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The hard drive wasn't an Apple innovation. Neither was the battery tech. They brought the wheel interface and were willing to gamble that people would pay a p

The hard drive wasn't an Apple innovation. Neither was the battery tech. They brought the wheel interface and were willing to gamble that people would pay a premium for a bunch of very expensive components that resulted in a comparatively small player. The closest thing to an iPod at the time it launched was the Rio players which were flash based and had capacities in tens of megabytes or the Creative HDD players which were battery hogs the size of 2 CD players stacked on top.

prepend 8y ago
Creative had the Nomad Jukebox [0] at 6GB. It used a larger drive and was about the size of a discman, not double. The battery was awesome and lasted all day. The iPod was more expensive, but they ended up with being able to both buy and rip music. The size helped using the new smaller drive. But they took off because of their music, I think. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_NOMAD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_NOMAD
- cptskippy 8y ago
  The Nomad Jukebox is 1.5 inches thick, in 2001 most portable CD players were under an inch thick and there were a few competing for thinnest with the IO-Data HyperHyde being .55 inches thick. The battery in the Nomad at the time of the iPod launch was four standard AA cells, and you're right that they could last all day if you used Alkalines. You could use NiMH batteries but they were pretty awful; their main selling point in 2002ish was that they had no memory effect compared to NiCADs; not that they lasted as long as Alkalines. The iPod launched a full 2 years before the iTunes Music store. At launch you could not buy music for the iPod and it still sold like hotcakes. The iPod had a high capacity rechargeable battery, FireWire (400mbps) and could fit in the front pocket of a pair of jeans. The Nomad Jukebox was the closest thing at the time and it used four AA batteries, USB 1.1 (12mbs) and was praised for passing the jacket test (e.g. fitting in an oversized jacket pocket).
  - prepend 8y ago
    At launch the iPod was not widely bought. It wasn’t it was released for windows and launched the iTunes Store that it got popular. Check out the sales curve [0] and it didn’t get significant until 2004 when it became the top seller in October and exploded in 2005. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quarter.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quarter....
    - cptskippy 8y ago
      In 2002, the first full year of sales, it managed to capture 11% of the market[1] with 475 thousand units and ranking 3rd in a market of only around 4.2 million[2]. That's not nothing. The market tripped to 12.5 million units in 2003 and Apple's market share continued to grow. By 2009 they had almost 80% of the market. [1] https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Apple_iPod_Number_One_In_Music_Player_Market https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Apple_iPod_Number_On... [2] https://www.macworld.com/article/1053499/ipodtimeline.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1053499/ipodtimeline.html

prepend 8y ago

Creative had the Nomad Jukebox [0] at 6GB. It used a larger drive and was about the size of a discman, not double. The battery was awesome and lasted all day. The iPod was more expensive, but they ended up with being able to both buy and rip music. The size helped using the new smaller drive. But they took off because of their music, I think. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_NOMAD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_NOMAD

cptskippy 8y ago
The Nomad Jukebox is 1.5 inches thick, in 2001 most portable CD players were under an inch thick and there were a few competing for thinnest with the IO-Data HyperHyde being .55 inches thick. The battery in the Nomad at the time of the iPod launch was four standard AA cells, and you're right that they could last all day if you used Alkalines. You could use NiMH batteries but they were pretty awful; their main selling point in 2002ish was that they had no memory effect compared to NiCADs; not that they lasted as long as Alkalines. The iPod launched a full 2 years before the iTunes Music store. At launch you could not buy music for the iPod and it still sold like hotcakes. The iPod had a high capacity rechargeable battery, FireWire (400mbps) and could fit in the front pocket of a pair of jeans. The Nomad Jukebox was the closest thing at the time and it used four AA batteries, USB 1.1 (12mbs) and was praised for passing the jacket test (e.g. fitting in an oversized jacket pocket).
- prepend 8y ago
  At launch the iPod was not widely bought. It wasn’t it was released for windows and launched the iTunes Store that it got popular. Check out the sales curve [0] and it didn’t get significant until 2004 when it became the top seller in October and exploded in 2005. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quarter.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quarter....
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    In 2002, the first full year of sales, it managed to capture 11% of the market[1] with 475 thousand units and ranking 3rd in a market of only around 4.2 million[2]. That's not nothing. The market tripped to 12.5 million units in 2003 and Apple's market share continued to grow. By 2009 they had almost 80% of the market. [1] https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Apple_iPod_Number_One_In_Music_Player_Market https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Apple_iPod_Number_On... [2] https://www.macworld.com/article/1053499/ipodtimeline.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1053499/ipodtimeline.html