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See, that's just the thing right there. Jobs wanted to market a great product and was in no way concerned that some people might not be able to use it, because
by honkhonkpants 10y ago
See, that's just the thing right there. Jobs wanted to market a great product and was in no way concerned that some people might not be able to use it, because expanding the product to those users would compromise the greatness of the product. USB ports with comparable speeds to FireWire had only just been released on PCs when the iPod came to market, and charging a battery over USB was at that time just an abuse of the specification, whereas FireWire was designed from the beginning to provide 15W nominally and up to 45W tolerated. USB did not reach FireWire levels of battery charging ability until 2012!
- FabHK 10y agoExactly. Firewire = charging + super speed. iTunes was Mac only at the time, for (relatively) easy management and syncing of your music.
- MagnumOpus 10y agoYes, Jobs was short-sighted and made a bad business decision by not supporting 95%+ of his potential customer base. He subsequently did a 180 on this decision - Gen 3 introduced USB syncing, Gen 4 introduced USB charging, Gen 5 dropped Firewire syncing - and hey presto, the iPod started selling more than 5 million units a year, started being profitable and swallowed the entire competition.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoYou're applying your own success criteria to someone else's project.