4 ms·

The very first iPod was sort of stupid though. Firewire only. First generation did not sync with Windows, though a later revision made it work using Music Matc

The very first iPod was sort of stupid though. Firewire only. First generation did not sync with Windows, though a later revision made it work using Music Match, which was an awful program to use. Eventually we get a USB cable, but it cannot be used for charging, data transfer only. It wasn't until 2003-2004 that the iPod actually became something most people could use.

pohl 15y ago
That wasn't stupid. It was cunning. Record labels only signed on because the market looked to be safely relegated to Macs. Little did they know that iTunes would be ported to Windows and FireWire would be supplemented with USB.
- TruthElixirX 15y ago
  Do you have a source for that claim? Because the store did not pop up until the same era as USB and Windows support.
  - pohl 15y ago
    Doug Morris, as quoted in Steve Knopper's book, as related in the recent Fortune magazine's special edition re: Steve Jobs, page 14: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Morris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Morris Jobs cleverly made his pact with the record labels when iTunes worked only on Macs, which in 2002 had a personal-computing market share in the low single digits. Apple's humble position - before iTunes became compatible with Windows, expanding its potential market share to nearly all PCs - was a virtue. This made iTunes an experiment rather than a destructive paradigm shift. "I don't understand how Apple could ruin the record business in one year on Mac," said Doug Morris, the head of Universal Music, according to Appetite for Self-Destruction, a new book about the record industry's ills by Rolling Stone writer Steve Knopper. "Why shouldn't we try this?"
    - ZeroGravitas 15y ago
      This doesn't substantiate the claim that it was "cunning", i.e. a planned ruse by Apple. I can still remember the disbelief when iTunes was ported to Windows so I'll need some convincing that Steve Jobs was so ahead of the game that he started out by playing possum in order to lull the labels into a false sense of security. Was the lack of Firewire adoption also part of this masterplan+
      - pohl 15y ago
        My bad. I thought TruthElixirX was asking for a source for the bit about the record labels. You could be right, but honestly I didn't want to take your position for fear of putting Steve on too high of a pedestal - for it would strain credulity for someone to have had his impact on six industries without the application of strategic thinking. It would be truly god-like to have stumbled into it all via mediocrity.
- ZeroGravitas 15y ago
  Record labels didn't sign on till later. The first iPod was for playing songs you'd ripped from CDs, or found on the internet.
  - pohl 15y ago
    Record labels didn't sign on till later. Yes, that is precisely my point.
    - dextorious 15y ago
      How can this be "your point"? Your original point was "record labels only signed on because the market looked to be safely relegated to Macs. Little did they know that iTunes would be ported to Windows and FireWire would be supplemented with USB". and he just told you that Record labels signed LATER when the market was no longer relegated to Mac, and USB iPods and iTunes for Windows already existed, i.e the opposite of your original point.
      - pohl 15y ago
        It can be my point because I understood ZeroGravitas to be saying that the record labels did not sign on until after the original iPod was released, which of course is correct. Your interpretation of his post seems to be that he was claiming that the record labels didn't sign on until after a USB iPod was released, and after iTunes became available for windows. But I have too much respect for ZeroGravitas to think that he was saying something that was not historically accurate. Wikipedia says that the iTunes store was introduced April 29, 2003, and that the 3rd-generation iPods (the first with USB) were first available on April 28, 2003. Furthermore, iTunes for Windows was announced on October 16, 2003. So when, in this timeline, do you think labels would have signed contracts allowing Apple to distribute their music? It would be incredible to think that they put pen to paper after the store was introduced, wouldn't it?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
dextorious 15y ago
> Firewire only. And this is stupid because? > First generation did not sync with Windows, though a later revision made it work using Music Match, which was an awful program to use. First generation wasn't intended to sync with Windows. For what it did it wasn't stupid at all.
- TruthElixirX 15y ago
  Because no one used Firewire. And because Mac market share when the original iPod was released was very poor.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    > Because no one used Firewire. It was meant for Macs, which already had it, remember? > And because Mac market share when the original iPod was released was very poor. Still big enough to create a device to test waters on, and gradually enhance it. Which was kind of the point, remember?
ZeroGravitas 15y ago
I think it's harsh to call something stupid just because it was initially aimed at Apple's own demographic. It is however interesting to note that the device was effectively useless for the vast majority of techies unless they switched platforms. Which makes the poor reviews a bit more understandable, they couldn't use it even if they wanted to so it's a classic case of 'sour grapes'. And switching at that time would have involved paying over the odds for a weird looking computer with non-x86 chips and a half-finished, Frankenstein OS. So as well as the standard not wanting to change and cost reasons there were plenty of perfectly sensible reasons to not switch to a Mac. Indeed if anything, that was clearly stupid. But I did it anyway.
- dextorious 15y ago
  Actually it was so "stupid" (sic) that even though it was initially aimed at Apple's own demographic, there was demand enough for it on the Windows side for dozens of third-party integration solutions to be created...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
philwelch 15y ago
If you had a Mac--which was the original requirement--it was far from stupid. As a penniless high school student I didn't have one, but I wanted one and it was, basically, what the iPod was always meant to be: a way to carry around your entire music collection without a huge binder of CD's.
js2 15y ago
Yes, well this is how Apple does things, constant iteration - http://www.macworld.com/article/151235/2010/05/apple_rolls.html http://www.macworld.com/article/151235/2010/05/apple_rolls.h...
- notatoad 15y ago
  maybe it used to be how apple did things, but it is most certainly not how apple does things now. look at their most recent new product line - the iPad. it was not a device that needed iterating on, as evidenced by the iPad2 being virtually the same thing.
  - jfoutz 15y ago
    as an iPad owner, and friend of an iPad 2 owner, i have to say, the iPad 2 is clearly better in a handful of ways. the differences are small, but over a few generations they add up to huge differences. (well, they did in other product lines anyway( That said, the original iPad was a far sharper vision than the original iPod. it's slowly becoming a dynabook, i think.
  - elithrar 15y ago
    > maybe it used to be how apple did things, but it is most certainly not how apple does things now. look at their most recent new product line - the iPad. it was not a device that needed iterating on, as evidenced by the iPad2 being virtually the same thing. What about the iPhone? Launched as a 2G/2.5G (EDGE) only device, no copy & paste in the OS, no native third party applications, etc. Every iteration since then has added 'core' features that would be hard to live without now that we are used to them.

pohl 15y ago

That wasn't stupid. It was cunning. Record labels only signed on because the market looked to be safely relegated to Macs. Little did they know that iTunes would be ported to Windows and FireWire would be supplemented with USB.

TruthElixirX 15y ago
Do you have a source for that claim? Because the store did not pop up until the same era as USB and Windows support.
- pohl 15y ago
  Doug Morris, as quoted in Steve Knopper's book, as related in the recent Fortune magazine's special edition re: Steve Jobs, page 14: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Morris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Morris Jobs cleverly made his pact with the record labels when iTunes worked only on Macs, which in 2002 had a personal-computing market share in the low single digits. Apple's humble position - before iTunes became compatible with Windows, expanding its potential market share to nearly all PCs - was a virtue. This made iTunes an experiment rather than a destructive paradigm shift. "I don't understand how Apple could ruin the record business in one year on Mac," said Doug Morris, the head of Universal Music, according to Appetite for Self-Destruction, a new book about the record industry's ills by Rolling Stone writer Steve Knopper. "Why shouldn't we try this?"
  - ZeroGravitas 15y ago
    This doesn't substantiate the claim that it was "cunning", i.e. a planned ruse by Apple. I can still remember the disbelief when iTunes was ported to Windows so I'll need some convincing that Steve Jobs was so ahead of the game that he started out by playing possum in order to lull the labels into a false sense of security. Was the lack of Firewire adoption also part of this masterplan+
    - pohl 15y ago
      My bad. I thought TruthElixirX was asking for a source for the bit about the record labels. You could be right, but honestly I didn't want to take your position for fear of putting Steve on too high of a pedestal - for it would strain credulity for someone to have had his impact on six industries without the application of strategic thinking. It would be truly god-like to have stumbled into it all via mediocrity.
ZeroGravitas 15y ago
Record labels didn't sign on till later. The first iPod was for playing songs you'd ripped from CDs, or found on the internet.
- pohl 15y ago
  Record labels didn't sign on till later. Yes, that is precisely my point.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    How can this be "your point"? Your original point was "record labels only signed on because the market looked to be safely relegated to Macs. Little did they know that iTunes would be ported to Windows and FireWire would be supplemented with USB". and he just told you that Record labels signed LATER when the market was no longer relegated to Mac, and USB iPods and iTunes for Windows already existed, i.e the opposite of your original point.
    - pohl 15y ago
      It can be my point because I understood ZeroGravitas to be saying that the record labels did not sign on until after the original iPod was released, which of course is correct. Your interpretation of his post seems to be that he was claiming that the record labels didn't sign on until after a USB iPod was released, and after iTunes became available for windows. But I have too much respect for ZeroGravitas to think that he was saying something that was not historically accurate. Wikipedia says that the iTunes store was introduced April 29, 2003, and that the 3rd-generation iPods (the first with USB) were first available on April 28, 2003. Furthermore, iTunes for Windows was announced on October 16, 2003. So when, in this timeline, do you think labels would have signed contracts allowing Apple to distribute their music? It would be incredible to think that they put pen to paper after the store was introduced, wouldn't it?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

dextorious 15y ago

> Firewire only. And this is stupid because? > First generation did not sync with Windows, though a later revision made it work using Music Match, which was an awful program to use. First generation wasn't intended to sync with Windows. For what it did it wasn't stupid at all.

TruthElixirX 15y ago
Because no one used Firewire. And because Mac market share when the original iPod was released was very poor.
- dextorious 15y ago
  > Because no one used Firewire. It was meant for Macs, which already had it, remember? > And because Mac market share when the original iPod was released was very poor. Still big enough to create a device to test waters on, and gradually enhance it. Which was kind of the point, remember?

ZeroGravitas 15y ago

I think it's harsh to call something stupid just because it was initially aimed at Apple's own demographic. It is however interesting to note that the device was effectively useless for the vast majority of techies unless they switched platforms. Which makes the poor reviews a bit more understandable, they couldn't use it even if they wanted to so it's a classic case of 'sour grapes'. And switching at that time would have involved paying over the odds for a weird looking computer with non-x86 chips and a half-finished, Frankenstein OS. So as well as the standard not wanting to change and cost reasons there were plenty of perfectly sensible reasons to not switch to a Mac. Indeed if anything, that was clearly stupid. But I did it anyway.

dextorious 15y ago
Actually it was so "stupid" (sic) that even though it was initially aimed at Apple's own demographic, there was demand enough for it on the Windows side for dozens of third-party integration solutions to be created...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

philwelch 15y ago

If you had a Mac--which was the original requirement--it was far from stupid. As a penniless high school student I didn't have one, but I wanted one and it was, basically, what the iPod was always meant to be: a way to carry around your entire music collection without a huge binder of CD's.

js2 15y ago

Yes, well this is how Apple does things, constant iteration - http://www.macworld.com/article/151235/2010/05/apple_rolls.html http://www.macworld.com/article/151235/2010/05/apple_rolls.h...

notatoad 15y ago
maybe it used to be how apple did things, but it is most certainly not how apple does things now. look at their most recent new product line - the iPad. it was not a device that needed iterating on, as evidenced by the iPad2 being virtually the same thing.
- jfoutz 15y ago
  as an iPad owner, and friend of an iPad 2 owner, i have to say, the iPad 2 is clearly better in a handful of ways. the differences are small, but over a few generations they add up to huge differences. (well, they did in other product lines anyway( That said, the original iPad was a far sharper vision than the original iPod. it's slowly becoming a dynabook, i think.
- elithrar 15y ago
  > maybe it used to be how apple did things, but it is most certainly not how apple does things now. look at their most recent new product line - the iPad. it was not a device that needed iterating on, as evidenced by the iPad2 being virtually the same thing. What about the iPhone? Launched as a 2G/2.5G (EDGE) only device, no copy & paste in the OS, no native third party applications, etc. Every iteration since then has added 'core' features that would be hard to live without now that we are used to them.