Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

Post by seppin » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #394

addicted wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree about the fashion bit. The iPod was better than any competitor it faced ever. The UI with the click wheel was completely unmatched. Maybe the Zune, years later, came close, but Apple absolutely crushed it with the iPhone and iPod touch. The iPhone was leaps and bounds ahead of its time, to the point that the then King of the hill, BlackBerry, didn’t even think it was possible. And the smoothness o…

AirPods are objectively great and it has taken 3 years for anything better to come out (and I would rather have seamless pairing than negligible audio quality improvements), but fashion is absolutely part of this. The same is true of the iPod and of the iPhone. To me, that doesn’t diminish from the fact that those are/were best-in-class products, but the ubiquity is absolutely based on fashion. The same is true of th…

Post by seppin » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #491

addicted wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree about the fashion bit. The iPod was better than any competitor it faced ever. The UI with the click wheel was completely unmatched. Maybe the Zune, years later, came close, but Apple absolutely crushed it with the iPhone and iPod touch. The iPhone was leaps and bounds ahead of its time, to the point that the then King of the hill, BlackBerry, didn’t even think it was possible. And the smoothness o…

> The iPhone’s UI was so far ahead that it’s now the default UI for every phone. When it comes to multitasking, the WebOS card metaphor won out and even came to iOS.

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 4:18 AM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #193

_trampeltier wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony's problem was never the hardware or the design. The problem was, special in the beginning of the MP3 / Smartphone age, they tryed to lock everything so hard with DRM (because other parts from Sony does sell Movies and Music). The even installed something like an trojan already very early in the MP3 market. So al lot of tech guys said "bye, bye Sony" when the market still was very young. I think they lost a lot b…

Apple had DRM on iTunes with FairPlay and AAC for around six years until the courts forced them to remove it. iTunes was still a huge business for them at the time. Sure that DRM was the real issue? Likewise, claiming that the Root Kit business (by which time the iPod had been around for a good 5 years) sunk Sony’s business seems like a bit of a reach.

Post by toasterlovin » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 4:28 AM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #498

filmgirlcw wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AirPods are objectively great and it has taken 3 years for anything better to come out (and I would rather have seamless pairing than negligible audio quality improvements), but fashion is absolutely part of this. The same is true of the iPod and of the iPhone. To me, that doesn’t diminish from the fact that those are/were best-in-class products, but the ubiquity is absolutely based on fashion. The same is true of th…

Apple Watch was very much marketed as a fashion accessory first. That didn’t work. Au contraire, that was _vital_ to shifting the public discussion. Right at the beginning, public sentiment was "what? >$400 for a watch? are you crazy?" To stifle that thinking, Apple brilliantly went for the fashion accessory approach and announced the absurdly high-end Watch Edition at >$10,000 ... suddenly discussion went from "$400…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #230

013a wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would find an estimate like "AirPods make more money than Spotify" interesting; its a sort-of poetic "the hardware you use to listen to the music is worth more than the music itself", at least in a limited scope (of course, the entire audio hardware industry is larger than Spotify, but is the entire audio hareware industry larger than the entire music recording industry? idk).

> the hardware you use to listen to the music is worth more than the music itself Which still isn't a useful comparison. One is an outright purchase, and the other a subscription service.