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Interesting article, thanks for that. One of my key takeaways is the iPod represented not one but multiple simultaneous tech revolutions. Consumer storage until

Interesting article, thanks for that. One of my key takeaways is the iPod represented not one but multiple simultaneous tech revolutions. Consumer storage until then unseen, paired with material and interface design that companies hadn't considered a priority.

hedora 4y ago
I wouldn’t read it that way. Jobs was good at noticing something would become possible 2-3 years before the rest of the industry. Flash-based players existed back then, and would have followed the trajectory the iPod jumped on a few years after it launched. The iPod interface was middling. (iTunes really, really sucked, but the device was nice) Enabling podcasts was a big deal though. I’ll give them that.
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  iTunes was amazing. It’s UI was so successful it guided most of the Mac’s for next decade: Coverflow and Spotlight are direct descendants. Every major OS has Spotlight-like UI these days. You can thank iTunes for the search-as-filter paradigm. It also did everything you’d need regarding MP3s. You could rip CDs, organize and burn them, have the lyrics and album artwork show neatly while displaying a cool set of animated waveforms… I miss it dearly. The fact that it became a behemoth and later Apple Music was a tragedy.
  - yborg 4y ago
    And it was originally a 3rd party product that Apple acquihired, Casady & Greene's SoundJam.
    - tambourine_man 4y ago
      But the UI was completely rewritten. No instant search, coverflow, etc
  - gjvc 4y ago
    "rip, mix, burn" was an excellent campaign.
  - imiric 4y ago
    > Every major OS has Spotlight-like UI these days. You can thank iTunes for the search-as-filter paradigm. I think your Apple bias is clouding your memory. Apple certainly didn't invent the Spotlight UI. Quicksilver did it before on OS X, and my memory is hazy, but it also might've been inspired by another app. iTunes also didn't invent the search-as-filter paradigm. I remember using something similar on foobar2000 in the early 2000s, and it might've been available even before in some Winamp plugins. Again, hazy memory, and it's difficult to track down these things now with any certainty. I'm not arguing against your love for iTunes, but I think you're overstating its influence on software design.
    - tambourine_man 4y ago
      Quicksilver was after iTunes. iTunes ran on classic Macs for many iterations. I’m not claiming iTunes invented it, but it was the most influential implementation.
    - leejoramo 4y ago
      > Quicksilver did it before on OS X And before Quicksilver there was LaunchBar, which pre-dates OS X having originally shipped for NeXT. I believe I starting using LaunchBar during the OS X public Beta, and I still use it. You can download all of the old version of LaunchBar including for NeXT: https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/download-legacy.html https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/download-legacy.html
    - shaunsingh0207 4y ago
      Apple didn't invent much. Quite a bit of their hardware design is inspired by dieter rams, a lot of their software is inspired by similar features from other operating systems. Most recently, the iOS widget system. What apple does is perfect that design. iTunes didn't invent search-as-filter or the general UI layout, but it certainly perfected it.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  In retrospect it sucked. But at the time, iPod + iTunes + Mac was a better combo than anything else available on the market.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Every public source tells the story that the iPod went from idea to introduction in 9 months. Jobs also never wanted iTunes on Windows. He was dragged kicking and screaming into doing it.
coder543 4y ago
> One of my key takeaways is the iPod represented not one but multiple simultaneous tech revolutions. Consumer storage until then unseen I disagree entirely, for reasons that should be obvious once we examine the actual state of the market at the time. Storage was not the thing that made iPod successful. The microdrive had existed for several years by then[0][1], developed originally for digital cameras. Like most storage technologies, it was growing in capacity as time went on. I don't think "technology gets marginally better with time" counts as a "tech revolution", nor do I think the microdrive counted as a consumer storage technology that was previously unseen by the time the iPod launched. A physically larger 1.8-inch microdrive (with consequently greater capacity) also does not count as a revolution... it's like making a bigger montor and being surprised that you have more screen real estate. I also find the anecdote you replied to confusing because surely Apple would have known what a microdrive was before this meeting. That part of the anecdote makes no sense. IBM had their own 1GB microdrive by June of 2000, so even if Apple had exclusive rights to Toshiba's larger 1.8-inch microdrives, that seems entirely irrelevant, contrary to the "key takeaway" that the anecdote posited. Maybe Apple would have slightly higher storage capacities, but... we're talking about a relatively marginal difference compared to the gulf in storage capacity between these microdrive MP3 players and the flash based MP3 players of the time. An advantage, but not a revolution. As it turns out, Apple didn't even have a storage capacity advantage[2], in direct contradiction to the anecdote posted upthread. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAsBiplfM9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAsBiplfM9A [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34897209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34897209
- tarsinge 4y ago
  I didn't know about the Microdrive but Wikipedia says model larger than 1GB up to 4GB were first available in 2004, nearly 3 years after the iPod. At that time for $499 it costed you could already get a 40GB iPod.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Yeah, apple surely could've negotiated price discounts and I'm not sure what the bill of materials cost of the Toshiba hard drives were, but the larger IBM Microdrives were released in late 2000 and were $499 for the 1GB version (https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-1-gb-microdrive/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-1-gb-microdrive/). Even if that's a 100% markup, you're talking about $250 for 1GB. Hard to build a consumer device with a MSRP of $399 if one of the components is over 60% of that cost. Competing firms estimated the total BOM for the original iPod at more like $200. They were also surely looking at the potential trajectory of storage improvements too -- by the time the 4gb microdrives had been released in 2004, Apple was already shipping 40gb iPods and selling them for $499.
zitterbewegung 4y ago
Yea another example is the NVIDIA Tegra. NVIDIA tried to use it to make their own portable gaming device but then Nintendo figured out how to use it to make the switch.
- minxomat 4y ago
  Not to forget the Toshiba AC100 with the original Tegra, which was one of the first usable ARM laptops (netbooks?) and helped much of Linux desktop support development for ARM in the early days.
HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago
I forget the exact timeline, but I think part of it too was music pricing. Physical media (tapes, records) had gotten very expensive, and almost everyone was pirating MP3s from Napster etc. Apple's iTunes prices were low enough that it became simpler just to buy stuff legally than pirate it. I can't recall if iTunes was introduced at exact same time as iPod not not. Google search suggests it may have been 1 or 2 years later, but if so then where were people originally getting music to put on iPods ?
- anthomtb 4y ago
  >music pricing. For sure. My memory of those days is getting hazy, but IIRC CD's from top artists were going for $15-$16 in the late 90's. Maybe $12 if you were lucky. Considering inflation and that you might only want two of the twelve songs on the disk, you could easily be paying $10/song (in 2023 dollars). Big chunk of change especially for a pre-teen or teenager.
  - rconti 4y ago
    I seem to recall typically being able to buy major CDs in the $14 range in ~1995, but the expensive stores (Tower Records) charged $18.99 and up which is very clear in my mind. That's more than $37 in today's money.
  - damascus 4y ago
    I miss what.cd. It was such a great way of discovering new music back before there were algos recommending stuff to you 24/7.
    - dban 4y ago
      I also miss what so much
    - rOOb85 4y ago
      Like always, communities reform. There’s a Swiss site now that I’ll have to leaved “REDacted” that is just as good if not better than what.cd
antipaul 4y ago
Exactly, that’s why the Apple Newton didn’t work out - wrong timing.
layer8 4y ago
I bought an Archos Jukebox portable MP3 player refurbished with a 20 GB HDD (2.5") in June 2001 (original 6 GB release was December 2000). While not as pocketable and sleek as the iPod, when the iPod came out it was too little (storage, interoperability) too late for me.

hedora 4y ago

I wouldn’t read it that way. Jobs was good at noticing something would become possible 2-3 years before the rest of the industry. Flash-based players existed back then, and would have followed the trajectory the iPod jumped on a few years after it launched. The iPod interface was middling. (iTunes really, really sucked, but the device was nice) Enabling podcasts was a big deal though. I’ll give them that.

tambourine_man 4y ago
iTunes was amazing. It’s UI was so successful it guided most of the Mac’s for next decade: Coverflow and Spotlight are direct descendants. Every major OS has Spotlight-like UI these days. You can thank iTunes for the search-as-filter paradigm. It also did everything you’d need regarding MP3s. You could rip CDs, organize and burn them, have the lyrics and album artwork show neatly while displaying a cool set of animated waveforms… I miss it dearly. The fact that it became a behemoth and later Apple Music was a tragedy.
- yborg 4y ago
  And it was originally a 3rd party product that Apple acquihired, Casady & Greene's SoundJam.
  - tambourine_man 4y ago
    But the UI was completely rewritten. No instant search, coverflow, etc
- gjvc 4y ago
  "rip, mix, burn" was an excellent campaign.
- imiric 4y ago
  > Every major OS has Spotlight-like UI these days. You can thank iTunes for the search-as-filter paradigm. I think your Apple bias is clouding your memory. Apple certainly didn't invent the Spotlight UI. Quicksilver did it before on OS X, and my memory is hazy, but it also might've been inspired by another app. iTunes also didn't invent the search-as-filter paradigm. I remember using something similar on foobar2000 in the early 2000s, and it might've been available even before in some Winamp plugins. Again, hazy memory, and it's difficult to track down these things now with any certainty. I'm not arguing against your love for iTunes, but I think you're overstating its influence on software design.
  - tambourine_man 4y ago
    Quicksilver was after iTunes. iTunes ran on classic Macs for many iterations. I’m not claiming iTunes invented it, but it was the most influential implementation.
  - leejoramo 4y ago
    > Quicksilver did it before on OS X And before Quicksilver there was LaunchBar, which pre-dates OS X having originally shipped for NeXT. I believe I starting using LaunchBar during the OS X public Beta, and I still use it. You can download all of the old version of LaunchBar including for NeXT: https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/download-legacy.html https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/download-legacy.html
  - shaunsingh0207 4y ago
    Apple didn't invent much. Quite a bit of their hardware design is inspired by dieter rams, a lot of their software is inspired by similar features from other operating systems. Most recently, the iOS widget system. What apple does is perfect that design. iTunes didn't invent search-as-filter or the general UI layout, but it certainly perfected it.
908B64B197 4y ago
In retrospect it sucked. But at the time, iPod + iTunes + Mac was a better combo than anything else available on the market.
scarface74 4y ago
Every public source tells the story that the iPod went from idea to introduction in 9 months. Jobs also never wanted iTunes on Windows. He was dragged kicking and screaming into doing it.

coder543 4y ago

> One of my key takeaways is the iPod represented not one but multiple simultaneous tech revolutions. Consumer storage until then unseen I disagree entirely, for reasons that should be obvious once we examine the actual state of the market at the time. Storage was not the thing that made iPod successful. The microdrive had existed for several years by then[0][1], developed originally for digital cameras. Like most storage technologies, it was growing in capacity as time went on. I don't think "technology gets marginally better with time" counts as a "tech revolution", nor do I think the microdrive counted as a consumer storage technology that was previously unseen by the time the iPod launched. A physically larger 1.8-inch microdrive (with consequently greater capacity) also does not count as a revolution... it's like making a bigger montor and being surprised that you have more screen real estate. I also find the anecdote you replied to confusing because surely Apple would have known what a microdrive was before this meeting. That part of the anecdote makes no sense. IBM had their own 1GB microdrive by June of 2000, so even if Apple had exclusive rights to Toshiba's larger 1.8-inch microdrives, that seems entirely irrelevant, contrary to the "key takeaway" that the anecdote posited. Maybe Apple would have slightly higher storage capacities, but... we're talking about a relatively marginal difference compared to the gulf in storage capacity between these microdrive MP3 players and the flash based MP3 players of the time. An advantage, but not a revolution. As it turns out, Apple didn't even have a storage capacity advantage[2], in direct contradiction to the anecdote posted upthread. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAsBiplfM9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAsBiplfM9A [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34897209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34897209

tarsinge 4y ago
I didn't know about the Microdrive but Wikipedia says model larger than 1GB up to 4GB were first available in 2004, nearly 3 years after the iPod. At that time for $499 it costed you could already get a 40GB iPod.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Yeah, apple surely could've negotiated price discounts and I'm not sure what the bill of materials cost of the Toshiba hard drives were, but the larger IBM Microdrives were released in late 2000 and were $499 for the 1GB version (https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-1-gb-microdrive/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-1-gb-microdrive/). Even if that's a 100% markup, you're talking about $250 for 1GB. Hard to build a consumer device with a MSRP of $399 if one of the components is over 60% of that cost. Competing firms estimated the total BOM for the original iPod at more like $200. They were also surely looking at the potential trajectory of storage improvements too -- by the time the 4gb microdrives had been released in 2004, Apple was already shipping 40gb iPods and selling them for $499.

zitterbewegung 4y ago

Yea another example is the NVIDIA Tegra. NVIDIA tried to use it to make their own portable gaming device but then Nintendo figured out how to use it to make the switch.

minxomat 4y ago
Not to forget the Toshiba AC100 with the original Tegra, which was one of the first usable ARM laptops (netbooks?) and helped much of Linux desktop support development for ARM in the early days.

HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago

I forget the exact timeline, but I think part of it too was music pricing. Physical media (tapes, records) had gotten very expensive, and almost everyone was pirating MP3s from Napster etc. Apple's iTunes prices were low enough that it became simpler just to buy stuff legally than pirate it. I can't recall if iTunes was introduced at exact same time as iPod not not. Google search suggests it may have been 1 or 2 years later, but if so then where were people originally getting music to put on iPods ?

anthomtb 4y ago
>music pricing. For sure. My memory of those days is getting hazy, but IIRC CD's from top artists were going for $15-$16 in the late 90's. Maybe $12 if you were lucky. Considering inflation and that you might only want two of the twelve songs on the disk, you could easily be paying $10/song (in 2023 dollars). Big chunk of change especially for a pre-teen or teenager.
- rconti 4y ago
  I seem to recall typically being able to buy major CDs in the $14 range in ~1995, but the expensive stores (Tower Records) charged $18.99 and up which is very clear in my mind. That's more than $37 in today's money.
- damascus 4y ago
  I miss what.cd. It was such a great way of discovering new music back before there were algos recommending stuff to you 24/7.
  - dban 4y ago
    I also miss what so much
  - rOOb85 4y ago
    Like always, communities reform. There’s a Swiss site now that I’ll have to leaved “REDacted” that is just as good if not better than what.cd

antipaul 4y ago

Exactly, that’s why the Apple Newton didn’t work out - wrong timing.

layer8 4y ago

I bought an Archos Jukebox portable MP3 player refurbished with a 20 GB HDD (2.5") in June 2001 (original 6 GB release was December 2000). While not as pocketable and sleek as the iPod, when the iPod came out it was too little (storage, interoperability) too late for me.