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Turns out people just wanted a more refined iPhone with 4G. Who would have thought? Seriously though, I remember naysayers about the iPod back when it was fir

Turns out people just wanted a more refined iPhone with 4G. Who would have thought? Seriously though, I remember naysayers about the iPod back when it was first released, bemoaning the interface, design, and pointing out dozens of other mp3 players with longer feature lists at better prices. Yet the iPod still won out because it offered a consistent and predictable user experience, from the purchase to the day-to-day use—looking at the quality of experience holistically and end-to-end, including fashion, features, and fun. You could pick up any iPod and know how to use it, and that trend continued throughout new releases and new iPods for years on end, with the only major interface change being the shift to touch, which was (arguably) even easier to use. The tech crowd tends to look at devices as bricks with feature lists attached to them, but consumers don't. And consumers are the ones who buy things and use them, not just us. The iPhone 5 is exactly what people want with just enough "new" to make them want it. It will be moderately successful for a refresh, and most importantly, people will continue to enjoy using their phones and will continue to want to upgrade in the future. Apple nailed it.

choko 14y ago
I think iTunes was probably the bigger motivator for customers purchasing iPods. Before iTunes, there weren't a lot of places to legally purchase digital music, and ripping CDs was kind of cumbersome.
- josephlord 14y ago
  I don't think you remember that time period very well. The iTunes store wasn't launched until over a year AFTER the iPod! The original iPod, chunky by today's standards was by far the smallest and easiest to use mp3 player that could carry more than a few hundred MB of data. At the time there wasn't any Windows support but I think 3rd party software became available if you had Firewire on your PC. From Wikipedia: iPod "The iPod line was announced by Apple on October 23, 2001, and released on November 10, 2001." From Wikipedia: iTunes Store "It opened on April 28, 2003, as the iTunes Music Store"
  - bornhuetter 14y ago
    They didn't sell many iPods before iTunes came out. I think it's true that what drove the large numbers of iPod sales was probably iTunes, and the ability to legally download mp3s. See iPod sales chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Ipod_sales_per_quarter.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Ipod_sale...
    - bryanlarsen 14y ago
      They also didn't sell many iPods before they added full support for Windows and for USB. I suspect that was a bigger driver of initial iPod sales than the iTunes music store. The iTunes Music Store was probably a big reason why people upgraded to new iPods, though.
    - josephlord 14y ago
      As someone else mentions Windows support was a big factor. Pricing also was an issue, they were very expensive. Another factor is that the market was smaller, Apple dominated the market very quickly (at least if you count the market as large capacity devices until they had the shuffle).
  - saurik 14y ago
    AFAICT, people weren't talking about the success of the iPod until 2004, and a bunch of people showing sales figures and historical analysis concur with that: the iPod was even described as "a flop" until the calendar year following the release of the iTunes Music Store. Of course, that also might not be causative: it was only in 2003 that they caved on supporting USB, and in 2004 they came out with the mini.
untog 14y ago
I agree that the criticism of the iPhone 5 was overblown, but I don't think these figures are a tremendous validation of the iPhone 5, either. The simple fact is that the vast majority of people are on two year cellphone plans, and it's been two years since the iPhone 4 came out. They took the upgrade in front of them. The iPhone 5 was good enough that people didn't want to switch to Android, but that isn't the strongest compliment out there. IMO, Apple is simply benefitting from no-one else doing anything very interesting. I'd like to think that the Windows Phone devices from Nokia and HTC will change that, but at this point it may be too late.
- seiji 14y ago
  If five million devices sold in three days isn't impressive, what kinds of numbers are you used to looking at? A calculated decision to "stay on iOS" or "switch to android" is about the 6219th most important thing in most people's lives.
  - untog 14y ago
    Another user posted an article[1] where an analyst suggested 10 million, with a "worst-case scenario" of 6 million. Obviously, no-one has any idea what Apple's target/expectations were. In any case, I didn't say that 5 million devices wasn't impressive. It is. But it isn't necessarily evidence that the iPhone 5 is earth-shatteringly great, it's just good enough for people to upgrade. [1] http://articles.cnn.com/2012-09-19/tech/tech_mobile_iphone-5-pre-orders_1_iphone-4s-release-apple-stores-16gb http://articles.cnn.com/2012-09-19/tech/tech_mobile_iphone-5...
  - medicine23 14y ago
    not exactly 3 days...the pre-orders were open for a longer duration
  - larsberg 14y ago
    > A calculated decision to "stay on iOS" or "switch to android" is about the 6219th most important thing in most people's lives So true. I'm a tech person, and even I get overwhelmed. I look to see what the "correct" new Android phone to get is, start looking at my daily-use apps to see if they're there and usually give up after a couple of hours of research. I'm sure one of these times it'll be there, but frankly it's easier just to support the retirement plans of all my friends and former coworkers now at Apple (so far as I can tell, none of my friends or former coworkers at Google directly make money if I buy an Android phone).
mike-cardwell 14y ago
They would have still sold millions if they'd just kept the exact same phone but put a number 5 on it.
- madoublet 14y ago
  For the most part, that is what they did.
  - ceejayoz 14y ago
    As someone who picked up a 5, bullshit. Mine's dramatically faster, LTE is remarkably speedier, and the extra real estate is a big deal in some apps (http://instagram.com/p/P7fGmzFalN/ http://instagram.com/p/P7fGmzFalN/).
    - madoublet 14y ago
      Sorry, I just don't see it. Lets call it what it is: a nice, incremental upgrade to catch the iPhone up (in term's of hardware).
vibrunazo 14y ago
> The tech crowd tends to look at devices as bricks with feature lists attached to them, but consumers don't. That's one unusual conclusion. One could argue that the main difference is that the tech crowd knows what they're buying better than average misinformed consumers. We have a saying where I live. Billions of flies eat shit every day, but that doesn't mean so should we. Apple certainly doesn't sell shit, their products are great for sure. But there are also a lot of valid criticism to be made. And breaking record sales doesn't mean, in any way, the criticism is any less valid. You're confusing two very different things. I understand here at HN people can get very personally offended if I even hint that Apple's sales success might not be exclusively a result of technical engineering or design innovation. But doing so would be unfair to Apple's sales and marketing team. Who are genius at what they do, and deserve a lot of recognition for their important role in driving sales.
- adestefan 14y ago
  > That's one unusual conclusion. One could argue that the main difference is that the tech crowd knows what they're buying better than average misinformed consumers. Or people just don't care about the "other stuff." Most people just want something that makes calls, sends text messages, surfs the web/facebook/twitter, and plays games. I see the latest Samsung commercial about the S3 and I really don't care that I can bump to share playlists (1. because I barely listen to music on my phone and 2. who actually makes playlists anymore?) or the list of 20 other features that I'll never use. I don't even care about 4G/LTS because 3G is fast enough and I'm not going to pay more for less data from the carriers.
- calinet6 14y ago
  I disagree that it's an unusual conclusion... it's been my general experience, which is why I brought it up. Tech-savvy people tend to undervalue user interface and holistic design quality and overvalue individual features and overall feature count, in particular features that they're specifically looking for often without fully realizing how that feature fits into the larger picture. In other words, nerds tend to have tunnel-vision. This isn't surprising, they're usually specialists. I'm just sayin, it doesn't lead to accurate predictions of the larger market. Furthermore, this fact is valuable in determining your own (perhaps nerdy, myopic, or short-sighted) biases in your own market or business strategy.
6ren 14y ago
Yep, people buy benefits, not features. But getting greater CPU power than, and equivalent GPU power to the iPad 3, into a tiny, smaller, lighter phone, is a pretty impressive feature. Because the CPU power isn't spread over 4 cores, it's easier to utilise than Tegra 3 phones. And... 2x in a year even beats Moore's Law.

choko 14y ago

I think iTunes was probably the bigger motivator for customers purchasing iPods. Before iTunes, there weren't a lot of places to legally purchase digital music, and ripping CDs was kind of cumbersome.

josephlord 14y ago
I don't think you remember that time period very well. The iTunes store wasn't launched until over a year AFTER the iPod! The original iPod, chunky by today's standards was by far the smallest and easiest to use mp3 player that could carry more than a few hundred MB of data. At the time there wasn't any Windows support but I think 3rd party software became available if you had Firewire on your PC. From Wikipedia: iPod "The iPod line was announced by Apple on October 23, 2001, and released on November 10, 2001." From Wikipedia: iTunes Store "It opened on April 28, 2003, as the iTunes Music Store"
- bornhuetter 14y ago
  They didn't sell many iPods before iTunes came out. I think it's true that what drove the large numbers of iPod sales was probably iTunes, and the ability to legally download mp3s. See iPod sales chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Ipod_sales_per_quarter.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Ipod_sale...
  - bryanlarsen 14y ago
    They also didn't sell many iPods before they added full support for Windows and for USB. I suspect that was a bigger driver of initial iPod sales than the iTunes music store. The iTunes Music Store was probably a big reason why people upgraded to new iPods, though.
  - josephlord 14y ago
    As someone else mentions Windows support was a big factor. Pricing also was an issue, they were very expensive. Another factor is that the market was smaller, Apple dominated the market very quickly (at least if you count the market as large capacity devices until they had the shuffle).
- saurik 14y ago
  AFAICT, people weren't talking about the success of the iPod until 2004, and a bunch of people showing sales figures and historical analysis concur with that: the iPod was even described as "a flop" until the calendar year following the release of the iTunes Music Store. Of course, that also might not be causative: it was only in 2003 that they caved on supporting USB, and in 2004 they came out with the mini.

untog 14y ago

I agree that the criticism of the iPhone 5 was overblown, but I don't think these figures are a tremendous validation of the iPhone 5, either. The simple fact is that the vast majority of people are on two year cellphone plans, and it's been two years since the iPhone 4 came out. They took the upgrade in front of them. The iPhone 5 was good enough that people didn't want to switch to Android, but that isn't the strongest compliment out there. IMO, Apple is simply benefitting from no-one else doing anything very interesting. I'd like to think that the Windows Phone devices from Nokia and HTC will change that, but at this point it may be too late.

seiji 14y ago
If five million devices sold in three days isn't impressive, what kinds of numbers are you used to looking at? A calculated decision to "stay on iOS" or "switch to android" is about the 6219th most important thing in most people's lives.
- untog 14y ago
  Another user posted an article[1] where an analyst suggested 10 million, with a "worst-case scenario" of 6 million. Obviously, no-one has any idea what Apple's target/expectations were. In any case, I didn't say that 5 million devices wasn't impressive. It is. But it isn't necessarily evidence that the iPhone 5 is earth-shatteringly great, it's just good enough for people to upgrade. [1] http://articles.cnn.com/2012-09-19/tech/tech_mobile_iphone-5-pre-orders_1_iphone-4s-release-apple-stores-16gb http://articles.cnn.com/2012-09-19/tech/tech_mobile_iphone-5...
- medicine23 14y ago
  not exactly 3 days...the pre-orders were open for a longer duration
- larsberg 14y ago
  > A calculated decision to "stay on iOS" or "switch to android" is about the 6219th most important thing in most people's lives So true. I'm a tech person, and even I get overwhelmed. I look to see what the "correct" new Android phone to get is, start looking at my daily-use apps to see if they're there and usually give up after a couple of hours of research. I'm sure one of these times it'll be there, but frankly it's easier just to support the retirement plans of all my friends and former coworkers now at Apple (so far as I can tell, none of my friends or former coworkers at Google directly make money if I buy an Android phone).

mike-cardwell 14y ago

They would have still sold millions if they'd just kept the exact same phone but put a number 5 on it.

madoublet 14y ago
For the most part, that is what they did.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  As someone who picked up a 5, bullshit. Mine's dramatically faster, LTE is remarkably speedier, and the extra real estate is a big deal in some apps (http://instagram.com/p/P7fGmzFalN/ http://instagram.com/p/P7fGmzFalN/).
  - madoublet 14y ago
    Sorry, I just don't see it. Lets call it what it is: a nice, incremental upgrade to catch the iPhone up (in term's of hardware).

vibrunazo 14y ago

> The tech crowd tends to look at devices as bricks with feature lists attached to them, but consumers don't. That's one unusual conclusion. One could argue that the main difference is that the tech crowd knows what they're buying better than average misinformed consumers. We have a saying where I live. Billions of flies eat shit every day, but that doesn't mean so should we. Apple certainly doesn't sell shit, their products are great for sure. But there are also a lot of valid criticism to be made. And breaking record sales doesn't mean, in any way, the criticism is any less valid. You're confusing two very different things. I understand here at HN people can get very personally offended if I even hint that Apple's sales success might not be exclusively a result of technical engineering or design innovation. But doing so would be unfair to Apple's sales and marketing team. Who are genius at what they do, and deserve a lot of recognition for their important role in driving sales.

adestefan 14y ago
> That's one unusual conclusion. One could argue that the main difference is that the tech crowd knows what they're buying better than average misinformed consumers. Or people just don't care about the "other stuff." Most people just want something that makes calls, sends text messages, surfs the web/facebook/twitter, and plays games. I see the latest Samsung commercial about the S3 and I really don't care that I can bump to share playlists (1. because I barely listen to music on my phone and 2. who actually makes playlists anymore?) or the list of 20 other features that I'll never use. I don't even care about 4G/LTS because 3G is fast enough and I'm not going to pay more for less data from the carriers.
calinet6 14y ago
I disagree that it's an unusual conclusion... it's been my general experience, which is why I brought it up. Tech-savvy people tend to undervalue user interface and holistic design quality and overvalue individual features and overall feature count, in particular features that they're specifically looking for often without fully realizing how that feature fits into the larger picture. In other words, nerds tend to have tunnel-vision. This isn't surprising, they're usually specialists. I'm just sayin, it doesn't lead to accurate predictions of the larger market. Furthermore, this fact is valuable in determining your own (perhaps nerdy, myopic, or short-sighted) biases in your own market or business strategy.

6ren 14y ago

Yep, people buy benefits, not features. But getting greater CPU power than, and equivalent GPU power to the iPad 3, into a tiny, smaller, lighter phone, is a pretty impressive feature. Because the CPU power isn't spread over 4 cores, it's easier to utilise than Tegra 3 phones. And... 2x in a year even beats Moore's Law.