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Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

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Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#11

Post by Ididntdothis »

Causality1 wrote: post #3

The key to the ipod's success was, in my opinion, the iTunes store and Apple's excellent marketing. At no point in the ipod's history was it particularly innovative with its hardware in comparison to competing devices but the enormous amounts of work that went into forging an infrastructure-level cultural presence paid dividends when it came to ipod sales. For over a decade iTunes was the place you bought music onlin…

I had been using quite a few MP3 players before the iPod but the iPod was the first device that brought together high capacity with very good usability. A very similar thing happened with the iPhone. There were smart cellphones with all the features before but the iPhone was the first to combine everything into an elegant package. I think that always was the real strength of Apple starting from the Apple II: wrapping everything together into a really nice package.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#12

Post by [deleted] »

terracatta wrote: post #5
Causality1 wrote: post #3

The key to the ipod's success was, in my opinion, the iTunes store and Apple's excellent marketing. At no point in the ipod's history was it particularly innovative with its hardware in comparison to competing devices but the enormous amounts of work that went into forging an infrastructure-level cultural presence paid dividends when it came to ipod sales. For over a decade iTunes was the place you bought music onlin…

> At no point in the ipod's history was it particularly innovative with its hardware in comparison to competing devices When the iPod came out I remember the main competitor was the Creative Nomad Jukebox. It was bulky (it was the around the same size as a Sony discman), the screen was small, and it had like 11 weirdly shaped buttons, and I think had recharable AA batteries (that took like 12 hours to charge). It was…

[deleted]

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#13

Post by Demiurge »

Causality1 wrote: post #7
charlesism wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t remember any portable MP3 playing device before iPod that wasn’t a joke. Are you thinking of a particular product that was comparable? I’m curious.

Define "a joke". There were quite a few flash-based players that predate the ipod and a couple of hard drive based ones. Heck, Rio was three generations into their mp3 players when the ipod was released. Apple fixed the experience for non-nerd. Instead of having to go online and find music files yourself you could just go buy them.

I was constantly shopping around for MP3 players, they were too expensive with too little space, or not great reliability. The issue is that for a young person, such as myself, this was a big investment. The best thing to do before the iPod was really an mp3 cd player, because you could have many of these CDs.

If all we're working with anecdata, I honestly don't know anyone who didn't have an mp3 collection before the iTunes store.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#14

Post by charlesism »

Causality1 wrote: post #7
charlesism wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t remember any portable MP3 playing device before iPod that wasn’t a joke. Are you thinking of a particular product that was comparable? I’m curious.

Define "a joke". There were quite a few flash-based players that predate the ipod and a couple of hard drive based ones. Heck, Rio was three generations into their mp3 players when the ipod was released. Apple fixed the experience for non-nerd. Instead of having to go online and find music files yourself you could just go buy them.

The Rio had slow transfer speed (USB), hardly any storage (less than one CD), big ugly form factor... and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t rechargeable. My buddy at the time bought one. It did not impress.

The tech for the first iPod (Firewire and a 5GB hdd) made it essentially a different category of device.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#15

Post by mattkevan »

Causality1 wrote: post #3

The key to the ipod's success was, in my opinion, the iTunes store and Apple's excellent marketing. At no point in the ipod's history was it particularly innovative with its hardware in comparison to competing devices but the enormous amounts of work that went into forging an infrastructure-level cultural presence paid dividends when it came to ipod sales. For over a decade iTunes was the place you bought music onlin…

iTunes music store was launched in 2003, two years after the first iPod. By that time the iPod was already a success, if not the mega hit it became later.

iTunes’ proposition at the time was Rip Mix Burn, making it the repository for the music all from your existing CDs. Myself and most people I knew had big MP3 collections long before we got players.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#16

Post by joe_bleau »

[no time for video, so if these are answered let me know...]

Two things I never got about the iPod:

Why not add a second headphone jack so two people could listen and share the experience?

Why didn't Apple preload some music (maybe classical stuff in the public domain, performed by affordable Eastern European orchestras) for a better out of the box experience? Think about kids getting an iPod at Christmas; until it was sync'd to a computer, there wasn't much to do with it.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#17

Post by tehwebguy »

Causality1 wrote: post #7
charlesism wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t remember any portable MP3 playing device before iPod that wasn’t a joke. Are you thinking of a particular product that was comparable? I’m curious.

Define "a joke". There were quite a few flash-based players that predate the ipod and a couple of hard drive based ones. Heck, Rio was three generations into their mp3 players when the ipod was released. Apple fixed the experience for non-nerd. Instead of having to go online and find music files yourself you could just go buy them.

I worked all summer building websites to buy the first gen Rio PMP300.

Everything about it sucked ass, including transferring songs over serial.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#18

Post by ksec »

Causality1 wrote: post #3

The key to the ipod's success was, in my opinion, the iTunes store and Apple's excellent marketing. At no point in the ipod's history was it particularly innovative with its hardware in comparison to competing devices but the enormous amounts of work that went into forging an infrastructure-level cultural presence paid dividends when it came to ipod sales. For over a decade iTunes was the place you bought music onlin…

That is giving too little credit to hardware engineering team. The latter iPod were the first to adopt NAND based storage, to the point where half of the world's NAND production were going to Apple.

Not to mention its design, they were possibly the only MP3 player that looks good.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#19

Post by champagneben »

joe_bleau wrote: post #16

[no time for video, so if these are answered let me know...] Two things I never got about the iPod: Why not add a second headphone jack so two people could listen and share the experience? Why didn't Apple preload some music (maybe classical stuff in the public domain, performed by affordable Eastern European orchestras) for a better out of the box experience? Think about kids getting an iPod at Christmas; until it w…

That's what the kids want: classical stuff in the public domain.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#20

Post by blaird »

Causality1 wrote: post #7
charlesism wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t remember any portable MP3 playing device before iPod that wasn’t a joke. Are you thinking of a particular product that was comparable? I’m curious.

Define "a joke". There were quite a few flash-based players that predate the ipod and a couple of hard drive based ones. Heck, Rio was three generations into their mp3 players when the ipod was released. Apple fixed the experience for non-nerd. Instead of having to go online and find music files yourself you could just go buy them.

I had the Rio 600 before the iPod (https://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/rio600/) . It was definitely a joke, 32MB could barely fit a single CD and that was only after degrading the bitrate of the rip to a degree that it was really scratchy.
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