talks about exactly what's inside and explains how the touch-sensitive Click Wheel works." From the article: "Although the iPod is an Apple product, it works with both Mac and Windows machines. Since it's the top-selling media player in the United States, probably the big question is: What makes it different from any other digital media player?"

Comments

The 3 reasons for the iPod's rule

[dada21]

I've looked at numerous MP3 players, including my t809 cell phone and a multitude of PDAs I've used over the years. The iPod has a decent interface, but I feel it is lacking for me as I have a huge volume of music and the iPod doesn't give me a very quick way to access various songs on-the-fly. I'd love to see a manufacturer come out with a new way to navigate very quickly -- AI like. I'm thinking we a need invention: something like what T9 did to SMS messaging.

Of all the MP3 players, I've seen numerous ones that I liked, but the iPod won out mostly because the dame of the house prefers the interface. She has two.

The three reasons for the iPod rule, from what I've been able to deciper, are:

1. Marketing -- massive marketing
2. De-geeked interface (including copying songs)
3. Marketing

There has not been a bigger marketing campaign of any device, and in the long run I think it is marketing that helps to win the battle when everything else is equal. Yes, the de-geeked factor was a big reason for success with the girlfriends, parents and even grandparents, but I don't think it is the main reason for success.

Apple took huge risks to earn this reward, but that's how business is: those who risk the most earn the most rewards, if they earn at all.

Side note: Has it really been over 10 years since I first downloaded an MP3?

Re:The 3 reasons for the iPod's rule

[gEvil (beta)]

...and the iPod doesn't give me a very quick way to access various songs on-the-fly.

I have the exact opposite opinion. The iPod acceleration works quite well. It takes a second or two of frantic spinning to get it going, but once it does, I usually end up hitting the end of the list in no time.

Re:The 3 reasons for the iPod's rule

[mr-mafoo]

Well there is always the roll your own UI. Rockbox has a very customisable GUI, I haven't used it but my cousin has been raving about it on his iRiver. They have a beta for the iPod going - although you have to get it from the CVS iirc. http://www.rockbox.org/ then there is iPod linux, and ones own coding skillz.

Re:The 3 reasons for the iPod's rule

[timster]

As an experiment, I timed myself picking out an arbitrary specific song on my iPod from the "Songs" list. It turned out to be song 458 out of 775 and I reached it within 12 seconds (from the top-level menu, so I'd say I spent about 10 seconds looking for it in the list). Scrolling from the top of that list of 775 to the bottom takes about three seconds. I don't scroll this way very often, as I prefer to play by album or playlist, so I would probably be better at it with practice.

By comparison, typing "something" on my cell phone's predictive text input takes about three seconds (and I use that particular feature all the time).

I'm not saying that you're right or not, I'm just wondering if we can bring facts into the question of whether the iPod provides a quick way to get to songs. I feel that most people don't look for a song this way so often, and that it would be a mistake to design around it. Personally, what I appreciate about the iPod's interface is how easily I can express "give me a mix of band X and band Y" and similar things. That takes me more like 30 seconds, but I'm glad for the expressive power.

Re:The 3 reasons for the iPod's rule

[defy god]

i'm confused... when you say de-geeked interface, i get images of "easier to use." isn't that a good thing? the world doesn't doesn't like compiling their own software, using a CLI, or tweaking every single option just to get a merginal speed boost. that's what i think of when i hear geek interface. that's what i see when i look at other MP3 players with "more features." yes, it's great that it can decode mpeg2, divx, ogg vorbis, and [insert latest codec here], but does it achieve its original purpose easily? people buy these MP3 players (it's become generic... MP3 player = digital music player, though MP3 is still the dominant format used) to play their MP3s. if it does it well, then great!

and the iPod does indeed play MP3s well. no, i don't mean just sound quality, but on how people can actually play their music. people can easily browse and navigate their player to find the songs they want. they can easily create playlists with the provided software, iTunes. they can manage their giant music collections,again easily, and load them onto their iPod. from the clickwheel, to the iPod interface, to the syncing software, Apple has been very keen to look at the minute details on what it takes to actually play one's music.

after that, everything else is secondary. now, Apple's made it easy to watch television shows and music videos on the iPod. i really do think that's the approach all these music player companies should take. first, make sure the very basic features are complate, then work on the added stuff. sure, as a geek i'd love more options and more codecs, but please, PLEASE, for the love of [deity], perfect your original function first before trying to add on other fluff.

Re:The 3 reasons for the iPod's rule

[2nd Post!]

You forgot one of the reasons for the iPod's rule:
Perfect form factor.

Prior to the iPod you had CD sized large capacity MP3 players, or iPod sized low capacity flash players. The iPod bridged that gap quite nicely by providing high density small size players.

Now EVERYONE has a deck of cards sized MP3 player with touch pad and screen. Before the iPod it was a mess of buttons and UI elements.

So the top three, in order of history:
1) Perfect form factor
2) De-geeked interface
3) Marketing

You can't after all, market crap. There has to be something marketable in the first place.

Re:The 3 reasons for the iPod's rule

[mcsnee]

I'd say the integrated iTunes Music Store played a big role, too... the iTunes software is about a times easier to use than the garbage put out by, e.g., Creative Labs, and I can buy a song on the Music Store and be listening to it on my iPod in under a minute all with the same piece of software.

Whether you include that under the heading of "marketing" I don't know, but that was one of the big selling points of the iPod for me after dealing with a Creative Jukebox and then an RCA Lyra and their attendant shortcomings.

Re:The 3 reasons for the iPod's rule

[Firehed]

Very true. Heck, my minidisc player was exactly what I need as far as navigation and capacity went (four CDs worth of music is more than my typical playlist, though it can become problematic for those longer trips in the car of whatever), and a good 50 hours of tunes on a single AA battery. What ruined it? That utterly craptastic NetMD software. Oh the horrors. Like, almost up there with Windows ME. Maybe even worse, considering I never had ME installed on one of my computers.

And when I first got my iPod, I avoided iTunes at all costs. I bought Anapod Explorer but that eventually got a bit tiresome and I moved into the Winamp plugin. Easy enough to deal with, but no support for pics or videos. There's a good chance I tried something else in there too, but I forget if I did or not. I finally did move to iTunes... and I think it's had about the same uptime as my computer since Thanksgiving '05. Why? Once I got all my music added - admittedly a huge PITA (Japanese imports and the like don't CDDB particularly well), I could easily navigate and it integrates perfectly and seamlessly with the iPod. I plug it in, it syncs. I leave it plugged in, it keeps charging. That's all there is to it. Oh yeah... CD burning and ripping is also seamless. Put in CD, click one button, it rips it. Put in blank, choose a playlist, click burn, confirm, wait three minutes, done.

Does it have downsides? Of course. No lossless support except Apple's, music is still overpriced IMO, some of the "extra" things only work with MS software (no using T-bird with it... Outlook only), etc. But it's simple, elegant, and it integrates everything you really need into one place. I used to like my old approach of ripping with FreeRipMP3 then manually tagging it and then putting it in a directory that I'd remember then enqueing it in a Winamp playlist (this is, of course, before Winamp had ripping support). Then I realized there was software specifically intended to do all of that and then put it into a library which integrates seamlessly with the device I was using. How delightful.

Just throw this out there... is there any free (legal) software other than iTunes that has unlimited ripping and burning support? Winamp's ripping is limited unless you pay as is all the other software I've tried. That or it's full of adware and other crap. While I try to avoid using the music store, it is extremely easy to do, and again integrates extremely well. Searching through your library is a breeze since it does that ultra-fast-Apple-search thing, which makes creating a playlist very easy (we all know that making playlists on the iPod itself is a pain, but it's really easy in iTunes and I think that's more of how you're meant to do it).

So basically, for me, it ended up coming down to the software and UI. I should have known better than to buy something by Sony, but until it's software almost drove me to running the thing over with a steamroller, I loved the player. Had Apple made iTunes' default behavior some sort of "My music is here" thing upon starting (defaulting to the normal My Music folder for simplicity of most users), I'd have had to deal with so much less annoying junk before finally switching. Oh well.

Re:The 3 reasons for the iPod's rule

[xouumalperxe]

Considering the marketing effort Apple puts into most its products, I'd say the reasons Apple is dominating the mp3 player market are: interface, interface, aesthetics (including size), interface, the fact that it's entering a new market (as opposed to its computer section) and interface*

* Yeah and a bit of marketing

FOSS Means Business, Belfast, Thursday March 16th

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

As usual, wikipedia has a great article about the iPod (and of course it has less adds than TFA.

Sum of Parts

[necro81]

If they are asking the question about the iPod's dominance, they are probably looking in the wrong place by dissecting it. Sure, the iPod's appealing form factor and capabilities are determined by its components, but I think everyone here would agree that it takes far more than that to make a winning product. Just think of all the other awesome products out there, with great form factor and a nice feature list, that failed utterly.

Apple - Always Late, Always Cautious

[meehawl]

Apple took huge risks to earn this reward, but that's how business is: those who risk the most earn the most rewards, if they earn at all.

Actually, Apple has always been a few years behind the curve when it comes to mp3 players - unwilling to jump into a new market but instead preferrig to wait for others to prove its viability and take the legal flak.

Saehan's 1998 MPMan F10 - the world's first flash memory mp3 player.

Diamond's 1998 Rio PMP300 - first major US company taken to court by the RIAA for providing mp3 hardware.

Compaq's 1999 Personal Jukebox - 1st hard-drive based mp3 player.

Archos's 2002 Multimedia Jukebox - first portable video/photo player and recorder.

BS. Actually there are 6 reasons.Its not marketing

[acomj]

You can fool some people with marketing but not everyone multiple times. The fact is the ipod works amazingly well. Is it perfect? No. But I think its the best out there and I'd buy another one if this one dies (its 2 years old, and running gread (knock on wood).

David pouge has 6 reasons in His NYTimes article...

In fact, at least six factors make the iPod such a hit: cool-looking hardware; a fun-to-use, variable-speed scroll wheel; an ultrasimple software menu; effortless song synchronization with Mac or Windows; seamless, rock-solid integration with an online music store (iTunes); and a universe of accessories. Mess up any aspect of the formula, and your iPod killer is doomed to market-share crumbs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/technology/circu its/09pogue.html

Re:My Take

[lyonsden]

The other thing is that id really like the iPod to have the ability to look for tunes beginning with a specific letter.

You are in luck! You can do that very thing easily using smart playlists.

1. Create a smart playlist for each letter you are interested in (up to 26)
2. Sync it to your iPod
3. Listen to your music the way you want to listen to your music.

Any questions?

Re: Marketing only goes so far

[Thrudheim]

Critics of the iPod consistently cite marketing as the number one reason for its success. Granted, Apple is very good at marketing, and iPod ads are all over the place, but if it is mostly marketing then why can't anyone else hire equally good ad agencies and grab a big chunk of market share?

The most important factor is that no one else has the whole system (player, software, music store) working as seamlessly as Apple does. Apple has also been aggressive at bringing integration of things like podcasts and, now, video. It works well, and that leads to satified customers, who then become effective marketers for the device. So, yes, people see iPod ads, but endorsements from friends are far more influential.

I remember two years ago reading commentary by some "technology analyst" who argued that Apple's share of the mp3 player market would soon be about the same percentage as its share of the computer market. Wish I could still find the article; it would be fun to see again. Instead, Apple has only increased its market share since then. There have been plenty of opportunities for competitors to use marketing, and larger distribution channels, to stop this from happening. It is not Apple's marketing, for instance, that made Sony completely inept at producing a competitive product. Likewise, Dell did not turn its prowess at low-margin mass-production into making an mp3 powerhouse. Walmart did not, as some predicted, turn its music download store into a dominant player. There is more to all this than marketing.

How many iPod killers have we seen? None of them know how to run an advertising campaign?

Re:I don't like the click wheel.

[badmammajamma]

Careful...don't ever say anything good about the Karma. Some iPod user (who of course use to use a karma) will come out and say how the harddrive in the player didn't work right and they almost always say how it took at least 2 replacements before it was resolved. Oh, and the little red knob would fall off.

Oh, and how dare you say the karma wheel interface was better! Blasphemy! Frankly, I'm stunned you haven't been properly chastised yet. Lord knows it happens to me whenever I make the mistake of bringing it up.

The Big Answer

[nuckin futs]

Since it's the top-selling media player in the United States, probably the big question is: What makes it different from any other digital media player?"

because it's tied to, and works seamlessly with the easiest, most popular online music store in existence. what other company has a complete, one stop shop, all in one solution that works with itunes?

iPod's Success is not Marketing Alone

[salesgeek]

I keep reading marketing... marketing... marketing... on reasons why iPod succeeded. There's a lot more to it that slick packaging, good advertising and strategic price/feature positioning:

1) Design: as people like to point out iPod wasn't the first or the most capable device of it's type. It was the most drop-dead easy to use and understand from install to sync to library management.

2) iTunes: solved the real problem with other players: you had to either rip CDs or download pirated music to get any use out of your MP3 player.

3)Focus on customer experience and satisfaction leading to great reputation. While Sony and RCA are busy explaining why their stuff "Works for Sure" people know iPod works because their friends and coworkers will tell them so. iPods are kind of the CrackBerry of music players.