100 Million iPods

prelelat writes "I find it somewhat hard to believe but this story over at PC world, indicates that the iPod has sold over 100 million units. It also asks how many are broken and replaced which makes me believe the number may be more accurate."

Comments

Mine's still working

[Anonymous Coward]

My 2004 4th generation ipod is still working, with good battery life etc. Though I did have to do the business-card trick to fix the hard drive.

Obligatory.

[Tackhead]

"No wireless. More space than a Zune. Lame."
- CmdrBallmer

Re:Obligatory.

[RedElf]

To summarize the article: "The sheeple are consuming!"

Slow news day.

Comma chameleon, come and go, come and go

[ruiner13]

I personally, find it funny, how some people, tend to abuse commas. What is so hard, to understand? This has to be one of the worst headlines ever. It took me 4 times reading it before I started to think I understood what the author was getting at.

To keep on-topic, my 3G 15GB iPod still works just fine. The battery doesn't last the 8 or so hours it used to (more like 6 now), but it still runs like a champ.

Re:Comma chameleon, come and go, come and go

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt very many iPod failures are the result of being poorly manufactured, I'm willing to bet 95% of dead iPods are the result of hard-drive failures caused by users repeatedly dropping them.

Re:Comma chameleon, come and go, come and go

[yada21]

Cammas have, another use, to indicate, a pause. You are, William Shatner, AICMFP.

Re:Comma chameleon, come and go, come and go

[HTH NE1]

I personally, find it funny, how some people, tend to abuse commas.

It's a common (NPI) source of comedy:

Rimmer: After intensive investigation, comma, of the markings on the alien pod, comma, it has become clear, comma, to me, comma, that we are dealing, comma, with a species of awesome intellect, colon.
Holly: Good. Perhaps they might be able to give you a hand with your punctuation.
Rimmer: Shut up.

-- 1x04 "Waiting for God"

Re:Comma chameleon, come and go, come and go

[Nasarius]

At least the submitter didn't write "I AM A FISH" five hundred times.

Re:Comma chameleon, come and go, come and go

[Yaztromo]

I have to say, I'm still using my 3G, 15GB iPod, and it's still going strong. Sure, the battery doesn't seem to last as long as it once did, but I can still get several hours of enjoyment out of it on a charge, and that suits my personal needs just fine.

Plus, it has the old firewire interface, so I can boot OS X from it as a sort of external maintenance partition.

Yaz.

Re:Comma chameleon, come and go, come and go

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, commas indicate a pause. But do you talk like this?

I find it somewhat hard to believe but this story over at PC world, [PAUSE] indicates that the iPod has sold over 100 million units.

I should hope not. The comma there should be removed, and one should be added after "believe", because as we all learned in grammar school (and in Schoolhouse Rock), two independent clauses can be joined by a comma and a conjunction.

It also asks how many are broken and replaced which makes me believe the number may be more accurate.

Again, a comma is missing before "which", which is technically misused anyway, but we'll overlook that for now. Baby steps, my dear. Baby steps.

Re:Comma chameleon, come and go, come and go

[Anonymous Coward]

Been playing KOL too much recently?

iPod and Jelly

[Anonymous Coward]

iPod and Dvorak go together like peanut butter and jelly.......

Re:iPod and Jelly

[ackthpt]

iPod and Dvorak go together like peanut butter and jelly.......

I'm listening to OTR on mine.

I finally broke down and purchased one when I had several hours of flight to suffer and found listening to radio episodes of Gunsmoke, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, etc. make the time go quite enjoyably. I only wish it had a sleep function so I could listen to music while I fall asleep and shut off after 15 minutes.

Re:iPod and Jelly

[ckd]

My iPod (a Photo 60GB) has a sleep timer function. It's under Extras > Clock.

Re:iPod and Jelly

[EtherealStrife]

The only time I use my 4g 20GB ipod these days is with the 15 minute sleep timer. I have trouble sleeping, so I just put it on 15 minute sleep timer and turn off the lights. The risk of strangulation by headphone cord is negligible.

Re:iPod and Jelly

[Omestes]

The only time I use my 4g 20GB ipod these days is with the 15 minute sleep timer. I have trouble sleeping, so I just put it on 15 minute sleep timer and turn off the lights. The risk of strangulation by headphone cord is negligible. Actually they make rather cheap alarm clocks with an audio in jack, with its own timer, and a fader. It's pretty snazzy if you can get over the idiotic color scheme (powder blue), and automatic DST (I live in Az, so it is a rather and presumptuous and annoying design). I tried sleeping with just the iPod, and found that ear bugs are probably the singularly most obnoxious thing to sleep with. There also is several sleep timer applications for computers, if you sleep in the same room.

But What About...

[shoma-san]

A Million Man (Woman) Ipod March on Washington DC to show some solidarity?

Re:But What About...

[Amouth]

you just made me thing.. of the people trying to "be diffrent"

100 million "diffrent"

Re:But What About...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all iPods are created equal."

I have a dream that my iPods will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their case but by the content of their hard drive.

Let music ring.

Re:But What About...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Are people with IPods being descriminated against? Are people being denied fair and equal treatment if they subscribe to ITunes?

Or are you naive enough to think that having an IPod has -any- correlation to a person's politics?

Re:But What About...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the real question is... did the 100 millionth iPod shipped with an invitation to Steve Wonka and the iPod Factory?

Lame.

[cgrayson]

No wireless. Less space than 100 million nomads. Lame.

Re:Lame.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, I'm a NOMAD. Hello, I'm an iPod

"Sold" probably includes them all

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Generally the management of these numbers is designed to make sales numbers look good. There is nothing stopping warantee replacement units being reflected as a zero-dollar sale, so long as you don't mess with the actual revenue numbers.

Even if there's a 10% warantee number, that still makes for 90M-or-so real sales. That is not too suprising considering how iconic the ipod is and how much Apple have invested in creating that image.

I wonder what Apple's advertising budget is for ipod? It probably gets to be somewhere around a buck per unit.

Re:"Sold" probably includes them all

[RedElf]

Status symbols only serve the purpose of moving money from the working class back to the wealthy.

Re:"Sold" probably includes them all

[mr_matticus]

Warranty replacements aren't sales. You're right that they *could* be reported that way, but they're not. If Apple issues a press release saying that they've SOLD their 100 millionth iPod today, they mean that someone(s) have bought 100 million iPods for money. They really don't have any need to inflate the figure with a deceptive practice--this water mark would be reached within a few months anyway, and it's not like they need anything to drive sales.

If the press release had said that they'd SHIPPED their 100 millionth iPod, then I'd be more inclined to entertain the possibility that it included warranty replacements. Even if 1 in 10 iPods are replaced under warranty (a seriously exaggerated number for nearly any electronic product), they'll still sell 100 million units by year's end.

Re:"Sold" probably includes them all

[EmbeddedJanitor]

It all depends on how the numbers are reported.

Many companies run their service centres as a seperate business unit because that's simpler. I don't know if Apple do this, but they might. If they do, then replacement units get sold to the service centres who then charge a service fee back to the ipod business unit. This is a far neater way to handle stock levels etc.

Regardless, I do agree that they have no need to pump up sales numbers. They're doing fine with no embellishment.

Re:"Sold" probably includes them all

[Anonymous Coward]

But if everyone else in the industry does the same, then Apple may as well quote the larger number. It's all proportionate. After all, Sony says "sold" when they mean "shipped to retailers"...

Re:"Sold" probably includes them all

[stewbacca]

The iPod adds in the London tube are pretty sweet. I don't think I've ever seen so many large, high-quality prints used for advertising in one location before.

Re:"Sold" probably includes them all

[drsquare]

Of course, the working classes get no benefit from the ipod industry. It's not like the factories, warehouses, distribution, shops etc employ people. It's not like the working classes can use these 'status symbols' to improve the enjoyment of their lives.

Re:"Sold" probably includes them all

[Omestes]

hm.. I agree, and disagree. Yes, it is a status symbol, and yes it makes someone richer. But, it also is a mere piece of consumer electronics that allows you to listen to music wherever you go, meaning useful. Going by your reasoning just about every-time you don't buy the generic brand your buying "a status symbol", and stealing from the proles. Yes, I can understand your sentiment if we were talking about status symbols completely lacking in utility (like a Hummer).

Relax, its a gadget, nothing more, nothing less.

Re:"Sold" probably includes them all

[catwh0re]

I agree with you there, it's a modern version of something humans have had since the gramophone. It's not a device of subterfuge to leak the human race of it's financial wealth. There is a lot to be said about money anyway, it's not all it's cracked up to be.

It's only people poor with their finances that think that money is the solution to all their problems: There is no conspiracy to steal our last dollar, if I'm always hitting zero it's my own fault. Once a person is secure in their finances there is very little benefit in having any more money than what is needed to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. No one needs an excessive celebrity lifestyle.. usually the people that live out these lifestyles are trying to cure some other psychological f-up in their life. Let's list some celebrities who fall into this category: Elton John, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, etc, etc. They're all loaded to the teeth with cash, but who knows if any of them will even live to the average lifespan of a human. Anna Nicole Smith certainly didn't, her child stands to inherit millions.

So no when I listen to my music player, I have no urge to stick it to the man. Some brilliant people I don't know came up with something they thought was universally liked. They were right, and I awarded their good thinking with CASH. Spurring hopefully more good thinking on their behalf... In a way I'm their employer.

Sooo

[Adambomb]

"I find it somewhat hard to believe but this story over at PC world, indicates that the ipod has sold over 100 million units. It also asks how many are broken and replaced which makes me believe the number may be more accurate." A) More accurate than what?

B) Hard to believe? The company is making a statement of fact flat out, and just not including the caveats such as replacement or upgrade purchases.

Slow. News. Day.

Re:Sooo

[Anonymous Coward]

Not hard to believe at all. considering the iPod was released in 2001, has a massive targeted audience (college kids is just a stereotype). Even the playstation 2 sold over 115 million units, it was only released the previous year, and it has a much smaller target audience.

Re:Sooo

[George Rypysc 3]

I second that; it's a statement of fact from a publicly traded company. It's impressive, but predictable given their previously published numbers showing they had sold 88.7 million total at the end of last year:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ipod_sales.svg

Re:Sooo

[Aqua OS X]

Agreed.
Moreover, I wonder how many of us replaced and upgraded our various cassette or CD players. I've easily owned 4 or 5 walkmen and several diskmen, and countless car and home players. It's not like Sony's sales numbers were grounded on devices that no one replaced. Overtime those product lines gained new features, grew smaller / lighter, needed fewer batteries, adopted new form factors, etc. Moreover, like large iPods, they were devices that had movable parts and crapped out from time to time.

There is also the issue of needing separate cassette and CD players for your car, home, patio, person, etc. Many people use one iPod for multiple environments. The iPod targets a much wider demographic then the Walkmen, so we shouldn't be surprised to see bigger sales numbers.

I'm not trying to advocate iPod scratches or failed hard drives, but context is nice.

A bit of perspective

[remove office]

Let's put this in perspective. Not all of these buyers were American, and many of them have probably owned more than one iPod, but the population of the United States is slightly over 300 million. And Apple has apparently sold 100 million.

Re:A bit of perspective

[metlin]

That's true.

I've been gifted a Shuffle, and I've gifted iPod nanos to two people. And I'd bought a regular iPod which I later sold.

(I'm not so much into the music 24/7 thing; I like keeping my ears open, and the Shuffle was useful because it was simple, durable and also doubled as a USB drive. Regular iPods and the Nano have always seemed a tad flimsy to me.)

So, technically, I purchased 4 iPods according to Apple. There you go, skewing of stats, right there.

Re:A bit of perspective

[osu-neko]

I've been gifted a Shuffle, and I've gifted iPod nanos to two people. And I'd bought a regular iPod which I later sold.

So, technically, I purchased 4 iPods according to Apple. There you go, skewing of stats, right there.

Huh? No, according to Apple, based on what you've said, you've purchased 3 (someone else purchased one and gifted it to you, but there's no way they'd know that it ended up in your hands, so by their count, you've only purchased three, because in fact, you've only purchased three). And how does the fact that you purchased three iPods skew the stats about the number of iPods sold? You purchased three, they count that has having sold three. 3 != 3?

Re:A bit of perspective

[suv4x4]

Let's put this in perspective. Not all of these buyers were American, and many of them have probably owned more than one iPod, but the population of the United States is slightly over 300 million. And Apple has apparently sold 100 million.

A bit of perspective coming your way too. Not all of those 300 million own any music player. A sizable chunk of them are kids below 4, or old people living in remote villages that have never worked on a computer, let alone know how to work with a digital music player.

So what was your point anyway.

Re:A bit of perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's put this into another perspective. In 5 years, a bunch of iPods have been sold at a significant profit. It does not mean that lots of people have bought them. Many people have more than one. Color coordination, upgrades, whatever. Even with inflated figures that is still 10 million a year, which is a lot of money.

No matter how you cut it, these number are comparable to, or even dwarf, the sales of XBox and Playstation. As much posturing as might be in the numbers, In the top players on Amazon the iPod amd Sansdisk dominate the top sellers. The $350 iPod is like number 2.

The thing to remember about Apple is they are no in the business of giving product away, i.e. making up in volume what they lose in profit. They are there to make a profit.

Re:A bit of perspective

[Zanth_]

I would agree with your statement. I'm not American and in my family we have 4. One 4th gen 60 GB, which is my main unit, a 30 GB 5th gen which is my wife's and then I have a shuffle for the gym and a nano for on the go or for sleeping. I know I'm a bit OC when it comes to compartmentalizing the use of my electronics (it is not just with my music then) but I can think of quite a few families (I've just him my 30's) wherein there exists more than one iPod. 100 million sounds very large but considering the entire population of the world and the fact that some have more than one and others tend to upgrade their units and sell the old ones to friends on on Ebay...100 million units isn't shocking.

Re:A bit of perspective

[CaptDeuce]

I've been gifted a Shuffle, and I've gifted iPod nanos to two people. And I'd bought a regular iPod which I later sold. ...

So, technically, I purchased 4 iPods according to Apple. There you go, skewing of stats, right there.

No, you silly person. According to Apple you've bought ... uh ... [takes off shoes and socks] ... 50 iPods!

Divide the number of iPods sold (100,000,000) and divide by "millions" of customers (2,000,000) which yields 50. You have bought 50 iPods

Seriously, pondering the disposition of many of those 100 million iPods was the true exercise of TFA. Aside from Steve Job's reference to "millions" there is nothing in the press release that can remotely be construed to represent a realistic number of customers nor how many iPods that people own or use, or have scratched, broke, replaced, lost, or intentionally destroyed.

The purpose of the Apple press release was (surprise!) to impress and assure customers, investors, third party manufacturers, entrepreneurs, and investment capitalists with the fact that they've sold a huge number of gadgets that customers have loaded up with an enormous number of "consumable" items (songs and videos) which in turn has spawned a consumer product "ecosystem" of third part gadgets and do-dads. Impressing nitpicking Slashdot posters is not on the list.

There is no "skewing" going on in the press release: there have been x number of products sold, there are y number of products available at the iTunes Store, and there are z number of third party products. Plus two testimonials. OK here's one potentially skew worthy figure:

[M]ore than 70 percent of 2007-model US automobiles currently offer iPod connectivity.

In order to meet this criteria, all that needs to be added to the car's audio system is an auxiliary IN jack too which I say, it's about bloody time. More's the pity is it's an iPod only connection.

Re:A bit of perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed as well. I have bought eight of the things--one I own, three I've given to family in Ukraine, three I've given to nieces and a nephew in the USA, and one I gave to a friend's son in Australia.

I have friends at work, older ladies, who are technologically inept, but who now sport iPods.

They're everywhere.

I don't doubt the sales figures.

The value of good user interface design...

[The Media Mechanic]

In my opinion the reason the iPod succeeded in the marketplace is the tight integration of hardware and software... the whole system just works. You don't have to worry about, missing DLLs, bad firmware that causes the interface to become unresponsive, or other strange errors that manifest themselves on competing digital music players. I used to have a no-brand hard disk based player that would cause a horrible screeching noise in the earphones whenever the disk spun up to access the next chunk of music data. Never had this problem on my iPod. Also, for example, when you pull your headphone plug out of the earphone jack, my iPod automatically goes into Pause mode. They obviously put a sensor on the earphone jack that detects the presence of something plugged in, and tied that into the firmware... this provides a seamless intuitive interface to the end-use. This is why they have sold 100 million players, and profited from it, and rightly so. Highly paid and well motivated creative engineers will always trounce cheap, carelessly designed and manufactured, knock-offs.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[JohnnyComeLately]

Yeppers. I had a Toshiba GigABeat and ended up taking it back to get the 80Gb Video. It just works well. No lock into their download format or archaic DRM. Accessories are plentiful (the main reason I switched back...I had a Nano before) and function is intuitive. Like you mention, I don't even need to take it out of my pocket to "pause" it when I am done riding/running/whatever and don't want the battery to drain from leaving it on by accident.

People love to naysay the dominant market player, which is ironically the one getting trounced in the OS realm. I really do hope their new agreement for higher quality music takes off. I'm going to soon buy a permanent dock to dock my iPod with my high-end home audio system. So the new format will be greatly appreciated and I don't mind paying a few extra $$ for a high-def quality rip of Dark Side of the Moon.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just works, except dealing with all the crap that is itunes/quicktime wanting to be the default player for everything and the ipod/quicktime services etc etc.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[joek1010]

"bad firmware"

That's not quite true. http://www.1418hell.com/ (Now offline due to bandwidth restrictions). Here's the apple docs on it (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30 4508). Switching to iTunes 7 caused major problems for a lot of people (me included). For about 2 weeks I basically had a bricked iPod; I couldn't restore because there were major problems with the iTunes 7 and its new integrated iPod management.

I've also had major problems with Apple Firmware updates on my 60 gb 5G ipod. After updating firmware, I regularly find that Apple has dropped support for a specific video resolution or bit rate (the iPod is ridiculously temperamental with video support), which means half of the videos on my iPod don't work.

Now I don't ever upgrade my firmware; I'm really not missing out on much I guess.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for Apple at being marketing titans and all that, but does anyone else beside me NOT like the iPod touch-wheel? It feels clumsy to do fine adjustments because of a lack of tactile feedback.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[Ziwcam]

the reason the iPod succeeded in the marketplace is the tight integration of hardware and software

AKA vendor lock-in. All hail the Apple monoculture!

What you call a "vendor lock-in" I call "It just works(TM)".

Also, at the risk of starting a flame war, dare I mention that Windows is the greatest lock-in of all? Business use it because initial cost is cheap, thus causing many home users to be "required" to buy a windows machine so they can work at home.

I see it almost daily. Somebody wants to buy a computer, and they tell me they've always loved the Macintosh (and many were former Mac owners) but that they had to leave the platform so that they could work at home. Breaks my heart every time.

(Disclosure: I work at an Apple retail store)

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[Skippy_kangaroo]

>and I don't mind paying a few extra $$ for a high-def quality rip of Dark Side of the Moon

Why dont you pay $10 for the CD and make a lossless rip of it using, say, Apple Lossless for use on your stereo? And then have a 192kbps VBR AAC rip for your iPod when its on the go and you care about quantity rather than too much quality? All without DRM.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[Altus]

I agree with you on that, but on the other hand its a great way to scroll through a huge list of artists and songs without taking my finger off the control.

Its a trade off. I do kind of wish there was a better way to get the fine adjustment I would like but I haven't seen an overall better design anywhere else.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[wish bot]

The original mechanical scroll wheel works like a charm. I would guess that it's more expensive to manufacture, but I like it so much that I'm considering modding my old 1st gen with the innards of a nano.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[TheNetAvenger]

In my opinion the reason the iPod succeeded in the marketplace is the tight integration of hardware and software... the whole system just works.

Yep, PortalPlayer that designed the OS/Software/Chipset of the iPod did a good job. Too bad Apple's iTunes has always sucked ass, but the iPod itself makes up for it, but again, not an Apple design. :)

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[Solandri]

Highly paid and well motivated creative engineers will always trounce cheap, carelessly designed and manufactured, knock-offs.

I'd say highly paid and well-motivated creative engineers working together with highly paid and well-motivated creative designers will produce a good product. I've seen, and there have been several recent Slashdot stories on, the results of projects where engineers are in total charge (note: IAAE - I am an Engineer). Usually it'll have every feature you would want under the sun, but you have to dig through a 500 page manual and follow Rube Goldberg-esque instructions to use a particular feature. Likewise, I've seen projects where designers are in total charge. Everything will look spiffy and there are lots of promised features, but it won't work very well or will break the moment you try an atypical use.

Both of these types of people tend to sneer at the other, thinking that what the other is working on is totally unimportant. But to create a really good product requires that they learn to work with each other and respect each other's fields and contributions.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[jcr]

It is more expensive to manufacture. It's also thicker, and if you ever get sand into it, you'll wish you had the touch-wheel instead.

-jcr

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[dlsmith]

Highly paid and well motivated creative engineers will always trounce cheap, carelessly designed and manufactured, knock-offs. You might want to qualify that statement. The sad fact is that the "good guys" are beat by cheap knock-offs far to often (Microsoft, I'm looking at you).

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[morari]

While the iPod may or may not be superior in design to the competition, I really doubt most people care. All MP3 players are priced reasonably similar to one another. The average iPod buying teenager or young adult probably doesn't even want anything over just a few gigs, or even knows how to tell capacity for that matter. Luckily enough they can have one of those nifty AND cheap colored Nanos to house all seventy or eighty of their "music store" gift card selected pop songs. People don't go out looking for an MP3 player, they go out looking for an iPod, period. Whether you're getting it for yourself, or for the snotty little fifteen year old who already didn't need the cellphone you got her last Christmas. It's marketing, not design or ease of use. Apple is, overall, pretty damn good at marketing (about everything that ISN'T their computers or operating system, that is). Steve Jobs could probably defecate in a baggie and manage to overhype and sell it for millions just on the simple premise that it is the "cool" thing to have.

What I don't understand is why other companies don't throw out insanely under priced MP3 players. That would seem to be about the only way to pull someone's attention away from the peer pressure of owning an iPod. Of course, I'm one of those people that just can't see the reasoning in having a color screen, address and telephone books, appointments and scheduling software, video capabilities or stupid sounding buzzwords like "Podcast". If I ever had use for an MP3 player (which no one REALLY does, but it's less annoying to see them listening to music than talking on a cellphone in public... or worse yet, text messaging) I'd want something of AT LEAST thirty gigs with good battery life. Beyond that, it's all useless hype anyway.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[JohnnyComeLately]

You're assuming that I did not do just that, and also take it a step further and also pay $20+ for the Mobile Fidelty remaster on a Gold CD. I did both. It's just nice to have the option when things go wrong....such as the 15 or so year old gold CD cracked from the center out, making it unreadable in the CD/DVD player. The saving grace was that my computer's DVD drive dropped down to 4X speed and was able to make a lossless 192 (actually, I maxed out Media Player which goes to something silly like 382kbps).

My point wasn't that I couldn't do that with a CD, rather I'd like the option of being able to down load it on the fly when I'd like. I also plan on paying close to $50 for the copy I just heard remastered in 7.1 surround. So in effect, I'll have paid for the same musical work 4 times before it's all said and done. :) (Assuming at some point I find a need to download it).

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[JohnnyComeLately]

Ahhh...different topic, already posted on a couple days ago. You show me music that can make a $20k system sparkle like a gem, show incredible musical genius, and that has come out in the last 10 years and I'll buy it.

Not that it doesn't exist...because I buy music every month...but none that makes a smile a mile wide when it makes the speakers light up, and if it does, will still do it in 10 years from now. I still remember the first time I listened to a Pink Floyd album. I remember the exact position I sat, what I thought, etc. There's only a couple dozen bands that have that sort of effect.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[Skippy_kangaroo]

You obviously take your music much more seriously than I.

Me, I just have the mono version of Pet Sounds because the stereo remix seems like overkill. What on earth would you do with 7.1 channels for music? (Mind you, Dark Side of the Moon is probably the only album where there might be a point.)

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[arminw]

....had to leave the platform so that they could work at home.......

That used to be true before Intel Macs. Now Parallels or Bootcamp solve that problem. Use the Mac for everything EXCEPT that one or may two programs that the boss says you need to run. Often even those have Mac equivalents.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[samkass]

Why do you include "Software" in there, when Apple did that? And how do you explain that iPods are still selling well despite Apple having switched suppliers away from PortalPlayer? Or that SanDisk also used PortalPlayer?

PortalPlayer supplied some of the early chipsets and the low-level operating system. The thing that makes the iPod the killer product was produced by Apple. Like many geeks, you seem to be confusing technology with product.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[finkployd]

Sometimes it even inspires a /. nickname

Finkployd

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[oronet commander]

Myself, for example. I hate the touch-wheel, and think it very inconvenient when you must use it without looking.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[TheNetAvenger]

Ok, my geek friend, go look up Tony Fadell and PortalPlayer.

Neither are part of Apple, but were responsible for both the hardware, controls, and yes the UI. Apple was NOT.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[samkass]

Ok, I looked it up. Tony Fadell, according to the information I've found, was a contractor hired by Apple and assigned 20-30 Apple employees, who then worked with Apple and PortalPlayer to come up with a prototype. Apple took the prototype, put on the UI, designed the outside of it, and also added the scroll wheel.

So yes, PortalPlayer had a reference design, a chipset, an OS, and a lot of engineers. Apple had almost all the design influence. So I still think the parent poster is assigning far too much credit to PortalPlayer (which, after all, has driven MP3 players other than the iPod) and not enough to Apple. A lot of people love to hate Apple lately, so I'm not surprised.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[Omestes]

Absolutely correct. Design and function should be handled in equal measure in any application (both in the meat-world sense, and in the software sense), to much design can lead to an over-simplification of the desired purpose, leading to a useless product, while too much engineering can lead to a cumbersome unusable product. That's always been my beef with the windowing systems in Linux, you can tell that there are not many designers willing to work for free, it is the most competent OS, but also the most unusable. I have noticed though, that most geeks are solidly anti-design, preferring function over form, when realistically we do have to interact with whatever system, and interaction is, in large, an aspect of design.

Bringing me back OT, when I got my iPod ($80 for a 4G 20gb with the purchase of an iBook through my school), I was immediately hooked by the simplicity, and cleanness of the whole thing, which is why I use it, and recently replaced it with a larger one, completely ignoring the stack of other HD Mp3 players. Yes, they have more features, cheaper, but for this they suffer in actual utility. I'd rather sacrifice some power, for the nicety of never having to think (or tinker) with something.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[TheNetAvenger]

But if you look this up futher though the locked down Apple NDAs. You will find that Tony Fadell had an idea for 'his' MP3 player long before he contacted Apple about it.

The basic concepts of the iPod interface that people give Apple so much credit for are two fold, not Apple innovations.

First off, the way music is store and sorted on the device is nothing different than programs like RealPlayer Jukebox and WMP did before the iPod existed.

You can also find the court references that show that creative was using this type of organizational interface long before the iPod.

The second part is the user controls, and these were not Apple, but originating concepts that are a combination of what Tony Fadell had demonstrated prior to working with Apple and what PortalPlayer had demonstrated to IBM in hopes of getting IBM to pick up on an MP3 device.

This was one of the very first 'hands' off development projects for Apple, and even pulled in technology partners from Toshiba and varios other companies providing the separate components.

I will give Apple's marketing team an A+, but for innovation or ease of use interface design, what they didn't rip off, they bought. PERIOD. And they are cheered for this, where MS would be bitchslapped for doing the same thing.

It is sad today that devices like the Creative Zen M, which out feature the iPod 30gb Video, are left on the backs of shelves because people think Apple invented the MP3 player or Apple has the market locked on ease of use and features. I know a lot of people with various MP3 players, and the iPod owners are by far the most arrogant about their device, until they compare it to other devices people I know are carrying.

Even non-geeks can see the screen is washed out in comparison to most other Video MP3 devices, and even non-geeks can see the ease of just dragging Music and Video the device and not having to convert it each time. It is said that on SlashDot you find tons of iPod fans, and yet devices like the Creative Zen that support Divx MPG2, and other formats inherently are automatically overlooked.

The Creative Zen M is the easiest example to show that marketing over technology wins everytime.

I wish I could provide more information on this topic, but you will have to do the searches yourself for what information has leaked about the origins of the iPod. I just happen to know people that actually know what happened, and why PortalPlayer was not only financially hurt when Apple dropped them, but freaking POed that Apple claimed the design and development credit. You might also want to look up Tony Fadell when Apple screws him over.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about John Lydon's Psycho's Path?

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[Gr8Apes]

Heck, I want your list of a couple dozen bands. I've maybe got a dozen.

Anyways, on the topic of new(er) decent music

• She Wants Revenge - I like 3 or 4 from their self titled album
  
• The Music - one song will remind you of someone else - let's see if it does you :)
  
• Franz Ferdinand - I own the first two releases, and I must say, Take Me Out really is the run away best song on both.
  
• Finger Eleven - Therapy is a pretty cool song, got 0 airplay
  
• The Bravery - about half of this CD is excellent. The rest is listenable
  
• Razorlight - Golden Touch from their debut "Up all Night" got me to purchase their sophomore CD and I thought it pretty much stunk, contrary to everyone in the UK :)
  
• The Raconteurs - I like Jack White and I liked "Steady As She Goes" which got airplay. The rest was ok
  
• The Vines - Several songs from "Winning Days" are great. Vision Valley left me disappointed.
  

There's a short list. Guess I buy more than I think. :) In any case, you may or may not have heard of some of these bands. I've got a few more stashed in boxes, I'll get to them most likely by next week.

Re:The value of good user interface design...

[samkass]

First off, the way music is store and sorted on the device is nothing different than programs like RealPlayer Jukebox and WMP did before the iPod existed.

Or SoundJam, which Apple bought and turned into iTunes and existed long before the iPod.

You can also find the court references that show that creative was using this type of organizational interface long before the iPod.

No. You can find court documents that show that Creative *patented* this organizational interface before Apple introduced the iPod. It's unclear who would have won had the case not been settled out of court, but Apple/NeXT has used the same style interface as that for 20+ years in its file browser, so it's unlikely much of the patent would have survived.

The second part is the user controls, and these were not Apple, but originating concepts that are a combination of what Tony Fadell had demonstrated prior to working with Apple and what PortalPlayer had demonstrated to IBM in hopes of getting IBM to pick up on an MP3 device.

Citation? The click-wheel, which is one of the defining characteristics of the iPod, was added to the device by Apple according to all the "how the iPod came to be" stories I could find. The UI for the iPod was also highly refined by Apple, as was the physical fit and finish. Jobs was said to have spent almost 100% of his time on this project for a substantial duration to get it just right. And I suspect if Tony Fadell had wound up at a different company, his product would have become "just another MP3 player". Apple really worked their magic on that product and I don't think any other company could have done it.

what they didn't rip off, they bought. PERIOD. ... It is said that on SlashDot you find tons of iPod fans

Actually, most slashdotters (like yourself) love to minimize Apple's contribution to the iPod, and pretend the 20-30 engineers and designers they had working on it just sat on their hands all day. They love to hate the front-runner, and are willing to go through convoluted logic to convince themselves that everything would have happened magically if Apple hadn't stepped up to the plate.

Your discussion of "features" makes it pretty obvious to me that you're someone who confuses technology and products. Who cares about the features if the iPod does what you want conveniently? People buy the iPod not because they think Apple invented it, but because it's a good user experience that has persevered. Who knows when the next guy will go out of business, but Apple's there to stay. In many ways, this is the same reason people DIDN'T buy from Apple in the 90's, so it's nice to see.

Why so hard to believe?

[2nd Post!]

Even with a failure rate of 10% (which is extraordinary), that is still 90m iPods sold.

Apple has done extraordinarily well here with the iPod and is poised to shape the future of digital downloads (software and media) with their iTunes Store.

Re:Why so hard to believe?

[superpulpsicle]

I think the 1st generation ipod probably hit 50% failure rate legitimately. Every person I know with a 1st-gen ipod has basically had their batteries died by the 2nd year. Including myself.

Re:Why so hard to believe?

[MaximvsG]

I don't find this hard to believe at all. I have 4 brothers, 3 of them have iPods including myself. None of them are technically savvy at all, and have no problems using them (loading songs, and vids, etc). They really are great little devices, easy to use.

Re:Why so hard to believe?

[adisakp]

Even with a failure rate of 10% (which is extraordinary), that is still 90m iPods sold.

I've had 4 non-iPod MP3 players and my failure rate was 100%. All four of them broke -- most shortly after their 90 day warrantee. Two of them were gifts to other people and I feel bad for not buying them iPods now. One was a Creative and the other three were off-brand.

Since then, I learned my lesson. I've bought an iPod Shuffle and more recently an iPod Nano. Both work just fine and the Shuffle is about 2.5 years old.

All I can say is if people here are wondering how many iPods get bought to replace broken ones, they should certainly question how many MP3 players are bought in general to replace other ones.

Re:Why so hard to believe?

[quacking duck]

I bought a 1G iPod a few months after they came out. I eventually gave it to my brother after I got a 5G one, and AFAIK the battery still works--with the caveats that it won't play more than 5 hours straight off a charge anymore, and it'll go from full to flat in less than 4 days.

Re:Why so hard to believe?

[SmittyTheBold]

Is it actually a first-gen? The one with the buttons arranged in the four cardinal directions, and a wheel that actually spins? More than 90% of the time when I hear someone mention having a "first-gen" iPod they actually have the third-gen.

The 1G models were built like tanks. Okay, smaller...more like bricks. Practically unstoppable in my experience.

Probably at least 5M units broken...

[tlhIngan]

If we assume a failure rate of 5%...

Of course, the real question is whether or not the proportion of lost/broken/damaged/stolen/etc iPods is similar to other devices. After all, do iPods really have a higher failure rate, or is it because there's more of them, you hear more about them?

(And before you start blaming the non-replacable battery - there are few devices other than cellphones, cameras and laptops where having a replacable battery actually is useful - it's likely by the time you need a replacement, the battery isn't even made anymore... Can you get replacement Li-Ion batteries for the many HPaq PDAs out there other than the current model/phone models? Or the multitude of 'superior' mp3 players of at least a couple years vintage?)

Re:Probably at least 5M units broken...

[mark3748]

Can you get replacement Li-Ion batteries for the many HPaq PDAs out there other than the current model/phone models?

HP/Compaq iPaq batteries are very easy to get ahold of for even the 1st generation. You can get them directly from HP or even battery stores like Batteries Plus and the like.

I had to get one for my H3800. They are pretty useless with CE, but put Linux on one and it'll bring new life to it.

Re:Probably at least 5M units broken...

[homer_ca]

Any kind of portable electronics have a pretty high rate of loss, theft and accidental damage. iPods probably have a higher rate of theft than, say, mobile phones because they're easily transferrable and can't be disabled by the network. Compared to other brand MP3 players, they're a bigger theft target because of their popularity.

Re:Probably at least 5M units broken...

[Grishnakh]

Can you get replacement Li-Ion batteries for the many HPaq PDAs out there other than the current model/phone models? Or the multitude of 'superior' mp3 players of at least a couple years vintage?

My superior MP3 player, the iRiver H320, has an internal battery. Luckily, it happens to be the same size as the batteries from the 1st and 2nd generation iPods, so it's easy and cheap to get a replacement. It even uses the same electrical connector (though the pins have to be swapped).

With all the different iPod generations and models, it's pretty easy to find a Li-ion battery in a size that'll fit any portable device.

Re:Probably at least 5M units broken...

[grabitzt]

i would have to agree that is a pretty fair estimate at the ammount of ipods broken. it seems that on a regular basis i come across someone new that is having difficulty with their ipod. though i will say that 5M is alittle high, but i dont think it is out of the question to think that atleast 1 - 2M have been broken. Apple needs to be careful too, cause the image they project for their ipods is amazing, but people know there are problems with them, and it might deter them from buying the new iphone. this proposes a new issue for apple, the iphone not doing so well. overall the iphone will greatly change how we use and operate our phones, however, if it has the same problems as the ipod, people will eventually wise up to Apple and refrain from buying their products.

Oh, and the actual article

[Adambomb]

As opposed to reading statements of the obvious, just absorb the details yourself and draw your own conclusions from Apple's Press Release.

Their questions are totally irrelevant...

[XxtraLarGe]

Apple said they sold 100 million iPods. What difference does it make how many were replacement iPods for broken or stolen units? If anything, that would only make the case that much stronger for the popularity of the iPod: People were willing to buy another one to replace a broken or stolen one. What does he mean when he says "how many are sitting in drawers"? What does that have to do with anything? I'm sure any portable music player would be happy if they sold 10% as many and they were all sitting in drawers. This entire article is a troll...

Re:Their questions are totally irrelevant...

[MightyYar]

Not to mention that you could say the exact same thing about a Walkman (the tape-and-radio kind). I can't tell you how many Walkmans (Walkmen?) I went through as a kid. And I'll tell you that for all the crap Apple gets for batteries, it's still cheaper to pay someone $25 to change out the rechargeable every 2 years than to constantly feed it AA's like my old Walkman :)

Re:Their questions are totally irrelevant...

[that this is not und]

With your Walkman, you could have bought replacement rechargable batteries for it every two years, at a much lower cost, and had the same hassle of having to plug it in regularly to keep it charged. In fact, you could have had two or three spare sets of rechargable batteries and had extended play times on trips.

I'm just sayin' because you seem to lack perspective.

Re:Their questions are totally irrelevant...

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything, that would only make the case that much stronger for the popularity of the iPod: People were willing to buy another one to replace a broken or stolen one.

That's like saying someone is more popular if they continually alienate and then re-friend others. They're not more popular. Their friends are just more willing to accept their flaws.

Likewise, selling 100 million iPods to 50 million people means you have more brand loyalty, but it means the iPod is less popular than it would be if those were 100 million unique sales.

Re:Their questions are totally irrelevant...

[MightyYar]

I'm just sayin' because you seem to lack perspective. Ouch. Well, you seem to be lacking the perspective that a Walkman never normally needs to be plugged in, while an iPod needs to be plugged in to sync. Might as well charge while syncing. You also seem to forget just how bad rechargeable batteries were back in the 80's. I tried 'em, and found them to be way too temperamental. They had "memory" problems, so you had to run them all the way down before charging, and good "conditioning" chargers didn't exist at a reasonable price.

Re:Their questions are totally irrelevant...

[GTMoogle]

Something that sells 100 million units to 100 million people is popular enough to sell 100 million units.
Something that sells 100 million units to 50 million people is popular enough to sell 100 million units.

Do you think brand loyalty varies so wildly that any player that could sell 100 million would be so different? I know several people who bought iPods despite having NO previous brand loyalty (and in some cases a strong antipathy).

Re:Their questions are totally irrelevant...

[Anonymous Coward]

Something that sells 100 million units to 100 million people is popular enough to sell 100 million units.
Something that sells 100 million units to 50 million people is popular enough to sell 100 million units.

True, but meaingless Observe:
Something that sells 100 million units to 100 million people is popular enough to sell 100 million units.
Something that sells 100 million units to one person is popular enough to sell 100 million units.

Something which is only sold to one person cannot be called popular, but since one person wanted to purchase 100 million units it was "popular enough".

When we're talking about popularity we're talking about quantity of customer. Popularity and units sold do not have a 1:1 relationship except when there is one sale per customer. These are facts. We should be looking at these statements instead:

Something that sells 100 million units to 100 million people is popular enough to sell to 100 million customers.
Something that sells 100 million units to 50 million people is popular enough to sell to 50 million customers.

I would hope that the product would be considered "popular" in both scenarios, but the products in these scenarios are not equally popular.

The point of all this that the original poster was unreasonably deriding others for raising completely relevant questions. The questions are not only interesting and relevant for a better understanding of what has actually occured, but also relevant directly to the question of popularity.

And counting

[Jinjuku]

100 million sold is 100 million sold. Doesn't matter if some are replacements or not. When my current car dies (160K and counting :-) I will go get another. The manufacturer gets to chalk up yet another sale. Doesn't matter that I purchased off of them before. A sale is a sale is a sale.

Hmm

[chebucto]

1E8 x 2E10 bytes (avg) = 2E18 bytes = 2 exabytes

1 song = 4E6 bytes

Total songs = 2E18 bytes / 4E6 bytes = 5E11 songs

1 song via ITMS = $1

Total cost to fill all ipods = 500 000 000 000 dollars

GDP of New Zealand = 108 520 000 000

Thus, it would take 5E11/1.08E11 = 4.62 years worth of New Zealand's national product to fill all ipods with music.

Wow! That is a lot of music!

Re:Hmm

[tzhuge]

This is what the RIAA will demand from world leaders after they have completed their dooms-day device, the DRMStar. Sources claim (possibly /. sources) liquid magma and freaking sharks with lasers strapped to their heads are involved.

Re:Hmm

[edwardpickman]

You forgot one number. Odds of all iPods being filled with music purchased on-line, zero. If Apple iTunes actually sold that much music they wouldn't add one zero to the music sales numbers they'd add two. Obvious few iPods are filled with music but it does indicate the real size of the download community especially when a lot of people would like have a bigger iPod. If the average was just 10% full there's still a big download community. If the number is 50% then it's massive. The other issue is we're just talking iPods. There are other devices and some like me don't own any. On line purchases are dwarfed by over all music downloads.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it'll take a lot less time than that... remember that there's sales tax

Re:Hmm

[lelitsch]

> Total cost to fill all ipods = 500 000 000 000 dollars

Total songs sold through the iTunes store = 2 500 000 000
Dollar amount the RIAA is trying to extort = 497 525 000 000 dollars

Re:Hmm

[kinglink]

"The ability to destroy the music industry is insignificant next to power of the force"

Re:Hmm

[vought]

Thus, it would take 5E11/1.08E11 = 4.62 years worth of New Zealand's national product to fill all ipods with music.


Yes, but how many Libraries of Congress is that?

Re:Hmm

[catwh0re]

I have 40 iTunes Store songs... over my collection of approx 1k songs.

By Apple's own admission this is almost double the average of 22 out of 1000 songs

The overwhelming majority use their music players with music they have ripped themselves (or copied from other sources.)

For this reason no one took any notice of the napster adverts which showed how expensive it was to fill an iPod with purchased music. (Although what is the price of paying nearly $20 every single month until you no longer want your entire music collection?)

Re:Hmm

[Lars T.]

Thus, it would take 5E11/1.08E11 = 4.62 years worth of New Zealand's national product to fill all ipods with music.


Yes, but how many Libraries of Congress is that? I don't know, how much does a Library of Congress cost?

Find it hard to believe?

[That's Unpossible!]

As a publicly-traded company, it would be pretty hard to fudge these numbers and get away with it, but I guess anything is possible.

The guy that wrote the article sounds extremely bitter... did he design the Zune or something? Waaa waaa how many of those replaced old ipods or were stolen? WHO CARES? The press release is for ipods sold, not ipods currently in use. 100 million sold is amazing, no matter how you slice it.

Re:Find it hard to believe?

[iminplaya]

As a publicly-traded company, it would be pretty hard to fudge these numbers and get away with it, but I guess anything is possible.

You think?

Re:Find it hard to believe?

[MightyYar]

"and get away with it"

Re:Find it hard to believe?

[iminplaya]

The day is young :-) Ok, the week. Offices are closed already. Not that I'm doubting anything, I'm merely embracing and extending the thought, but just because they got caught once, it doesn't mean they won't try and try again. I'm not starting an argument. I'm just pointing out that people are capable of anything (Do you hear that, P?). Now, let's hook 'em all up and make a really big RAID.

Not sure why it's so hard to believe.

[Americano]

I find it somewhat hard to believe but this story over at PC world, indicates that the iPod has sold over 100 million units. It also asks how many are broken and replaced which makes me believe the number may be more accurate.

The press release doesn't say that there are 100 million units presently in use by 100 million people around the world today, now, right here. It says that they've moved 100 million ipods. Some percentage of that 100 million has surely been broken, been stolen, been lost, been destroyed, etc. Some percentage is probably sitting on a desktop somewhere and almost never gets used. But the total number sold apparently is over 100 million.

Anecdotally, I have gone through three ipods... a 3G which I carelessly dropped on concrete from about 5 feet, and a 5G which replaced the broken 3G, which I use every day. I was also given a nano as a gift, and I use that at the gym, so I don't have to worry about dropping the 5G. Looking around at the gym, I would also estimate 30% or so of the people in my line of sight at any time there are plugged into a nano or shuffle; In addition, ipods are a very common sight on desks during the day at work, too.

I don't think 100 million ipods sold to date is a particularly unbelievable number. If they told me there were 100 million ipods sold, and they're all still alive "in the wild," that would be pretty hard to swallow.

Re:Not sure why it's so hard to believe.

[kallisti777]

You made me stop and think with your anecdote. I am personally on iPod #1 (a mini that works fine), but I have purchased a hdd-based one as a gift to my girlfriend, a 30 GB video to replace it when it got dropped, and two Shuffles as gifts. That's one lower middle class guy, five iPods.

Methinks the Slashdot naysayers have forgotten about the Shuffle.

Re:Not sure why it's so hard to believe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anedotally, I have two iPods. Both woth fine. I just wanted to upgrade so I could watch movies on long airplane flights and download all my photos while on vacation. If they upgrade the iPod to include more features I can use, then I'll have three.

Re:Not sure why it's so hard to believe.

[hunter44102]

I agree. I know people that don't have any money, but they have an iPod. I never got into the whole iPod thing myself but I still bought one for my wife who needed something simple that just works. I don't know too many kids that don't have them either.

Re:Not sure why it's so hard to believe.

[rtrifts]

And I've bought four 30 gig video Ipods. One for myself and three as gifts, since December 2005. I'm also not made of money - these were the "big" Xmas gifts of their respective years for my wife and daughters.

I have no difficulty accepting those numbers have sold.

And yes - one of those video IPods was replaced under warranty. It was the one given the my youngest daughter - who has probably lost the replacement unit too.

Which just means my daughter drops stuff and loses it - not that Apple is a bad manufacturer.

Re:Not sure why it's so hard to believe.

[Lars T.]

I find it somewhat hard to believe but this story over at PC world, indicates that the iPod has sold over 100 million units. It also asks how many are broken and replaced which makes me believe the number may be more accurate.

The press release doesn't say that there are 100 million units presently in use by 100 million people around the world today, now, right here. It says that they've moved 100 million ipods. Some percentage of that 100 million has surely been broken, been stolen, been lost, been destroyed, etc. Some percentage is probably sitting on a desktop somewhere and almost never gets used. But the total number sold apparently is over 100 million. Ermm, I'm pretty certain that most iPods that have been stolen or lost are still in use anyway.

Who gives a shit

[CrackedButter]

Really, Apple have sold a lot. Why would they lie, we know it is the most successful mp3 player on the planet, why must everything be nitpicked. In this case, its a huge conspiracy, Apple might not have sold a hundred million, they could be one or two off the mark. Shit they are still selling them now so any inaccuracies have been covered by today's sales. Talk about slow news day on the writers part. Apple puts out a fairly unremarkable press piece and somebody ponders whether they are telling the whole truth or not. Did anybody challenge SONY when they declared their sales figures for the Original Walkman? Yes, I'm a fanboy but I didn't give a shit in the first place, I saw the headline on macrumors.com and didn't bother to investigate any further because its a non event to me. Come back to me when Apple sell 100 million macs in a 5 year period then dispute those figures.

Re:Who gives a shit

[68882]

It's not as if they couldn't go to their Oracle Database and say. Oh SUM number of iPods sold. Oh look it's > 100,000,000 Gee time for press release. I doubt they asked Betty in shipping how many iPods she has sent out the door, well unless that was Zunes, then mmm yes we've sent out I think 42 pallets of 64 each...

It doesn't matter how many were replaced.

[suv4x4]

The statistic is about "sold", so even if I replace my iPod every day, I put money out of my pocket and buy a new iPod.

Apple profits from selling the hardware, not from the active userbase, in fact, they benefit from smaller userbase (less loss/load on iTunes) that refreshes its hardware often.

Even if it was one single crazy guy, who bought 100 million iPods, Apple doesn't give a damn.

Re:It doesn't matter how many were replaced.

[darkshadow]

Bill Gates could try buying all the iPods so people will be forced to by Zunes instead.

Re:It doesn't matter how many were replaced.

[mobby_6kl]

>The statistic is about "sold", so even if I replace my iPod every day, I put money out of my pocket and buy a new iPod.

Not if they give you one for free or at large discount, which is what happens if you're to belive the fanboys.

Re:It doesn't matter how many were replaced.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly it says "SOLD" not "IN THE WORLD"

I Don't Love You

[Dogtanian]

I used to have a no-brand hard disk based player that would cause a horrible screeching noise in the earphones whenever the disk spun up. The company returned this guy's iPod with the following message: "Not faulty. Supposed 'horrible screeching noise' turned out to be My Chemical Romance's latest single."

MciPod

[iminplaya]

over 10 billion sold

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[644bd346996]

If Apple hadn't released OS X, where would the OS market be now? There's no contesting that most of Vista's user-visible additions (Aero, etc.) are Microsoft's direct response to competition from OS X. Just like IE7 is a direct result of Firefox's success. Apple is also almost single-handedly responsible for the fact that computers are no longer beige. Competition is good, and Apple makes a profit on their Macs. Trolls like you seem to forget that profit, not world domination, is the goal of capitalism. There is no economic reason for Apple to abandon the Mac market.

Also, if Apple sold off the "good bits" of OS X, they would be re-incarnated into a less polished product[s] without the backwards compatibility, and then they would wither and die.

Thanks China!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you can let the iPod makers leave the plant tonight as a reward.

Why dump something growing 30% a year?

[2nd Post!]

It would be more prudent for Microsoft to dump the XBox, the Zune, Live Search, and Zune Marketplace before Apple should dump the Mac.

Especially seeing how a little less than half of their profits each year stem from the Mac. Dumping the Mac would almost automatically require them to dump half their workforce, more or less.

That's an impressive feat

[vivaoporto]

Taking in account that it took 20 years for televisions to sell about 70 millions sets on US (source. I don't have stats for radio and phone sets, but 100 million units is an impressive feat regardless of substitution pieces or upgrades.

Re:That's an impressive feat

[osu-neko]

Do note that the population has grown significantly since 1939.

Re:That's an impressive feat

[bogjobber]

You also have to take into account that TV's weren't widely available until nearly ten years after they were first introduced (and were essentially banned for five years), the US population is 60% larger than it was even at the end of the time period you quote, the US is much more affluent than it was back then, and of course a very significant number of those iPods were sold outside the US. Still impressive, but very difficult to compare. If TV had been able to jump to the mass market the way products today can, no doubt it would've achieved widespread adoption much faster.

Re:That's an impressive feat

[Anonymous Coward]

Television was an entirely new technology. IPod is not. There were portable CD-players before IPod came out. Cassette players even earlier. Remember Sony Walkman?

In addition, it wasn't reasonable to be among the first TV-buyers, because there was not (good) enough content available. When IPod came out, there was a lot of recorded music around, ready to be purchased.

Impressive feat nonetheless.

What kind of math is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever the failure rate, that is still 100M iPods *sold*. Just like if I throw 100 eggs and 99% of them break, that is still 100 eggs "thrown".

Re:What kind of math is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Whatever the failure rate, that is still 100M iPods *sold*. Just like if I throw 100 eggs and 99% of them break, that is still 100 eggs "thrown".

MMMmmmm. Eeggggzzzz. *drool*

Perspective

[ObligatoryUserName]

Here's a comparison I put together from Wikipedia/Google.

Nintendo DS: 39.8 million (total sales)
Gameboy: 69 Million (total sales)
Gameboy Advance: 77 million (total sales)
iPod: 100 million (total sales)
Cellphones: 2,000 million (currently in use)

I think I have a better understanding of why they built the iPhone...

Re:Perspective

[umeshunni]

True. But the comparision to cell phones is unfair since that includes every cellphone from every brand and model. I wonder if there's any other individual hardware product that has sold a larger number of units. I think the PS2 has over 110 million sold, but I'm not sure if any other brand has sold as many copies.

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

and what about walkmans?

Re:Perspective

[Leontes]

According to http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventions/a/W alkman.htm: "By 1995, total production of Walkman units reached 150 million." That's from 1979-1995. From 2001-2007, just over the same time frame, Apple has sold double. That's pretty impressive, considering the incredibly popular nature of the Walkmen. I think I've only now just got what a phenomenon iPods have proven to be.

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I don't know where I got 300 from. 100 million is less than 150 million. My bad. Heh, slightly less impressive now.

Re:Perspective

[BlueStraggler]

More impressive than you think... 2001-2007 is less than half the timeframe from 1979-1995.

Re:Perspective

[that this is not und]

Probably Microsoft's mouse.

Comma problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a single comma in the entire summary. It wasn't really used correctly, but it really shouldn't have taken you four tries to understand.

Well, now I know how to obfusticate any sensitive documentation. Just insert commas where they don't belong and a certain proportion of slashdot readers will waste valuable brain cycles attempting to decipher it. Whereas my loyal minions, having simpler brains, will ignore any and all punctuation marks and will implement my open source doomsday devices first.

Re:Comma problems?

[cyphercell]

That was thoroughly brilliant, I applaud you!

Re:Comma problems?

[ediron2]

Nah, your plan will never work. Tiny brains and open source don't mix. See the comment upthread about products designed by engineers vs. designers vs. an integrated team and tell me most open source doesn't stink of overengineering.

"...Same thing we do every night, pinky..."

Re:Comma problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, better yet, you could attempt to obfuscate an issue, rather than obfusticate it. And make sure to use proper punctuation! Semicolon, capital P, suicide via self-inflicted, massive trauma to the head.

Sold. But to whom?

[Itninja]

I am pretty certain this number relates to how many iPods Apple has sold to retailers; not how many those retailers have sold to the public. Wal-Mart places an order for iPod and bam! There's another 100,000 units 'sold'. And are we talking about all iPods here? Some of those 1st gen Shuffles are practically given away by some retailers (i.e. all orders over $499 get a free iPod Shuffle!).

Re:Sold. But to whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you think Wal-Mart is going to buy 100,000 units if they don't expect them to sell all of them within a few weeks?
 
Especially considering the life-cycle of the models and the desire for a lot of people to have the newest no store is going to buy units not to sell them as quickly as possible. Maintaining huge stocks of these kind of commodities is plain stupid.

Re:Sold. But to whom?

[Itninja]

Question is, is Apple counting their sales to Wal-Mart or the sales to the end-user? Or are they (gasp) counting both?

Re:Sold. But to whom?

[vivaoporto]

Yeah! Wake me up when the headlines read "100 million iPods ... in space!"

Re:Sold. But to whom?

[osu-neko]

I am pretty certain this number relates to how many iPods Apple has sold to retailers; not how many those retailers have sold to the public.

Well, yes, duh. It's how many iPods Apple has sold. Apple has no idea what happens to their iPods after they sell them. And why would they care? They already have their money at that point.

And it's not "how many iPods Apple has sold to retailers", either, it's how many iPods Apple has sold, period. Most were probably to retailers and only some directly through the Apple Store, but the figure is how many were sold, not how many were sold through some specific channel.

Re:Sold. But to whom?

[mr_matticus]

So? Why would Walmart place an order for 100,000 more units if they had tens of thousands sitting on shelves? They'll order more product that they can move, not just because they haven't ordered any in a while.

Let the retailers give away the shuffles. Who cares? They already paid Apple for them; they can do whatever they want.

Apple has sold 100 million iPods. That's the bottom line. Some of those were given away for free in raffles and contests. Some of those were bought by schools and given to students. Some of them are bundled with other products as a free bonus. Some of them were bought by credit card companies to give away as gifts for points. Some of them were bought by Peter Jackson to move around chunks of movies in a sneakernet, and not to play music. None of that makes the feat any less impressive.

Every product is given away in some numbers, from dish towels to cars. But it makes no difference since Apple already got paid for them.

Re:Sold. But to whom?

[UnknowingFool]

You raise a point that Apple might be stuffing the inventory with retailers. After all some manufacturers ship more product than actually sold and report the shipped numbers. (i.e. Sony PS3, Microsoft Xbox 360). Unlike the Xbox 360 and the PS3, many iPods are going to consumers and not sitting on the shelves. Before this quarter Apple had announced they had sold 88 million iPods. So they have sold 12 million more worldwide. I don't find that so hard to believe.

Unlike inventory and distribution in the past, big box retailers only buy what they need and never carry too much stock. And many times they buy things on consignment meaning that the manufacturer doesn't report a sale until the store reports one. As for the Wal-mart reference, 100,000 units sold to Wal-mart is pretty much 100,000 sold as Wal-mart does not carry much inventory. If they order 100,000, they will definitely sell 100,000.

For other retailers, if some of them are given away as opposed to sold directly, it's still a sale to Apple and it still goes to a consumer. Now if Apple itself was giving them away and counting it as a sale, that would be different.

Re:Sold. But to whom?

[mstone]

Yes, vendors can push inventory onto retailers.. it's called 'flooding the channel'. Microsoft may have done that with Zunes to meet its projected sales goals, based on its sales numbers per month for the year.

There are two reasons why Apple probably hasn't done so, though:

First, you can't flood the channel continuously. About all you can do is collapse the sales you would have gotten next quarter into this month's sales report.

Say I'm a vendor shipping a product whose market demand is a million units per month, and I want to puff up my sales figures. I ship 1M in January and 1M in February, then flood the channel with 4M units in March. That lets me claim 6M sales for my first quarter. It makes a nice press release, but doesn't mean that I'll ship another 6M units next quarter. In fact, if the actual demand is only 1M per month, I won't ship any at all. I can do the same thing again in the third quarter and claim 12M in sales by September, hopefully snagging some consumer interest for the upcoming Christmas season. But by the end of the year, I'll still only have shipped 12M units.

Bottom line, though: nobody can flood a channel with even a significant fraction of 100M units if the product doesn't already sell damned well.

The second problem is inventory management: Apple gives Dell a run for its money in keeping the supply chain thin. Apple itself owns less than 2 days worth of inventory at any given time, IIRC.

But in the example I gave above, I needed 6M units by the end of March. If I also want to stay below 2 days of unshipped inventory, I'd need a factory that can produce 1M units/month for two months, then jump to 4M units/month for March. Then I'd have to shut the whole thing down from April through June and start the whole thing up again in July.

It's incredibly difficult and expensive to jerk a factory's production capacity around like that. You can't build the product without machinery, which is expensive and can't just be rented for a month (who's going to have that much equipment stiiting around idle?). You need labor, which requires training (another sunk expense of both money and time) and doesn't like to be laid off every other quarter. And you need components, which means your suppliers would have to be willing to deal with exactly the same problems themselves.

In a word: unlikely.

Re:Sold. But to whom?

[gnasher719]

There are accounting rules for what sales Apple can count.

The rules are roughly: Apple can count an item as sold as soon as it leaves the company, AND Apple can be quite sure that the buyer will pay for it. If Walmart buys 100,000 iPods and has a contract that they have to pay for them no matter whether they sell them to end users or not, then Apple can count them as sold (even if Walmart can't shift them. Apple _has_ sold them). If Walmart buys 100,000 iPods and has a contract that they have to pay for those that they sell on to end users, and can return the others at any time, then Apple can count those as sold that Walmart has sold on.

If Apple sells 100,000 iPods to a seller that signed a contract that forces them to pay, but that seller goes bankrupt and Apple doesn't get the money, and doesn't get the iPods back, then I believe they can be counted as sold, and Apple's loss from bad debt is counted somewhere else in the books. I haven't heard of any such case.

other iPod models

[mnemonic_]

Also note that the 100 million includes the $80 iPod Shuffle and the iPod Nano. It's not hard to believe people owning multiple iPod models, either because they received them as gifts or for different uses (Shuffle for going on a jog, high-capacity standard iPod for long drives etc.).

Re:100 iPods sold or created?

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

"I have a 4G iPod which Apple replaced 5 times. Do all of them count?"

If you paid money for all 5 then yes. Warranty replacements are not sales.

As an aside, I had one glitch with my 4G Nano once. Other than that, flawless.

Why is everyone so surprised?

[AgentX24]

Why is everyone shocked at the total of 100 million iPods sold and calling conspiracy over it? After all, the PS2 had over 115 million units shipped worldwide by December 2006. Do people not believe that figure?

Re:Why is everyone so surprised?

[MightyYar]

People are weird when it comes to something popular. People hate Duke basketball, Windows, and now the iPod. There's even a hybrid car backlash going on right now.

Re:Why is everyone so surprised?

[kubrick]

Do people not believe that figure?

Trust? Sony? Wikipedia? Bwahahahahahahahahaha.

A bit more

[DogDude]

These are sales numbers to the retailers and distributors. I wouldn't think that it would be outrageous to think that there are 50+ million iPods sitting on store shelves and in warehouses right now. "Sales" numbers coming from manufacturers are always very, very generous.

Re:A bit more

[Anonymous Coward]

Very few industries have that amount of product in their supply chain now days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_In_Time_(busines s)

Re:A bit more

[Tim Browse]

I wouldn't think that it would be outrageous to think that there are 50+ million iPods sitting on store shelves and in warehouses right now.

Are you serious?

Let's say the iPod was released in 2001. They've sold 100 million units. But if, as you claim, 50+ million are in stores/warehouses, that means they've sold about 50 million in the 6 years since release.

Apple refresh the iPod lines every 1 or 2 years. This means the sales life-span of a model is 2 years max.

So your argument is that Apple keep SIX YEARS' worth of stock in the supply chain? And that of that stock, 4 years' worth, or about 33 MILLION will never be sold, because a new replacement model will be out by then?

Well, you've convinced me.

Re:A bit more

[Pope]

Then you'd be crazy. Apple is known for keeping tight reigns on the amount of product they have in the channel and keeping inventory low to avoid getting stuck with unsold items taking up valuable space in expensize warehouses. Order a laptop through their online store and the damn thing's trackable from the time it leaves the Chinese factory/distributor.

My wife and I have 5 between us...

[rthille]

iPod - 40GB (3/4th gen?)
iPod Mini (1st gen)
iPod Nano (2nd gen)
iPod Shuffle (1st gen)
iPod Shuffle (2nd gen)

I've been tempted to get the 5.5gen iPod, but I think I'll wait for widescreen.

Slashdot editors need to get over their iPod hate

[hattig]

Nice, select the one negative article about this news. Well done. Lame.

Given that 80 million iPods have been sold in the last two years - wait, Apple said they had sold 10m in early 2005 - so 90 million iPods in the last two years, I'd guess that the vast majority of them are in use (i.e., they work and aren't under the sofa missing) still (even if they were stolen!).

My iPod nano is 20 months old and I use it all the time still.

I bet that over time less than 10 million iPods sold were due to a previous iPod breaking and being out of warranty. Probably less than 5 million. Likely less than 2 million. Apple will sell than many in a couple of weeks, so it's a rather pointless argument anyway.

Anyway, why doesn't this thinking apply to other manufacturers? Sony - 120m or so PS2s for example. Sold == Sold in anybody's book.

Re:100 iPods sold or created?

[MightyYar]

Yikes do you have bad luck. My first-generation died when it drowned, but I put a new hard drive in it and it came back to life - so I have a well-worn first-generation that has "survived" a drowning. You're like that lady in New York who survived the Macy's parade float knocking a lamp-post into her, only to have a Yankee pitcher fly a plane into her living room.

My shuffle did die after I yanked it hot from a PC, though...

640,000 Zunes is enough

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Will MS make the magic number?

Re:640,000 Zunes is enough

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Shouldn't that be 655,360 Zunes?

Forgotten tagline...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft announces Zune is rapidly approaching fifteen units sold." /Stolen joke //Yeah, I bet you can guess where I stole it from.

Re:Importance of the other questions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Required disclaimer: I'm not an apple fanboy and don't even own any music player yet.

Only in bitter dreams is there even the slimmest of chances that 95 million iPods do not work. Let's be real here: Apple did a fine job of making an accessible, easy-to-use, attractive portable music player that does a very respectable job of providing the features most users wanted. Good on them.

No need to denigrate them or their players simply because you dislike their "cool" image. Not all hot cheerleaders are mean.

Continued sales

[SuperKendall]

If 95 million did not work, sales would be zero right now. The fact sales continue to be good means failure rate is not anywhere near that high, or the devices are so much more desirable currently than any other player around that people re-buy them anyway. Either way, sales continue.

Since the Zune has had a rough time unseating the iPod, we can assume the case is much more of the former than the latter.

Re:What did Hemos say when CmdrTaco entered?

[larry bagina]

That reminds me of a joke:

Q: Is Jeff Bates gay?

A: He mos' certainly is!

Re:100 iPods sold or created?

[lixee]

My shuffle did die after I yanked it hot from a PC, though...

Anyone could explain how is that physically possible? Sounds to me like your shuffle was just looking for an excuse to die.

Never understood why people unmounted USB stuff instead of just removing it right away. From my understanding, the worst that could happen is unplugging it during writes. Maybe I'm just lucky but until someone provides a reasonable explanation as to why I should bother to click/type unmount and wait a few seconds to withdraw my sticks/iPods, I'll keep doing it.

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[Anarchitect_in_oz]

The mac is hub of the focus on digital media hardware and software.

Somebody has to create media an Apple wants as much of that pie as they can get.
Hobbyists through to Mega Media Conglomerates Apple wants those dollars.

3% means they are probably doing pretty well at that goal.

Coincidence

[BasilBrush]

* What's the exact figure of how many iPods have been lost (I once left mine on an Air France flight) or stolen?

That's a coincidence, I found mine on an Air France flight!

Re:~~~100 million~~~

[rtrifts]

I don't think it's loonie.

I have bought FOUR 30 gig video ipods in the pat 15 months. Two for Xmas 2006 (gifts); one for myself in the fall of 2006 and still one more for Xmas 2006 (gift).

Now, I'm just one guy. But that's a whole lot of buying from just one guy. And while I'm different - I'm not *that* different. The number of white ear buds on the TTC when I take the bus or subway says to me: 100 million world wide? Entirely possible.

Price Point

[RetroRichie]

This doesn't really surprise me. I know Google has purchased thousands of shuffles just as corporate giveaways, and I don't doubt that many other companies have done the same. The price point of the shuffles and nanos is so low that anyone can get their hands on them. And most people who have the hard disk-based iPods seem to have a smaller version as well for the gym, or whatever. Heck, we have received two shuffles as corporate giveaways, and we haven't even resold them. They're so small that we're just waiting to lose them, put them through the wash, or drop them in the toilet (actually, we have already dropped one in the toilet and it survived just fine). :)

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet if you look at Apple's financial reports, the Mac accounts for approximately 50% of their revenue (more in non-holiday quarters). If they killed the mac, it would hurt their bottom line.

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[TheNetAvenger]

There's no contesting that most of Vista's user-visible additions (Aero, etc.) are Microsoft's direct response to competition from OS X.

Ya, sure if you are MacFanBoi that doesn't know any better, than this is a solid fact.

Let's see...

Vista - Vector Composer
OSX - No Vector Composer

Vista - GPU Scheduler
OSX - No GPU Scheduler

Vista - GPU RAM Virtualization
OSX - No GPU RAM Virtualization

Vista - 3D accelerated interface that processes all 2D
OSX - 3D drawing surface only - no 2D acceleration - no 3D UI features or acceleration

Vista - WPF - 3D API accelerated
OSX - Quartz - non-accelerated limited 3D features

Vista - Pretty Graphics and transparent stuff
OSX - Pretty Graphics and transparent stuff

Yep, they are exactly the same.

(Do you realize how much this ignorant crap that keeps getting repeated bugs people? And I freaking use OSX and like OSX for what it is, but I'm also a freaking OS engineer and know the difference in technology. Technically, MS could have added a double buffer to Win2k and had all the features of OSX with GDI+, transparency and all because that is the level of technology in the OSX Display engine. )

Re:Importance of the other questions.

[Anonymous Coward]

so it isn't news, it doens't tell people something.

It does tell people something. It tells them, "If you buy a Zune, you're an idiot."

Speaking of idiots, where did you get that, "...matters becuase if 95million don't work..." figure?

Microsoft can be dethroned

[Uksi]

You're so right on the money.

This is the reason that Microsoft can be dethroned--when you have good design, you can beat the giants. When you have shitty design and you are a giant, your product doesn't sell (Zune, case in point).

This is why Apple is sending shivers through the phone industry with the iPhone.

I predict that 2008 will be the year of actually easy to use phones, because of the well-designed competition by the iPhone.

Thank you Apple for raising the bar.

Re:Microsoft can be dethroned

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the reason that Microsoft can be dethroned--when you have good design, you can beat the giants. When you have shitty design and you are a giant, your product doesn't sell (Zune, case in point). So, do you think windows is dominant because it's a "good design"?

Re:Microsoft can be dethroned

[expressovi]

I don't' know if I'd Say Apple is beating a giant...they are a pretty big gian with or without Microsoft in the picture. They also have mean lawyers..... **looks over shoulder*

Re: 15 Units?

[reezle]

Only if you count the 15 that Beve Stalmer bought

Re:Importance of the other questions.

[pandrijeczko]

It does tell people something. It tells them, "If you buy a Zune, you're an idiot."

Why do you Apple fanbois constantly make this incorrect assumption that anyone who is anti-Apple is automatically pro-Microsoft?

Personally, I wouldn't be seen dead owning an iPod or a Zune. I have a 2GB £20 (=$35) music player that:

1. Mounts as a USB drive I can read/write files to in both Linux and Windows.

2. Supports MP3 and Ogg - the only two music formats of any importance.

3. Nobody is going to mug me for it.

4. If I leave it on a plane or in a taxi, it's no great loss.

In my 45 years on this earth, I have never found a good reason to own an Apple product - and since I'm now far too old to worry about making fashion statements, I probably never will either...

Re:~~~100 million~~~

[Anonymous Coward]

Two for Xmas 2006 (gifts); one for myself in the fall of 2006 and still one more for Xmas 2006 (gift).

And why don't you say "three for Xmas 2006 (gifts)" instead of 2+1? The last one was for your boss, ex-wife or something?

i agree

[Gabe308]

The number does seem hard and somewhat hard to believe but drawing from my own personal experiences with the ipod, I find the number to be realistic. I was given the ipod mini as a gift about 3 years ago and since that time, I have had to replace it 3 times and I don't think that I am the only one who has had to do this. Therefore, when apple says that they have sold over 100 million ipods, I tend to believe them.

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[that this is not und]

Apple is also almost single-handedly responsible for the fact that computers are no longer beige.

Who cares? This is slashdot, not a brittney chat room.

I might have been #100mil

[kilodelta]

I just got my iPod a week ago. Got an 8GB black Nano. Love it! I wanted a solid state player that could store at least 1,000 tracks and have enough room for podcasts. The Nano fit the bill for me.

Re:I might have been #100mil

[stewbacca]

Agreed. My harddrive based video iPod seems archaic in comparison. My 8Gig flash-based iPod is more responsive, makes no noise and the battery lasts forever. I think harddrive based players are DOA. I'm eagerly awaiting affordable flash drives in my computers!

Re:I might have been #100mil

[Omestes]

I'd disagree. I just bought a new 5.5G because I ran out of space. I never did like having to decide what I might be in the mood for listening to in the future, I'd rather have it all there in case the mood strikes me (how do I know it isn't going to be a Guns N' Roses day?). The philosophy of the Shuffle is even more off kilter to my lifestyle, I've got 3000+ songs on my computer, the odds its going to chose 50 of them that I really feel like listening too is rather remote. I had a smaller flash player before my iPod, and it sat forgotten on a shelf since it was too much hassle to rotate the play-lists, I took my old CD brick out instead, that way I was not attached to a small selection of music.

They have their places though. I wouldn't mind a nano or shuffle for the gym, or more active stuff, since they are well-nigh indestructible.

the most important point to me is.....

[rust627]

The quality of the sound.
MP3 is a terrible format, yes I know a lot of people tell me,"it's alright, I use the highest rate available", but it still sounds like excrement, with nasty high frequency artifacts that make my teeth jangle and destroyed dynamics.
Seriously I was in a nightclub a few weeks ago and they had installed an MP3 based music system and apart from all the high frequency narkiness that was giving me a headache the lack of dynamics made the resultant mix of songs so BORING that even the dedicated clubbers were getting turned off.
Apple on the other hand worked a bit harder on their codec and came up with something that did not destroy the music as much.
As I once wrote before try this test (With thanks to Paul D. Lehrman, of Mix Magazine and a teacher of audio).
take a mono wave file, convert it to both MP3 (any rate you choose), and 'MP4a'(Apples format).
Now convert both of these back to .wav. Using your favourite wave editing program. invert the original wave file and then add it to each of the converted and reconverted files.
For a perfect conversion there should be total cancellation,that is, to give an example, if you add the inverted wave file to the original wav file there will be nothing left over.
My experience is that the apple codec will leave a few specks on the graph but nothing more than a few clicks and pops will be audible.
The Mp3 codec will leave you with enough of the song behind that you will be able to recognise the track and even sing along with it.
Paul Lehrman from mix magazine goes into this in more detail and someone else may be kind enough to provide a pointer to the exact article.

But in the meantime here are some references from music industry professionals (not RIAA but the real ones who do the work and love music) :
http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_consumer_conundrum/ index.html

even students notice the difference :
http://mixonline.com/newmedia/internetaudio/audio_ kids_right/index.html

Re:the most important point to me is.....

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, while Apple did come up with a pretty solid format (Apple Lossless), AAC can't be credited to Apple--it's a part of the MPEG specification.

Re:the most important point to me is.....

[gnasher719]

'' For a perfect conversion there should be total cancellation,that is, to give an example, if you add the inverted wave file to the original wav file there will be nothing left over. ''

For a perfect conversion that removed the inaudible phase shift information, there would be no match whatsoever to the original wav file, but you wouldn't hear any difference.

Re:the most important point to me is.....

[stokessd]

Not all MP3 encoders are created equal. If you care about your music and still want to use MP3 format, you owe it to yourself to try LAME vs. the built-in iTunes Fraunhoffer encoding. There's even an iTunes (for the mac) plugin to allow LAME encoding in iTunes: http://blacktree.com/apps/iTunes-LAME/

I made a couple of CD-R's of the same track in it's original form followed by a bunch of different MP3 encodings and did a lot of A-B'ing of them on several high resolution systems (headphones, electrostatic speakers, as well as moving coil speakers). It was very interesting, the LAME encoding sounded as good as the Fraunhoffer encoding at the next higher bit rate (both FBR). At VBR it is harder to make broad generalizations as they seem to change bit rates differently.

I rip my CD's to FLAC files which I serve up to a Squeezebox (then to my DIY DAC's) and transcode from FLAC to MP3 for my iPod and airport expresses.

Sheldon

Re:~~~100 million~~~

[AISI]

From Apple's SEC filings (21 links are listed at Wikipedia):

Calendar quarter - iPod sales

Q4 01: 130,000
Q1 02: 57,000
Q2 02: 54,000
Q3 02: 140,000
Q4 02: 219,000
Q1 03: 80,000
Q2 03: 304,000
Q3 03: 336,000
Q4 03: 733,000
Q1 04: 807,000
Q2 04: 860,000
Q3 04: 2,016,000
Q4 04: 4,580,000
Q1 05: 5,311,000
Q2 05: 6,155,000
Q3 05: 6,451,000
Q4 05: 14,043,000
Q1 06: 8,526,000
Q2 06: 8,111,000
Q3 06: 8,729,000
Q4 06: 21,066,000

Cumulative sales as of last December: 88,708,000 (for a total revenue exceeding $17.36 billion). Thus this quarter Apple sold approx. 12,000,000 iPods.

Some of these iPods were stolen, some broke and were replaced, some people own more than one, but all in all Apple has sold 100 million iPods. Most of them are in use because the vast majority, more than 90 million units, have been sold since January 2005.

5 were purchased by my household

[notaprguy]

1, an original 40 GB model, died an early death. Then I bought a mini which I use once every three months in my car. I bought my wife a mini for Christmas two years ago and she never used it - not once. Then I bought her a Nano and she used it 2-3 times. Neither of us have ever bought any music through iTunes. All of my music was ripped from my CD collection or purchased from more reasonably priced online stores (with better music selections). iPod's are cool...for about give minutes. Then I want to go back to listening to NPR or actually talking to other people.

Re:5 were purchased by my household

[KirkH]

That's an odd story. Why buy five units when you hardly use them? Why replace one hardly used model with another one that will be hardly used? My head hurts.

I suspect your story is atypical. My household has bought only two... an old 3G from 2003 for myself and a Nano in 2005 for my wife. I use mine everyday in my car -- and I often listen to NPR on it via the free podcasts on iTunes. My wife uses hers everyday as well -- in her car, or playing music for our 2 year old via this speaker/dock thing downstairs, or playing ocean sounds over some portable speakers during nap time for our son.

We used to have a CD player in his room for the nap time music, but after a year and a half of constant use, it starting acting up and had trouble playing CDs. No such trouble from either of our iPods.

Re:5 were purchased by my household

[notaprguy]

There was a typo in my heading. We've bought four, not five. You're right. It's not particularly rational to buy four iPod's and not use them. Nor is it rational for humanity to buy 100 million iPod's. My situation is not quite as dumb as it sounds: 1. I bought the original big iPod when they first came out. I used it here and there and then it died on me. 2. Meanwhile, my wife said she wanted one so I bought her one for Christmas. Then she didn't end up using it. 3. Then we I got one to replace my 40GB model that died because I wanted to use it to store bird songs (check out www.birdjam.com). It turned out to be sort of cool but not something I used. 4. Then I forgot about the iPod I bought for my wife which was buried away in a drawer and got her a nono for Christmas last year. It is still sitting in a drawer. I'd disagree with your point that my situation is atypical. I talk to a lot of people who bought iPod's because they look cool, work nicely and they're gadget geeks. But, like Walkamn, people tire of fads like this and many end up gathering dust somewhere.

Re:5 were purchased by my household

[je ne sais quoi]

Well if I may answer your astatistical anecdotal story with my own astatistical anecdotal story: I bought a 4G 20GB iPod about four years ago and I use it every day while I'm walking to work, about half an hour each way. So a fad to you is something that I use during for something like ~1/34th of my life, which is substantial. (I don't use it on weekends, so its not 1/24th.)

Re:5 were purchased by my household

[scuba964]

Sounds like you've given a lot of money to apple for nothing! You could podcast NPR or something similar (actually many things similar).

Re:5 were purchased by my household

[Anonymous Coward]

What a Microsoftian koolaid drinking pussy you are. You've NEVER owned an iPod. You're just pissed your Zune stock is tanking.

Re:5 were purchased by my household

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

> I bought my wife a mini for Christmas two years ago and she never used it - not once. Then I bought her a Nano and she used it 2-3 times

Oh man. You have a lot to learn about buying gifts for women.

Re:5 were purchased by my household

[notaprguy]

No kidding! Next year: sexy underwear!

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[644bd346996]

Let's see... All but the last thing you listed are relevant only to developers. I said user-visible additions, meaning additions to the GUI. I'm well aware that Vista has some pretty advanced APIs. But the features for casual users amount to eye candy, searching, and moving buttons around. The Windows Flip3d effect, Sidebar, scalable icons, InkCanvas, and search are obvious "mee too" features. The Shadow Folders are an embrace,extend,extinguish against GoBack. Those things were added to make Vista seem newer and more advanced to the average user, particularly in comparison to OS X. All the acceleration and virtualization in the world can't make a GUI more usable, though.

Next time, before you get all worked up and call someone an ignorant fanboy, make sure that they aren't right.

Meh, nothing...

[andrewa]

Last time I checked, the global population was 6,587,774,956, so that doesn't even scratch the surface. Try harder Apple!

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[hey!]

Apple is also almost single-handedly responsible for the fact that computers are no longer beige.

Which only matters if you're the kind of person who knows where the cover and drive bay faceplates for your chassis are.

Re:~~~100 million~~~

[hey!]

That's an interesting phenomenon.

They may be approaching the saturation point, but the sales have been growing something like exponentially. I don't think advertising explains this; the simplest explanation is that the devices sell themselves. When people see one, they want one; when they buy one there's one more device out there making sales.

In a dump, who cares?

[68882]

I wonder how many IBM PC Juniors are in a dump/landfill/creek bed in China. Does it matter. Certainly any workable iPod is hung on a pocket of pre-teen/teen/yuppy in world. Even *broken* ones have value, see eBay.

Re:In a dump, who cares?

[stewbacca]

I'm 37 and my wife is 28. We own three iPods. We are not "pre-teen" or "teen", so I guess that makes us yuppies?

Re:Slashdot editors need to get over their iPod ha

[68882]

Well likely the author got a dozen Zunes from microsoft for Christmas, and his family members are still like: Bo why you give me this shitty brown Zune? Why not one of those hip iPods?

Apple doesn't have to hand out *FREE* samples anymore, that sucks from his perspective...

Oh and Apple doesn't have to hand out MacBook Pros either to show how good os-x runs either...

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[644bd346996]

Apple is also almost single-handedly responsible for the fact that computers are no longer beige.

Which only matters if you're the kind of person who knows where the cover and drive bay faceplates for your chassis are. I know where mine are: the attic. Same with the side panel. The way my furniture is set up right now, my old computer (the one I tinker with most) actually fits better with the bulging side panel off. And, it makes it much easier to swap drives and expansion cards.

I didn't really mean to say that the switch away from beige was all that great. I couldn't care less. But it still was a big accomplishment for Jonathan Ive and Apple.

100 Million iPods

[munsonroy]

It is not hard to believe that Apple has sold over 100 million iPods worldwide, when you take in a number of different factors. The first factor is that the iPod has the personal music industry dominated; whether it be the very effective opetating format or the the software (iTunes), Apple has it all and no other device comes close to challenging it. Also you must take into effect that the United States is not the only country who can generate large sales when it comes to technological purchases. Countries like Japan, China, South Korea, and Germany are all growing in their IT/TC areas, and the purchases of things like iPods becomes more and more frequent. Finally the iPod has had 3 generations now with a 4th to come, and within each generation the sales have been astronomical which leaves a worthy explanation of that 100 Million sold mark

100 Million iPods.....

[8127972]

....And not one sold into the Ballmer household.

Re:100 Million iPods.....

[UnknowingFool]

Interestingly one of reasons I've heard that MS created the Zune was that BillG and Ballmer were peeved that so many MS employees owned an iPod as opposed to one that used PlaysForSure. That was just a rumor though.

Stupid article

[El Gruga]

This is too stupid to comment on. ipods have won the battle 2 years ago - they will be the dominant music player for the next 20 years. Thats all. By next year the total will be 150 million, maybe more. if Macs grow at 30 percent for 10 years, Apple will be bigger than Microtrash. Watch it happen. They will then sell at least 60 million macs a year - thats 15 billion profit - more than M$ have ever made in a year. plus the iphone and the ipod - try 20 billion profit per year. Its called change - get used to it.

Re: 15 Units?

[rvw]

Only if you count the 15 that Beve Stalmer bought He has a deal with his local furniture dealer. For every chair he buys, he gets one Zune for free.

Mwahahaha!

[Anonymous Coward]

One hundred MEELLEEON iPods!

*bites pinky*

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

that "shadow folder" stuff was a feature of Windows Server 2003 already (shadow volume copies)

D'OH

[LKM]

The first iPod came out 6 years ago. Obviously some of these are replacements for broken or obsolete iPods - just like with any other electronics device. Does it matter? No. A sold iPod is a sold iPod, and if Apple managed to sell an iPod to a person who lost or destroyed his or hers, it means they were satisfied enough with their iPod to buy from Apple again.

Personally, I've owned two different iPods. One of the original "mechanical wheel" iPods (which I sold - it still works), and an iPod nano (which obviously also still works, it's quite new).

Microsoft has sold over 47 Zunes!

[argent]

Going by the poll on that page, anyway.

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[TheNetAvenger]

Let's see... All but the last thing you listed are relevant only to developers. I said user-visible additions, meaning additions to the GUI. I'm well aware that Vista has some pretty advanced APIs. But the features for casual users amount to eye candy, searching, and moving buttons around. The Windows Flip3d effect, Sidebar, scalable icons, InkCanvas, and search are obvious "mee too" features. The Shadow Folders are an embrace,extend,extinguish against GoBack. Those things were added to make Vista seem newer and more advanced to the average user, particularly in comparison to OS X. All the acceleration and virtualization in the world can't make a GUI more usable, though.


Do you only read Apple Marketing, or can I encourage you to look this stuff up in the real world yourself?

Relevant only to Developers? Um.. No. These are END USER features, because it allows games and applications to run faster, use more memory in games, and run smoother as all 3D applications and the UI itself are 'scheduled' by the OS. These are NOT developer features. DX10 stuff is developer features, and I didn't even mention it...

Flip3D: Ok, this one I could almost give you because Vista does add an additional preview feature to Windows. The problem here is, all of the 'features' Expose' brings to OSX are Windows rip offs. Since Windows 95 (yes 1995) Windows has had Show Desktop, Tile Windows, and Cascade, and also 'Undo Tile' that moves the Windows back to their original position, which does everything Expose does, and with Tile Windows, they are not just previews, but live Windows. Windows has also had Alt-Tab for application switching many years before you could do this on a Mac. The only thing Expose does that isn't a rip off is the cute scaling it does of the applcations all on the screen at once, and frankly Vista even does this better as they are live previews and you can roll through all the applications very easily. So MS Copied a 'pretty' at best, but Apple copied several features to make Expose'.

Sidebar: Well, Windows 95/ IE4 and Windows 98 had a feature called Active Desktop that allowed users to put any HTML or LIVE HTML content on their desktop. I have had a weather map on my desktop since 1997. I also have had a stock ticker and picture viewer on my desktop since 1997. This is old hat to Windows Users. Also, Konfabulator pioneered the technology on OSX and took an angle beyond MS's Active Desktop by allowing transparent edged 'widgets'. Vista just did away with Active Desktop and moved the technology into the sidebar. Apple copied both MS and Konfabulator.

Scalable Icons: Strange, Win95 even had scalable Icons. Also Win2k & XP also had high resolution, high color scalable Icons, Vista does add a new transparency feature and also scales the Icons to a size even larger than OSX. Vista also has masked preview icons, notice how the real pictures in a folder appear like they are in the folder. Maybe Apple can copy this for 10.6.

InkCanvas: Wow, MS had tabletPC technology going back to the early 90s, and yet OSX invented this? Are you mental? WindowsXP Tablet PC edition was released in 2002 even. Vista just rolls the features of TabletPC's Inherent Ink abilities into the main versions of Vista. This is OLD STUFF that Apple is still trying to copy and get right, where MS people have been using for YEARS.

The Shadow Folders are an embrace,extend,extinguish against GoBack.
Go look up Windows 2003 Server. You know the OS that was released in 2003? This is where this feature came from, long before Apple even considered adding it to OSX. This is an OLD feature for Windows users, and something that not only 'just works' but has been working for YEARS now. Apple completely ripped off this feature.

Sadly there are a few things that OSX did first and have done better, but you are so freaking clueless, you mention all the stuff that has been on Windows first. Come back when you go look this stuff up and can actually name some of the OSX features that Vista actually has copied.

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[644bd346996]

You have yet to explain how GPU Scheduling and WPF and GPU RAM virtualization are end user features! A back end technology is by definition not an end user feature. Only programmers are able to directly use WPF to accomplish something, because it is an API. To an end user, APIs are completely intangible. The things done with those APIs are what count for end users. And Vista is coming up short on new features with an immediate, tangible benefit to users.

The standard Tile/Cascade/Show Desktop functionality introduced in Win95 is a necessary feature for pretty much any window manager that organizes windows into a taskbar like area. It is not new, and nobody is claiming that they are new. What is new in vista is the Flip3d effect, and Microsoft is making a big deal if it. Too big, actually, since I have seen many computer advertisements showing the Flip3d effect on computers that cannot handle Aero. I personally think that flip3d is also rather inefficient compared to the tiling of expose, because expose makes better use of the screen area by showing all of every window at once, making it easier to identify similar windows. Also, you are dead wrong about live previews. Expose shows live previews even for movies and 3d games. In other words, there is nothing new or improved about flip3d.

You come very close to being right about the sidebar. Windows has had Active Desktop for years. Konfabulator came along and improved on it some, especially in the eye candy department. Then Apple ripped off Konfabulator as Dashboard, and made it popular. Then Microsoft redesigns their already working Active Desktop just so that it can look more like Konfabulator/Dashboard. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it isn't innovation.

As for scalable icons, I call BS. Show me some proof that Windows 95 had scalable icons. I'm pretty sure Vista is the first MS operating system that can display icons at multiple sizes without horrible scaling artifacts. If previous versions had been capable of this, MS wouldn't have waited until now to tout that feature.

As for InkCanvas, I'm well aware that Win3.1 had tablet apis. They have never mattered. Yes, Microsoft is almost entirely responsible for the availability of tabletpcs on the mass market. I've used tabletpcs. I know that they are not as usable as microsoft would have you think. I'm also surprised by the way that MS is promoting their tablet features. They are almost into trademark infringement territory with their nomenclature. OS X 10.2 (also released in 2002,btw) added Inkwell, aka Ink. i would argue that this is old stuff that neither Apple nor MS has gotten right yet, but MS has been failing at it a lot longer.

Also, you obviously have no clue what GoBack is. It is not TimeMachine from the forthcoming OS X 10.5. GoBack is a windows app that predates System Restore. I remember using it on Win9x machines. Over the years, it has been owned by WildFile, Adaptec, Roxio, and Symantec. System Restore was an obvious beginning to the embrace, extend, extinguish cycle, and Shadow Folders is intended to be the completion.

The point I have been trying to make is that all of Vista's selling points are essentially moot, because they are not new features. Your responses have amounted to saying things that are trivially proven false, and pointing out that Microsoft is not the only company that tries to sell old things as new. Neither of those tactics can produce a reasonable counter-argument. Don't reply to this until you have actually read my comment, and you can demonstrate that vista has a genuinely new feature for normal users.

Leave it alone

[Swift2001]

Apple sells 100 million iPods, joining a consumer electronics club with only the Sony Walkman and the Nintendo whatever, and of course Slashdotters can't deal with it. My original 5 GB had a battery go bad a few months after I lost it for about a month, and thus didn't recharge it. Should we strike that off the list, so it's only 99,999,999? Well, actually, I spent $30, replaced the battery, and then sold it when I bought my 20 GB model. That worked fine, but I replaced it with the 30 GB video iPod. I sold the 20 GB model. Since I sold them to friends, who were happy to get a cheap, $100 iPod in both cases, should you add the resold models?

The accountants added up all the sales and came up with 100 million. What's so hard to believe about that?

You know, President Bush has an iPod, and they released his playlists except for the top-secret podcasts he gets from Jesus. Do you hate America?

Doesn't necessarily follow

[anomaly]

My 15GB model is not sufficient to hold all of the content that I have in my iTunes library.

Some is podcast based, and much of that I would not pay for if it was only available for purchase. Most of my content has been ripped from CD media. Just because I have a large library of MP3s doesn't mean that I've made copyright-violating copies of music.

Of course there are lots of folks who don't pay for music, but that doesn't mean that there are not lots of us who don't illegitimately download content from the web.

Re:Note To Apple: Dump The Mac

[TheNetAvenger]

Over the years, it has been owned by WildFile, Adaptec, Roxio, and Symantec. System Restore was an obvious beginning to the embrace, extend, extinguish cycle, and Shadow Folders is intended to be the completion.

But System Restore and Shadow Folders are not the same technology, nor does this have ANYTHING to do with OSX as the post implied.

You have yet to explain how GPU Scheduling and WPF and GPU RAM virtualization are end user features!

Go back and read the post carefully, or better yet go look this crap up for yourself. GPU Scheduling means the end user can run WoW and not have to worry about it fighting with the 3D desktop, nor fighting with 3D application nor even other 3D Games.

This is like the difference between multi-tasking when it was application level yeilding and the move to pre-emptive multi-tasking. No longer could applications cease the CPU. The same is true, here, applications can no longer cease control of the GPU.

Are you going to argue that pre-emptive multi-tasking is not a feature that DIRECTLY BENEFITS end users? If you are, then you are really stupid and this conversation ends.

GPU RAM Virtualization in Vista is also an end user feature, as the OS manages VRAM, and shares it directly over the PCI/e or AGP bus. This means if your Video Card has 128mb of VRAM, and you want to run 5 applications or games that would each 'consume' the total VRAM, Vista will swap out low performance RAM texture elments to system RAM, and it is transparent to the Game, Application, etc.

GPU Scheduling and GPU Virtualization are NOT APIs, nor anything ANY DEVELOPER HAS TO EVER EVEN THING ABOUT, as they are END USER FEATURES THAT JUST WORK.

BTW GPU Scheduling also allows Vista to scale applications across multi-displays in a new way, and lets OLD games even support newer upcoming multi-core GPU technologies so that games won't have to use dated SLI concepts for Video cards with multi-core GPUs. Again, since this scales even ALREADY DEVELOPED games, it is an end user feature.

(Developers via DX10 also can write for GPU threading support, but this is not anyting I mentioned.)

Show me some proof that Windows 95 had scalable icons. I'm pretty sure Vista is the first MS operating system that can display icons at multiple sizes without horrible scaling artifacts. If previous versions had been capable of this, MS wouldn't have waited until now to tout that feature.

You seem to think you know a lot, go look this up yourself. It is very evident and very much 'common knowledge'. Vista adds HIGH RESOLUTION icons with PNG Transparency, this is what MS is touting, as they look good on high DPI pixel displays.

The point I have been trying to make is that all of Vista's selling points are essentially moot, because they are not new features.

And yet you were only comparing it to OSX and claiming MS ripped off Apple. Funny how your message is changing when faced with facts about crap you don't understand.

There are tons of features in Vista that would take far to many freaking pages to list. From end user features to developer and business and OEM features as well. I'm sorry you don't see anything but the 'transparent' windows you think they copied from Apple. BTW, in Vista, they are Blurred and Transparent, so don't be surprised if you see OSX copy the Blur fliter before long.

Most iPods Are Still Young

[gig]

Most of the 100,000,000 iPods are minis and nanos. Those models are only a few years old. The way the sales took off during the 4G and mini time and then exploded with 5G and nano, most of the iPods ever sold were just sold in the last 2-3 years. The monochrome ones are just a drop in the bucket.

the truth is

[imaroboninja]

You should read up on the real story behind 100 Million iPods

Re:Attention Apple Clickarounds

[bryan1945]

I think you may have some issues.