iPod's chief competition at the time was the Nomad (as captured in Rob Malda's classic iPod review). I bought a Nomad in August 2001 (roughly two months before

iPod's chief competition at the time was the Nomad (as captured in Rob Malda's classic iPod review). I bought a Nomad in August 2001 (roughly two months before the iPod came out). I have never had more remorse at being an early adopter. The Nomad was the size of two Sony CD Walkmans stuck together. Its interface was a series of four fiddly buttons and a dire lo-res LCD screen. The iPod was a tremendous improvement in every single respect. The reason why the iPod wasn't an immediate hit was because it was only available for the Mac. iTunes for Windows didn't get released until 2003. If the iPod sucked in 2002, every other hard-drive based MP3 player sucked more.