> "My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks But it was obsolete before I opened the box You say you've had your desktop for over a week? Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight"
Yes, all that is true... for people who were frequently trying to do anything "interesting" with their computers. Most people didn't try to do anything interesting with their computers! Most people — your average plumber in a small town in Ohio, for example — bought a computer for "productivity" (i.e. running Word); never played a single game on it other than the ones that came with Windows; and forgot it existed basically 99% of the time. Eventually, maybe they got AOL because of the free trial CD/floppy, and checked their email once a month. (But not more often than that; they didn't want to tie up their phone line!)
For these people, buying a piece of consumer electronics like an MP3 player, that forced them to use their computer to populate it (or, indeed, to do anything other than using Word), was a confusing incursion into what had previously been an analogue affair of tape dubbing, suddenly surprising them that the machine they thought would be just fine, had suddenly "gone bad" (i.e. gone obsolete) despite having been left mostly untouched.
> You also are totally incorrect about internet connectivity adoption at that point.
You are aware that in plenty of places that theoretically had the capacity for Internet connectivity, there were still many people who didn't bother to actually get Internet access, because they had no use for it, and that (unlike today) nothing out there demanded they get online to e.g. file their taxes, right?
Or that, even for many people "with Internet", they were still essentially using a captive portal experience (like AOL) at that point, with no web browser, FTP client, or anything else that would ever lead them to try to download a piece of software or anything else 1MB or larger, right?
Also, you know there are places outside the US, right? And that consumer electronics manufacturers care very much about selling into non-US markets? Look at global Internet penetration in 2001. Think about what you'd have to do to sell a consumer electronics device to someone in India or Indonesia in 2001.
My point wasn't that any of these factors pertained to the specific technosphere bubble that Apple released — and still releases — its products into. My point was, in fact, the opposite: that Apple is distinctive among consumer electronics manufacturers for a product marketing strategy involving addressing only that technosphere bubble. Everyone else used to target the lowest common denominator — that Ohioan plumber with the "antique paperweight", or even whatever someone might be using as a computer somewhere in Nigeria or the Philippines at that time.