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Hard to believe it has been 20 years. When talking about the impact of the original iPod on the last two decades of Apple's extraordinary success, I like to jum

Hard to believe it has been 20 years. When talking about the impact of the original iPod on the last two decades of Apple's extraordinary success, I like to jump back to this forum thread from October 23rd 2001 (it is always easy to find because it is thread number 500!) and see the reactions from the time: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.500/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5...

macNchz 5y ago
Replying to myself as I reread the thread: I found a comment a few pages in about Apple's stock being down $1 on the day. So what if you'd skipped the iPod and just bought $399 worth of AAPL? According to this site which seems to use real data, it'd be worth... $211k today. http://stockchoker.com/?s=AAPL&d=20011023&a=399 http://stockchoker.com/?s=AAPL&d=20011023&a=399
- selectodude 5y ago
  But if everybody did that, Apple would be bankrupt because nobody was buying their products ;)
- mywittyname 5y ago
  I always find it fun to think about what the biggest companies in the world will be in 10, 20, 30 years. There's a good chance that some haven't actually been founded yet, but I'm sure others are household names even now. FWIW, I think media will displace tech on the top spot and Disney will lead the pack in 2040. It's also fun to do with future presidents.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    Presidents are tricky because (recent circumstances excluded) US voters don't tend to reward people who have been in the public eye for a long time with the presidency. Looking at recent presidents, almost none were in nationally visible political offices 20+ years before their elections (though a number were famous outside of politics). The 20th/21st century presidents, and their situation 20 years before election (it would have taken a hell of an eye even identify any but Biden, Trump and Reagan): - Biden (2000): 27th year in the US Senate - Trump (1996): Tabloid-famous real estate developer - Obama (1988): First year at Harvard Law School - W. Bush (1980): Oil executive son of the VP-elect - Clinton (1972): Arkansas Attorney General-elect - H.W. Bush (1968): 1st-year US House Rep - Reagan (1960): President of the Screen Actors Guild, movie star - Carter (1956): Farmer, son of a briefly seated US House Rep - Ford (never elected, 1954): 5th-year US House Rep - Nixon (1948): 2-year US House Rep - Johnson (as elected VP, 1940): 3-year US House Rep - Kennedy (1941): US Navy Officer, son of Ambassador to the U.K. - Eisenhower (1932): Executive officer to the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army - Truman (1924): Former county court judge - F.D. Roosevelt (1913): former 3-year senator, Assistant secretary of the Navy, Ex-president's cousin - Hoover (1909): Successful mining engineer - Coolidge (1900): City Solicitor of Northampton MA - Harding (1900): 1st-year Ohio State Senator - Wilson (1892): Head of the Princeton Political Science department - Taft (1888): Judge in the Superior Court of Cincinnati, son of an ex-cabinet secretary - T. Roosevelt (1880): New college grad, heir to a family fortune.
    - mywittyname 5y ago
      If you look at the set of VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president, you get a pretty good list of candidates. Sure, you'll miss odd-balls like Obama, but he was still a Senator; he just got lucky with timing and probably expected his bid for presidency to occur in like 2020-2024. Future presidents might be someone like, Paul Ryan, AOC, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Christie, Antony Blinken.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > If you look at the set of VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president, you get a pretty good list of candidates. Interesting, then that of your list: > Future presidents might be someone like, Paul Ryan, AOC, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Christie, Antony Blinken. 3/5 are not covered by ”VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president”.
      - InitialLastName 5y ago
        My point is that the intersection of people who become president and had been VP's, Governers, Senators or previously run for president (20 years before) in the modern era is 2 (out of the last 21 presidents). I didn't go through and look at other major candidates, but the other major candidates didn't get elected; my sense is that the losing candidates, at least recently, have been more experienced politicians (hence, "Americans don't elect people who have been in the public eye for a long time"). Trump, Obama, W. Bush, Clinton, Reagan and Carter all got elected as "outsiders" against clearly more experienced establishment politicians. An interesting thing I noticed going through that list, though, is that a much larger number of presidents came into a more visible position (such as the ones you mentioned) by T-15 years. It seems (and in fact this somewhat mirrors other leadership-oriented career paths) that ~15 years of visibility and experience (usually preceded by a local politics, private sector, or military career to build a network) is roughly optimal for a presidential career path.
      - InitialLastName 5y ago
        I want to add: 10 years out, that selection criteria (VP's, governors, senators, former presidential candidates) would (as far as I can tell) have missed Trump, Obama, W. Bush, Clinton (narrowly), H.W. Bush, Carter, Ford, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, F.D. Roosevelt, Hoover, Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, Taft, and T. Roosevelt, so 17/21 of the people who actually became president.
AceJohnny2 5y ago
My favorite remains Slashdot's Editor-in-Chief CmdrTaco's "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." (shared with <3, it really shows how us geeks had/have no sense of the popularity of a tech product)
- Marazan 5y ago
  The firewire connection was lame. And everyone agreed. If you look at the sales graph for the ipod it is basically a trickle until it suddenly explodes upwards. Why the explosion? USB adaptor connection allowong it to be used on normal Windows machines.
  - rjsw 5y ago
    I have an ASUS WindowsXP laptop with firewire, it worked well with an iPod.
    - geerlingguy 5y ago
      There were a number of 'media' laptops that had "i.Link" ports (advertised that way by Sony), but you still had to buy adapter cables for it. It was a little bit of a mess but you could make it work.
      - rjsw 5y ago
        I didn't have to buy anything extra, the iPod came with a 4-connector to 6-connector adapter.
  - ArteEtMarte 5y ago
    I don't think it was Firewire that kept it as a niche product. It was that iTunes wasn't initially available on Windows machines, and Macs were still quite rare. I had a G3 iMac (Graphite) at the time the iPod came out. So I got one. Actually, I got three: the first died after a day, the second was DOA, but the third kept chugging away for about 3 years until the battery died and it was only usable when plugged in. It's funny to remember how unusual the iPod was. People on the tube in London, which isn't known for conversation amongst strangers, would ask me what it was. Tiny, about the size of a cassette case, with that that amazing white face and silver case. It was like something from the future.
lostgame 5y ago
From that thread: 'I'd call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time...and it's not really functional.' Hilarious.
khazhoux 5y ago
Ha! “The Reality Distiortion Field is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off”
MBCook 5y ago
It became so popular, especially after it was officially available on Windows in 2003. And it remained THE thing until the iPhone really exploded when unleashed from AT&T around 2011. It’s heyday was only about 8 years but it had such a MASSIVE effect on the technology and music industries. Has any other product been so important but only been around for a relatively short amount of time?
- tantalor 5y ago
  Daguerreotypes were only used for a brief period in 1840s and 1850s but had huge impact on development of photography. Edit: check out the video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbbH77rYaa8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbbH77rYaa8
  - MBCook 5y ago
    That’s a great example.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  the iPhone really exploded when unleashed from AT&T around 2011. Cingular.
  - xxpor 5y ago
    Cingular was renamed to AT&T in 2006.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      Bit more complicated than that: https://www.att.com/Common/merger/files/pdf/Cingular_timeline7.pdf https://www.att.com/Common/merger/files/pdf/Cingular_timelin...
    - warning26 5y ago
      Exactly -- during the iPhone unveiling all the demo screenshots showed "Cingular", but by the time it had been released, Cingular had been rebranded to AT&T.
em500 5y ago
During the heydays of the iPod craze, around 2005-2008, I was convinced that product line would be short lived. It was apparent that music playing was a trivial application of mobile phones, which were already becoming ubiquitous. In those days, Nokia was a far bigger cultural phenomenon outside of North America (where Nokia never gained much of a foothold). And it was truly global, not just European: even tiny villages in rural Asia, Africa and South America had Nokia vendors. So in my straightforward projection, it was only a matter of time before the iPod would be crushed by the likes of Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, LG, etc. Never did I imagine that Apple would turn the tables on the phone manufacturers so dramatically after 2008...
- thought_alarm 5y ago
  Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes to manage their library, and were hence locked in to the iPod/iTunes eco-system. There was no reasonable alternative. Manually copying mp3 files to a Nokia or Blackberry just didn't come close to cutting it, and any attempts by those companies to compete with iTunes on the desktop ended in miserable failure due to piss-poor software quality.
  - gbrown 5y ago
    And then, of course, iTunes got steadily and uniformly worse for years.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    > Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes to manage their library, and were hence locked in to the iPod/iTunes eco-system. There was no reasonable alternative. Sorry, not true. I had a large music collection, and did not bother with iPod in the early days (and when I tried much later, didn't like scrolling wheel). It did not work with OGG Vorbis, nor could it have any moderate amount of storage. My DAP had 40 GB: iRiver H340. This was around 2003/2004.
    - samplatt 5y ago

macNchz 5y ago

Replying to myself as I reread the thread: I found a comment a few pages in about Apple's stock being down $1 on the day. So what if you'd skipped the iPod and just bought $399 worth of AAPL? According to this site which seems to use real data, it'd be worth... $211k today. http://stockchoker.com/?s=AAPL&d=20011023&a=399 http://stockchoker.com/?s=AAPL&d=20011023&a=399

selectodude 5y ago
But if everybody did that, Apple would be bankrupt because nobody was buying their products ;)
mywittyname 5y ago
I always find it fun to think about what the biggest companies in the world will be in 10, 20, 30 years. There's a good chance that some haven't actually been founded yet, but I'm sure others are household names even now. FWIW, I think media will displace tech on the top spot and Disney will lead the pack in 2040. It's also fun to do with future presidents.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Presidents are tricky because (recent circumstances excluded) US voters don't tend to reward people who have been in the public eye for a long time with the presidency. Looking at recent presidents, almost none were in nationally visible political offices 20+ years before their elections (though a number were famous outside of politics). The 20th/21st century presidents, and their situation 20 years before election (it would have taken a hell of an eye even identify any but Biden, Trump and Reagan): - Biden (2000): 27th year in the US Senate - Trump (1996): Tabloid-famous real estate developer - Obama (1988): First year at Harvard Law School - W. Bush (1980): Oil executive son of the VP-elect - Clinton (1972): Arkansas Attorney General-elect - H.W. Bush (1968): 1st-year US House Rep - Reagan (1960): President of the Screen Actors Guild, movie star - Carter (1956): Farmer, son of a briefly seated US House Rep - Ford (never elected, 1954): 5th-year US House Rep - Nixon (1948): 2-year US House Rep - Johnson (as elected VP, 1940): 3-year US House Rep - Kennedy (1941): US Navy Officer, son of Ambassador to the U.K. - Eisenhower (1932): Executive officer to the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army - Truman (1924): Former county court judge - F.D. Roosevelt (1913): former 3-year senator, Assistant secretary of the Navy, Ex-president's cousin - Hoover (1909): Successful mining engineer - Coolidge (1900): City Solicitor of Northampton MA - Harding (1900): 1st-year Ohio State Senator - Wilson (1892): Head of the Princeton Political Science department - Taft (1888): Judge in the Superior Court of Cincinnati, son of an ex-cabinet secretary - T. Roosevelt (1880): New college grad, heir to a family fortune.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    If you look at the set of VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president, you get a pretty good list of candidates. Sure, you'll miss odd-balls like Obama, but he was still a Senator; he just got lucky with timing and probably expected his bid for presidency to occur in like 2020-2024. Future presidents might be someone like, Paul Ryan, AOC, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Christie, Antony Blinken.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > If you look at the set of VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president, you get a pretty good list of candidates. Interesting, then that of your list: > Future presidents might be someone like, Paul Ryan, AOC, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Christie, Antony Blinken. 3/5 are not covered by ”VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president”.
    - InitialLastName 5y ago
      My point is that the intersection of people who become president and had been VP's, Governers, Senators or previously run for president (20 years before) in the modern era is 2 (out of the last 21 presidents). I didn't go through and look at other major candidates, but the other major candidates didn't get elected; my sense is that the losing candidates, at least recently, have been more experienced politicians (hence, "Americans don't elect people who have been in the public eye for a long time"). Trump, Obama, W. Bush, Clinton, Reagan and Carter all got elected as "outsiders" against clearly more experienced establishment politicians. An interesting thing I noticed going through that list, though, is that a much larger number of presidents came into a more visible position (such as the ones you mentioned) by T-15 years. It seems (and in fact this somewhat mirrors other leadership-oriented career paths) that ~15 years of visibility and experience (usually preceded by a local politics, private sector, or military career to build a network) is roughly optimal for a presidential career path.
    - InitialLastName 5y ago
      I want to add: 10 years out, that selection criteria (VP's, governors, senators, former presidential candidates) would (as far as I can tell) have missed Trump, Obama, W. Bush, Clinton (narrowly), H.W. Bush, Carter, Ford, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, F.D. Roosevelt, Hoover, Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, Taft, and T. Roosevelt, so 17/21 of the people who actually became president.

AceJohnny2 5y ago

My favorite remains Slashdot's Editor-in-Chief CmdrTaco's "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." (shared with <3, it really shows how us geeks had/have no sense of the popularity of a tech product)

Marazan 5y ago
The firewire connection was lame. And everyone agreed. If you look at the sales graph for the ipod it is basically a trickle until it suddenly explodes upwards. Why the explosion? USB adaptor connection allowong it to be used on normal Windows machines.
- rjsw 5y ago
  I have an ASUS WindowsXP laptop with firewire, it worked well with an iPod.
  - geerlingguy 5y ago
    There were a number of 'media' laptops that had "i.Link" ports (advertised that way by Sony), but you still had to buy adapter cables for it. It was a little bit of a mess but you could make it work.
    - rjsw 5y ago
      I didn't have to buy anything extra, the iPod came with a 4-connector to 6-connector adapter.
- ArteEtMarte 5y ago
  I don't think it was Firewire that kept it as a niche product. It was that iTunes wasn't initially available on Windows machines, and Macs were still quite rare. I had a G3 iMac (Graphite) at the time the iPod came out. So I got one. Actually, I got three: the first died after a day, the second was DOA, but the third kept chugging away for about 3 years until the battery died and it was only usable when plugged in. It's funny to remember how unusual the iPod was. People on the tube in London, which isn't known for conversation amongst strangers, would ask me what it was. Tiny, about the size of a cassette case, with that that amazing white face and silver case. It was like something from the future.

lostgame 5y ago

From that thread: 'I'd call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time...and it's not really functional.' Hilarious.

khazhoux 5y ago

Ha! “The Reality Distiortion Field is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off”

MBCook 5y ago

It became so popular, especially after it was officially available on Windows in 2003. And it remained THE thing until the iPhone really exploded when unleashed from AT&T around 2011. It’s heyday was only about 8 years but it had such a MASSIVE effect on the technology and music industries. Has any other product been so important but only been around for a relatively short amount of time?

tantalor 5y ago
Daguerreotypes were only used for a brief period in 1840s and 1850s but had huge impact on development of photography. Edit: check out the video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbbH77rYaa8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbbH77rYaa8
- MBCook 5y ago
  That’s a great example.
reaperducer 5y ago
the iPhone really exploded when unleashed from AT&T around 2011. Cingular.
- xxpor 5y ago
  Cingular was renamed to AT&T in 2006.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    Bit more complicated than that: https://www.att.com/Common/merger/files/pdf/Cingular_timeline7.pdf https://www.att.com/Common/merger/files/pdf/Cingular_timelin...
  - warning26 5y ago
    Exactly -- during the iPhone unveiling all the demo screenshots showed "Cingular", but by the time it had been released, Cingular had been rebranded to AT&T.

em500 5y ago

During the heydays of the iPod craze, around 2005-2008, I was convinced that product line would be short lived. It was apparent that music playing was a trivial application of mobile phones, which were already becoming ubiquitous. In those days, Nokia was a far bigger cultural phenomenon outside of North America (where Nokia never gained much of a foothold). And it was truly global, not just European: even tiny villages in rural Asia, Africa and South America had Nokia vendors. So in my straightforward projection, it was only a matter of time before the iPod would be crushed by the likes of Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, LG, etc. Never did I imagine that Apple would turn the tables on the phone manufacturers so dramatically after 2008...

thought_alarm 5y ago
Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes to manage their library, and were hence locked in to the iPod/iTunes eco-system. There was no reasonable alternative. Manually copying mp3 files to a Nokia or Blackberry just didn't come close to cutting it, and any attempts by those companies to compete with iTunes on the desktop ended in miserable failure due to piss-poor software quality.
- gbrown 5y ago
  And then, of course, iTunes got steadily and uniformly worse for years.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  > Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes to manage their library, and were hence locked in to the iPod/iTunes eco-system. There was no reasonable alternative. Sorry, not true. I had a large music collection, and did not bother with iPod in the early days (and when I tried much later, didn't like scrolling wheel). It did not work with OGG Vorbis, nor could it have any moderate amount of storage. My DAP had 40 GB: iRiver H340. This was around 2003/2004.
  - samplatt 5y ago