The iPod happened during a perfect storm of young people suddenly accumulating fileshared boatloads of unsorted MP3s that they desperately wanted to take away f

The iPod happened during a perfect storm of young people suddenly accumulating fileshared boatloads of unsorted MP3s that they desperately wanted to take away from their computers (then mostly clunky desktop systems), all while carrying significantly less cash into record stores than before. I see nothing that could come even close to that for the watch. To people spending many of their waking hours pondering the cultural relevance of the different strains of pop music (back then: almost everybody under 25), the iPod, together with the underlying file-sharing boom was world-changing, much like having a car is world-changing. The analogy between iPod and watch might still hold of you look exclusively at buyers of the "minor iPods" at the time when the classic was still dominant (in other words: when the classic was still known as just the iPod). The distinction between people who wanted a portable music player and got the iPod (because it was the best), vs people who wanted an iPod and therefore got a portable music player (because that's what iPods were). The latter pattern could repeat itself with the watch just fine, but I don't know if that can happen with the former pattern happens before. The iPod started as a life changer (for a certain group/generation) that only later turned into a wealth indicator novelty. The watch is taking a bet to skip the first stage, because moving notifications from phone to wrist is a much smaller step than making the wondrously huge filesharing MP3 libraries of the day pocketable.