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iPod Has Nothing To Fear From Slow-Starting Zune
narramissic writes, "Looks like Apple's iPod has nothing to fear from Zune this holiday season. In a research note published Tuesday, PiperJaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster writes that 'during its launch week on Nov. 16, Zune held the seventh spot on online retailer Amazon.com's top 10 best-selling MP3 players list, and it fell from that spot to 13 on the list only five days after launch, on Nov. 20.' Even worse, only 8% of retailers surveyed by PiperJaffray recommend the Zune to customers, while 75% recommend Apple's iPod." The article notes Apple's 5-year headstart in the portable player market and Microsoft's stated intention to invest heavily in the Zune over the next several years.
The Zune is brown... Grandpa used to tell me, "No matter how much you polish a turd..." Poor MS hopefully Zune 2.0 ditches DRM, plays all formats and breaks all of the rules iPods live by. Untill then... It's the iPod for me!
Did M$ plan on having a flop out of the gate, planning on 2nd and 3rd generations to really go after the iPod? M$ never gets anything right the first time, so maybe it's not a big deal to them that it flopped?
if it could have squirted ogg, it might have done better.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Did anybody seriously expect the Zune to gain a lot of market share?
How many Windows iPods were sold a few weeks after they hit the market?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Unfortunately the Zune seems to offer very little, and the feature that it should be known for takes a LONG time to implement. Sharing a song with another zune is as easy as the path the pinball takes on the sesame street number song.
It takes like a minute to share (squirt) a zune song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpHzQYKDlWU [youtube.com]
The thing I was wondering is this. I do not mind the squirting feature, it seems neat and probably could have been implemented in a more intuitive way (IE have a squirt button instead of traversing 3 menus and a submenu) but the idea itself is "ok." Though I do have a problem with "squirting" a song in reference to a player that looks like it was molded in shit.
So they have some possibilities for cool features! They have wireless... why do they not leverage it in more interesting ways.
As you can see in the video they can see other zune players, in fact it seems incredibly intuitive.
Now lets say that it is true wifi and could probably support 5 or 6 streams coming out of it... why do they not have some kind of "Zune broadcast" feature were people can look at zunes, see what they are broadcasting or who they are listening too, and let people tap into the music that way... maybe even have some sort of re-broadcast peer to peer feature were each zune re-broadcasts what it is playing if someone wants to listen to the same song...
This way if you knew a lot of zune friends you could have them sample the song before you squirt it into their zune... though even talking about the zune and squirting makes me kind of uncomfortable.
Also, since it has wifi, why do they not provide a program that lets your computer do the same thing... IE submit to someones current audio stream.
This is even "better" than bringing an ipod to a club and having them plug it in, you just bring your zune in, start your stream and the DJ could link into it. OR you could go to your house, have your computer plugged into a nice sound system, and have it plug into what your zune is playing, this would allow you to use the zune as sort of a music remote control were you have a nice interface in your hand.
Or it could be used the other way around, the computer could transmit music and the zune could log in and see the music being transmitted... Microsoft even has Media center edition which would be perfect for this kind of thing, or it could be a plug in to their current media player. This way people could come over, log their zunes into your computer network and listen to music rocking down the line.
Maybe internet radio, walk into a wifi cafe, set up your zune, and listen to radio streaming from a remote radio station that is on-line, NPR for example (though you might want to find one to your tastes ofc).
How about wireless synchronization with podcasts? Walk into a wifi area and hit "sync" and have it sync with all the podcasts you are behind on and then tell you which ones you haven't listened to yet.
Maybe they could work with an online video provider similar to youtube and hook up a method to stream user videos to the zune in an easy fashion, something that would nearly be a killer app for anything.
Imagine a youtube branded mediaplayer with wireless access (maybe even work with phone companies for EVDO support) were someone could log into youtube and download youtube videos right to their phone.
I mean, the possibilities are ENDLESS and OBVIOUS. You merely have to think "man what would I love to do with a wireless capable player that can be locked into a major brand and legally buy music for" etc... and it seems Microsoft chose one interesting feature to focus on and implement poorly (squirting) and then made it so that the player broke every compatibility rule that you can think of, and made a SONY mistake were it changes format and requires that you re-purchase to play.
In the end you have to ask yourself "WTF"
and note, all of this is without the criticism of making blood contracts with record companies etc... it is saying "here are the things you made me hope you would provide, then you provided... this"
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
The iPod has remained relativley the same across all releases. It still does then what it does now. It still works in generally the same way.
If Microsoft wants to touch that, they need an interface most people understand and prefer to the iPod, and they need to STICK TO IT. Ease of use and knowing the tricks to an iPod are part of what keeps people buying them again and again. Knowing Microsoft every revision of the hardware will be wildly different from the last, breaking any device-bound loyalty people have.
Somebody posted this in a previous Slashdot story, I thought it was worth repeating:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=T10L9ybstps
Basically it ends up being an advertisement for the new iPod shuffle. Interesting to see how "the masses" are reacting to the Zune.
~ roscivs
Let me preface this by saying that I am actually a fan of Apple and I hope that I am dead wrong on this. But look what they did with the XBox, Web Servers, and Browser. Microsoft always tends to start slow with a crappy product and take heavy losses. Over time, they'll leverage Vista and everything else they can to turn the Zune into a household name. Apple is in a good position at the moment, but all it takes is one mistake.
In my opinion, Sony screwed the pooch with the PS-3 and MS took advantage of it. With the war chest they have, they do not need a better product. They only need to be able to win a war of attrition.
The thing is just plain ugly. Aside from the technical concerns (DRM, extremely limited wi-fi, sideways viewing) just look at it: brown, gray, or dull black. And it's blockier than even the 1G iPod.
As superficial as it sounds, Apple has right idea for a big seller: make it shiny, make it smooth.
I had every intention of flaming you, but you are right. These sales figures show that it took over a year for iPod to really take off.
an ill wind that blows no good
What about the console that lost 4 billion?
Microsoft duds - Bob, Windows at Work. Fair enough.
OTOH, Office succeeded more because it was a bundle for less than the cost of WP plus 1-2-3. Oh, and all components looked the same (thanks to being Windows based), and worked more similarly, so learning one meant that learning another had already started. And there were "extras" (Org Chart and so on). Despite how good technically 1-2-3 V3 and WP5.1 were, they were arcane to learn.
As for Zune, well it looks as though Microsoft used Taco's review of the iPod and stopped all thought there. No WiFi - well ours has. Smaller than an Archos - well ours is bigger. Lame - well...
"She's furniture with a pulse"
Apple will have a chance to have wifi and FM tuner for the next ipod. If they do it, they can thank MS for the ideas
Firefox Power http://firefoxpower.blogspot.com/
Like I said before, you can't compare the markets directly for a number of reasons, but you shouldn't count out a company that has a seemingly infinite warchest and is willing to spend it to strong-arm their way into whatever market they'd like.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
The WiFi could be a killer feature if it didn't suck, but it does, which means no squirting, which means there's really no fucking point to even having it.Yeah, cause of course, they're not going to add any features in future firmware updates that would make more use of the WiFi.
Except it will most definitely happen. Will people still be bashing the WiFi a year down the line when, say, you can wirelessly sync with your PC, have your friends all grabbing your music stream on their Zunes so you're all listening to the same thing at the same time, grab songs from WiFi kiosks at a concert or a music store, etc? The key is getting the WiFi in the Zune and working at launch - and enhancing the functionality in the future.
Is it fair to say that the current limited set of WiFi functionality isn't that impressive, and isn't enough to justify buying one at this point? Yes, it is. Is it fair to say that it wasn't worth putting it in there just because of how it's being used at launch? Hell no.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
In the simplest terms, the Zune will not be receiving the best response from the merchants who might be pushing it during this holiday season.
a) These merchants all have 100's of iPod Accessories. The nature of this is that if you sell a 299 dollar IPod, it will also create the sale of some other device, perhaps a speaker system or a nice little protective wallet, or some addon. Even if they would work fine with the Zune, the packaging all says 'iPod'.
b) No impulse upgrade available. Someone comes in for a 30 gig iPod and may be talked up to a 60. The shuffle buyer ends up with a Nano. Maybe the Nano buyer ends up with a video iPod.
c) The Zune is a new product from Microsoft. To most vendors that implies support issues. The worst thing for them would be to have to deal with returns. Microsoft waiting till this close to Christmas is probably to try to get enough of these into the market before the inevitable bug/virus/hardware issue comes up. They would prefer to fix it after Christmas to see big numbers.
d) Grandma buys the Zune for her kid because a salesperson said 'its like the iPod but better!' and the kid returns the Zune for store credit to get their iPod.
Basicly the profit margin can NOT be high enough to sell this at this stage. The question is WHEN.
---
I will not propose any suggestions of how they could improve things. Clearly the fact that they have a wifi and fm radio in the box and an upgradeable firmware/software means they could improve these gradually. But the fact that they came so strongly with DRM that even makes my recording of my sister's karaoke performance self destruct ala mission impossible, does not bode well to the idea of a flexible portable mobile media center.
The fact is that Microsoft should be big enough player to dictate to the RIAA how things are going to be rather than the other way around. Even Apple, substantially smaller, bullied them effectively.
I haven't tried the Zune, but i also didn't buy an iPod until the Nano came out, and since I can fit my Nano in my shirt pocket and forget it is there, I don't see any comparison to Microsoft's offering.
If these are the people that Microsoft is relying on to sell the Zune to the masses, they are seriously outgunned by the hordes of iPod lovers.
Sure, the Ipod is easy to use, but it is also boring. It's a white box, how innovative is that? And they act like they have made fire.Since when has fire been any more exciting? For starters, it's an incredibly dated technology. It doesn't do anything for me that I can't accomplish with a flashlight or space heater. I mean, sure, it's hot and red (red hot even?) but how innovative is that? And my cavemen neighbors act like they have made sliced bread.
Sigs are for suckers.
What real advantages does Zune really provide over the 5.5 generation iPod? Basically none. I went to Staples to check out a Zune and it is nearly twice as big as the iPod 30 GB and atleast $20 - $30 costlier. The wireless sharing capability is the only big feature but also cannot be used until the people I know have a Zune. And that too is a let down because you can't keep music for more than three days. It is similiar to the problem Sony is facing against XBox 360. Its new, doesn't have as many games as the 360 and way much costlier. Gee, I'd rather go for the 360.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
I dare them to buy the front shelves in the Apple Stores. (There's a reason Apple has a retail chain.)
What do Mac users have to do with it? The vast majority of iPod owners are using Windows.
... and then they built the supercollider.
On the go alot? Don't care if you have massive quantities of albums with you at all times?
Get a Rio Carbon! I've had my 5-gigger for roughly 3 years now. I used to use it when working on cars (I was a professional mechanic) dropped it upwards of 20-30 times. Thing still works PERFECTLY. Drag-and-drop, no software required. Hooks up using a standard mini-USB cable, 20 hours on one charge, can also be used out of the box as a portable hard drive...small as shit. Easily controlled using one thumb, MUCH faster interface than the clumsy "touch-ring" Ipod.
On the road alot? Still want those 20gigs?
Get a Rio Karma! Same easy to use interface as a Carbon, COMES with a docking station that A. Has USB 2.0 and Ethernet hookups (so you can hook it directly into your network, turning it into a digital jukebox) and B. Has RCA line-outs so you can hook it up directly to your stereo. Have had mine for about 2.5 years, works perfect, looks fantastic, and fits inside the palm of your hand (i.e. won't overlap the base of your fingers...yes I know not all hands are equal size, but my hands are fairly small)
Oh and did I mention? Both the Carbon AND the Karma can play nearly any audio format!
Seriously. I never understood the whole Ipod thing. To me, they have always been and always will be overpriced "look at me" gadgets designed for a generation too stupid to know that no matter how much reflective plastic you cover shit with, it is still shit.
Living With a Nerd
I have had multiple Sony MiniDisc players - they have been improved over the years (higher capacity, Walkman-like waterproofing, still more capacity) but have never taken off. Why? One likely reason is that Sony made the format proprietary and encumbered so heavily that whatever benefit it provided in convenience couldn't keep up with the encumbrance. Microsoft has the Zune, and it has many of the same problems (they fragged their partners to create a player that wouldn't play the ironically named "PlaysforSure" standard, the wireless feature encumbered by DRM to make it almost useless, inability to use the player for storage, etc.). While I'm sure MS can improve the usability of the Zune, they can't allow people to do what they wish with it (because doing so would compromise the support of the music studios and might interfere with MS's DRM implementations) and MS's previous behavior doesn't lead one to believe they would support their customers well enough to make compiling music in whatever format Zune uses worthwhile.
You can make using a device nice and easy, but if you can't do what you want with it then it is dear at half the price. When a better option(s) exists, people are unwilling to buy what someone wants to sell them in preference to what they actually wish to buy and use. While MS has in the past tried to constrain others from selling what its customers want if it isn't what MS wants to sell, MS can't do that here because what people want (and not what MS makes) is driving the market. I don't see a way that MS can make the Zune make sense for users without losing the support of the studio and its own DRM people, and so I can't see how the Zune would sell even if it's made usable.
What I want to know about that YouTube video is where it was made.
The screen shows at least six other Zunes nearby.
Is there any place in the universe other than the Microsoft campus that has over six Zunes within range of each other as of November 2006?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Sure, just try finding anybody outside of the /. readership that has the faintest idea what OGG (Vorbis or Theora, it's more fun if you name them by their codecs instead of the container) is.
Funny how the above might be interpreted as common sense.
Why is it that the cheapest and best sounding routine is the least used? You would think that a free market would grab it and promote it. The answer is that the market is not free and that the major players are a bunch of asses who want to promote their own little format at the cost of everyone else. WMA, the worst of the bunch, is paradoxically the most common format on players. Sony has their ATRAC and Apple has their AAC. MP3 is available to all for a slight fee. OGG is free for the taking yet few use it. How backward.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The reason they probably don't yet stream music is because they've not yet solved the WiFi buzz (audio noise) you get from enabling wireless on a Zune...
Read about it on a blog that listed the top ten ways Microsoft could improve the Zune.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How hard can it be to produce a decent player, really?
The market in portable MP3 players has been around for a fair few years now. The iPod runs the show because it does what Most People want to do, in a nice friendly way, and is brilliantly marketed. There are a thousand and one players on the market for Everybody Else, which offer more functionality, better sound quality, less DRM restrictions, lower price, whatever. Pretty much every single one of these competitors is deficient on the usability front, and most of them have some head-slappingly bad UI howlers that make you wonder just what the hell they were thinking when they designed it, or indeed whether they were thinking at all.
And then, having had years to learn from everybody else, good and bad, Microsoft rocks up with the Zune. Oops.
Why can't they, and everybody else, understand what makes for a good portable music player? Why do they give Apple such an easy ride? The iPod really isn't any great shakes, it's just that the competition is mostly rotten. With each revison Apple have done just enough to keep half a step ahead - for example, the rather fudged implementation of gapless playback that finally arrived with the last updates took away one of the main reasons why I personally wouldn't buy one (seriously, folks, if there's no gaps between the tracks on the CD, and your player puts them in, that is a bug. Fix it. And yes, I know MP3s can't really do true gapless).
Really, Apple's market dominance is there for the taking. All it takes is a bit of application. Why can't anybody come up with the goods?
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=294929001& context=set-72157594292367584&size=o
s hot_of_.html
Via boingboing
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/14/weird_screen
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
The Zune hardware is not too bad. Some reviews have actually said it's really pretty good. The problem is that you don't try to take on the market leader with a device that is about as good for the same price. Esp if it's larger, heavier, and has less battery. The biggest "cool factor", the WiFi isn't even remotely useful until there is a critical mass of Zune in the wild. If you want to squirt stuff from your Zune you have to find someone else who has one.
But it's not flying off the shelves. It's NOT EVEN ON some shelves. It will fall off the Amazon top 100 in the next few days. The iPod is 5 or 6 of the Amazon top ten electronics sellers. The #1 at Amazon has firmly been an iPod for weeks. (Zune was #94 last I checked)
And Microsoft has done everything right. They were able to convince the entire non-iPod MP3 player industry to adopt Plays-For-Sure so they could all be put out of Microsofts way at once and they STILL can't outsell Creative's player.
Would you do business with them after they lured you into Plays-For-Sure?
They were carefull to pay off the RIAA through Universal Music for each Zune sold. The RIAA gets their money when you pay at the cash register. That way people can know they are doing the right thing.
Everyone who wants to send a buck to the RIAA by buying a Zune raise your hand!
They did a lot of focus groups and their ads had the right mix of Black, White, Asian, women, men, young, and old in their "Welcome to the Social" ads which feature some kind of music player. Did their ads really inform anybody about the Zune? Why I want one instead of an iPod?
They carefully came up with a misleading "points" scheme to cloud how much a song costs and to force consumers to leave a few cents on the table for each purchase. This is sure to appeal to the average buyer.
The only one who deserves a Brown Zune for Christmas is Bill Gates.
MP3 players existed before the iPod and they were *commodity hardware* no less. Apple said "Screw that, this is a style item, not a pocket radio", and made the MP3 player *cool*, then charged a couple hundred dollars more than the Asian consumer electronics giants were charging. And proceeded to beat the living who-hah out of them. (The original iPod was $400 back in 2001. The Nomad Jukebox, which also had a hard drive, sold for about $250. Ever heard of it? Me neither. There were dozens of flash-based MP3 players, all capping at $250. Some of the popular models were in the $160 range.)
i ons/2100-1040_3-274821.html for a blast from the past.
See generally http://news.com.com/Apples+iPod+spurs+mixed+react
So here is the problem for Zune: there was a "portable MP3 player market". It was tiny. There is still a "portable MP3 player market", and its still tiny. And then there is an iPod market. Apple owns the concept like Nintendo used to own "video game console" (come on, how many of you have mothers who said that the Playstation was "The new Nintendo?").
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
This product doesn't exist to make a profit for Microsoft. They're not expecting to beat Apple just yet.
What they're going to have, is a proof that Microsoft is a contender in the mp3 player market. This is just a very expensive piece of marketting for their next generation player.This sounds exactly like the strategy they used for Microsoft Money to take over the market that Intuit had with Quicken. It always works.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Considering that the name "Zune" translates to "FUCK" in Hebrew... Not joking. http://herenot.livejournal.com/29371.html
What about the Creative Zen Vision? Of all things, I think the Creative Zen would be the best competitor with the Ipod. The Zune introduces that cool little music sharing capabilities, but the thing is, who is actually gonna use it? You can only listen to it a few times before the file goes bunk. Harsh truth is that a lot of the gadgets and techies who are going to be the first to buy the latest, probably aren't going to be caring much about copyrights and such. The only use the music sharing capabilities will bring to them is maybe a preview before they get frustrated and download the song.
You are crazy.
Netscape - A single product company (web server + browser) driven into the dirt because MS gave away a competing product free with windows.
WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 - both companies foolishly refused to provide Windows versions of their products, meanwhile MS made equivalent products that did support Windows, ultimately bundling them together as Office.
These scenarios are not even remotely analogous to ipod vs Zune unless you are suggesting that Microsoft are going to resort to giving Zunes away for free in breakfast cereal boxes. Even then I very much doubt people would start using them.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
It's already pretty well understood that the hardware and legal limitations of the Zune are early shortcomings. However, I happen to think that one of its bigger shortcomings is not the player, but the advertising for it.
I've seen only one commercial for the Zune, and it was the first time I wanted a refund of my time for a commercial. All I can remember was a dog wagging its tail and the owner asking it to go outside. The Zune was never shown. As a matter of fact, I cannot really recall any advertisement where the Zune was displayed. I mean, after looking at a commercial like that, it just begs the question of WHY? Did the owner want to go outside to get a Zune? Did its dog see one and get excited about it, thus sparking a reaction from the owner to chase it or something? If I have to do a close analysis of a 30-second or less commercial, what would make me or anyone want to research further into the product, let alone buy it? The "let's-get-lots-of-interest-by-being-enigmatic" strategy for marketing and advertisement only works for ideas and philosophies, in my opinion.
Let me not even get started on what they think is "welcoming the social." I think that seeing some random Spanish (?) girl looking like she has other intentions with something cylindrical or an Asian girl seemingly fornicating (this can be looked at in so many different angles) makes me wonder what "social" I really want to be a part of. Using the verb "to squirt" to describe sending music or data doesn't help the situation either. Developers, developers, developers.
Plus, it's not like Microsoft hasn't made cool advertising before. Its advertisements for Office have been pretty interesting, and so was its commercial for Windows Vista while it was still in beta. Why couldn't they do this with the Zune? Were they afraid that the RIAA would come down on them if they played a song or anything related to music?
To be fair, when the iPod was first launched, I don't remember the advertisements for it exactly but I think they centered around the same theme that Apple uses today: showing people using iPod to listen to music. They showed people dancing, jumping, freaking out, going crazy, and doing all sorts of things that have to deal with the enjoyment of listening to music. Hell, when I saw those ads I wanted to dance. Plus, the white iPod looked really cool in them. No wonder it became a chic item to have. Hell, just for kicks Microsoft could have creative around this idea. Why didn't they?
The reason Apple impresses us all is that they make devices so nice to use, that even people that claim to hate them buy them. You own one after all...
Also that the devices tend to have a lot of technical depth but hide it behind a refined interface - poke around for alternate iPod management software if you want to have more control over what happens. They have moved beyond the "Cool, I can add my own graphics" that a lot of us loved at one time and have moved into the "thank god I don't have to mess with it to use it fully'.
It's like the recent story about the Microsoft shutdown menu. Like you, they thought more choices were better but really they are not. Apple is very good at folding choices into as few choices as possible.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just watch out for the 1984 edition. Trust Me.
Once again, Zune is NOT a product. Zune is a massive testbed for DRM that MS is examining at the behest of the music industry for subsequent inclusion in Vista.
I have around 400 CDs in my personal collection. (Maybe 500 now?) My all-time record was 2000 which is an absolute pain in the ass if you actually deal with the physical media.
Many years ago-- while I was in the military-- I got tired of carrying around all the stupid plastic cases and migrated all my music to alphabetical CD binders. It was never an optimal solution for me because buying a new cd meant yanking all the discs out of the binder and shuffling them around to keep things easy to find. The binders were fairly difficult to use and were extremely dangerous to take on the road without a copilot to play DJ.
CDs in these binders seemed to be on a fast track to destruction. It was easy to scratch the surface of a CD with the zippers if you weren't careful. I once forgot a binder in the back of my car and warped approximately thirty CDs. A friend sat on one of the binders and shattered the first three pages of CDs... so on and so on. Lots of hassles I really hated to deal with but it was either binders or dead weight.
When computers caught up to CD ROM media in realtime playback with enough fidelity for me to stand the acoustic tradeoff I bought a few large swappable drives and started ripping my audio to mp3. I used UDF formatted CDRW's to dump MP3's to a Sony ATRAC/MP3 cd walkman for the times I wanted portable music and had my home computer as a permanent jukebox system. (I tried the Sony way and found ATRAC to be both cumbersome, slow and inferior.) The whole process was extremely time and labour intensive and involved numerous software packages that were never really designed to work together.
I managed with this setup for a few years until I found CDEX. CDEX automated a lot of the process of sorting rips by artist, album, and track. I was still bound to the "ghost" of physical media because I still had to shuffle albums on CDRW to be able to listen to whatever I wanted at any given time. I also had to plan my musical selections in advance. I did this for a couple of years and although not happy with the system, it worked so I made do. I never actually thought I wanted an iPod. I thought people who bought them were dumb. I basically thought "What the fuck do I need another MP3 player for? I've already got one."
One weekend I was at a friend's lake house. He had brought his laptop and a USB drive he used for his iTunes library. I'd brought a few new CDs I hadn't stripped from their cases yet and I brought them in so we could all listen to them. While we were listening to the first one he took the rest of the CDs and stuffed one into his laptop drive. (This wasn't to steal music... We were drinking and didn't want to fuck with having to change CDs every 30 minutes in a single-slot deck.) iTunes popped up and sucked the music into his USB drive and then spit out the CD. He worked his way through my stack, made a few clicks to set up a play list and then hooked up his iPod and synced to the library. Then, he dropped the iPod in a dock and started the playlist he'd just created.
(This was all on Windows, by the way. Not that it really matters to this story but there wasn't any fanboy Mac drug dealer peer pressure.)
At the time, I basically ignored the player. I already had an MP3 player but I wanted iTunes. All that work I did keeping my music portable and sorted... Gone. I was floored. What would have taken me hours to do even with CDEX helping me sort took minutes with iTunes. When I went home, I immediately downloaded iTunes and migrated my existing MP3 library over. Since I had been meticulous about ID3 tags the library imported without any user invervention other than me saying "yes" when iTunes asked if I wanted the program to keep my music sorted for me. I then spent the next two days filling in the gaps in my mp3 library. I didn't actually own an iPod but the ease of dealing with both physical media and also purchasing new songs virtually is what really sold me. I'd given up on the tactile fulfillment in handling packaging long ago so migrating to digital-on
Ease of use. My grandma could pick one up and intuitively figure out how to play her music. Nothing gets in the way of this even with all of the other features the iPod comes with (that the Sony MP3 does not). Plug it into you computer and the songs automatically get put on the iPod. You do all of your "work" in the completely intuitive iTunes, which coincidentally has a huge library of music to buy with one click. If you go into an Apple store and play with one, you quickly realize it's dominance in these areas.
And yes, it looks and feels much better, millions of accessories, etc... you basically answered your own question.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin