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You picked a bad example. The iPod was very innovative (first time you could have all your music with you on the go – instead of having to decide on a tiny sele

by fainpul 10mo ago

You picked a bad example. The iPod was very innovative (first time you could have all your music with you on the go – instead of having to decide on a tiny selection before you leave home and slowly upload it to your player). But yeah, that was decades ago. And with Jobs, innovation has left.

hagbard_c 10mo ago
The first iPod had 5 GB of storage, less than e.g. the Creative Nomad Jukebox which had 6 GB. If you were around at the time you may remember the (in)famous verdict of CmdrTaco [1]: . No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. So no, the fruit factory did not produce the first device which could haul your entire music collection. What they did is what has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread: they took an existing product - digital high-storage portable music player - and put it in a sleek package with an equally sleek user interface - click wheel etc. Then they marketed the hell out of it to their loyal followers, portraying it as the thing to be used by all the right people. They also locked the thing tight into their own 'ecosystem' so that you could not just hook it up to any old computer and dump music on it like you could do with most other devices in this category except for Sony's - which is not that strange given that the fruit factory seems to have taken quite a few clues from Sony elsewhere. Your statement is in itself a testament to their success in marketing and something which can be seen in many places: someone develops a product, the product gets some traction on the market, people seem to like the concept. Other companies also start making similar products which also gain some traction but it remains just that, a new product in a sea of many such. Then along comes the fruit factory which takes the product, wraps it in its trademark Dieter Rams-inspired shape, puts a large fruit stamp on it and markets it to the bone to their loyal audience. Pretty soon that audience will claim that the product was 'invented' by the fruit factory, that it is 'insanely great', that nobody has done something like this before and if they did they copied it from the fruit factory, etc. [1] https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
- fainpul 10mo ago
  Fair points about intense marketing and less successful products being forgotten in history. However, I wasn't able to find anything about the first (6 GB) Nomad Jukebox on Wikipedia. The iPod was released in October 2001, I only see mentions of the Jukebox later than that. What does the "no wireless" complaint refer to? I don't see any mention of wireless connections for any of the Nomad Jukeboxes either. Besides the point: I personally find the Nomad Jukebox and other MP3 players from the era extremely ugly, while the iPod looks beautiful and has become an icon (yes, Rams-inspired, but that's not a bad thing). I say this as a decidedly non-Apple-fanboy, but as an industrial designer.
  - sehansen 10mo ago
    "The Nomad Jukebox shipped in the U.S. in September 2000." [0] It had 6 GB of storage [1] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Nomad#Nomad_Jukebox_Zen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Nomad#Nomad_Jukebox_Z... - second to last paragraph 1: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/576463/Creative-Nomad-Jukebox.html?page=9#manual https://www.manualslib.com/manual/576463/Creative-Nomad-Juke...
  - kalleboo 10mo ago
    > What does the "no wireless" complaint refer to? "Wireless" refers to radio (e.g. FM radio), it's a (quite outdated) Australianism
    - hagbard_c 10mo ago
      I suspect he was referring to 802.11b WiFi when he said the thing has no 'wireless' option, not the lack of a radio receiver. 802.11b (and 802.11a) were launched in 1999 and as such predate these high-capacity digital music players. 802.11b was not fast by modern standards (raw data rate up to 11 Mbit/s, practical throughput ~5.9Mbit/s for TCP, ~7.1 Mbit/s UDP) so it would have taken a while to dump a large collection to these devices.
  - aembleton 10mo ago
    I still think the Rio Karma looked good and it had a good interface: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Karma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Karma I've still got it somewhere but the HDD has died.

by fainpul 10mo ago

hagbard_c 10mo ago

The first iPod had 5 GB of storage, less than e.g. the Creative Nomad Jukebox which had 6 GB. If you were around at the time you may remember the (in)famous verdict of CmdrTaco [1]: . No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. So no, the fruit factory did not produce the first device which could haul your entire music collection. What they did is what has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread: they took an existing product - digital high-storage portable music player - and put it in a sleek package with an equally sleek user interface - click wheel etc. Then they marketed the hell out of it to their loyal followers, portraying it as the thing to be used by all the right people. They also locked the thing tight into their own 'ecosystem' so that you could not just hook it up to any old computer and dump music on it like you could do with most other devices in this category except for Sony's - which is not that strange given that the fruit factory seems to have taken quite a few clues from Sony elsewhere. Your statement is in itself a testament to their success in marketing and something which can be seen in many places: someone develops a product, the product gets some traction on the market, people seem to like the concept. Other companies also start making similar products which also gain some traction but it remains just that, a new product in a sea of many such. Then along comes the fruit factory which takes the product, wraps it in its trademark Dieter Rams-inspired shape, puts a large fruit stamp on it and markets it to the bone to their loyal audience. Pretty soon that audience will claim that the product was 'invented' by the fruit factory, that it is 'insanely great', that nobody has done something like this before and if they did they copied it from the fruit factory, etc. [1] https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

fainpul 10mo ago
Fair points about intense marketing and less successful products being forgotten in history. However, I wasn't able to find anything about the first (6 GB) Nomad Jukebox on Wikipedia. The iPod was released in October 2001, I only see mentions of the Jukebox later than that. What does the "no wireless" complaint refer to? I don't see any mention of wireless connections for any of the Nomad Jukeboxes either. Besides the point: I personally find the Nomad Jukebox and other MP3 players from the era extremely ugly, while the iPod looks beautiful and has become an icon (yes, Rams-inspired, but that's not a bad thing). I say this as a decidedly non-Apple-fanboy, but as an industrial designer.
- sehansen 10mo ago
  "The Nomad Jukebox shipped in the U.S. in September 2000." [0] It had 6 GB of storage [1] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Nomad#Nomad_Jukebox_Zen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Nomad#Nomad_Jukebox_Z... - second to last paragraph 1: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/576463/Creative-Nomad-Jukebox.html?page=9#manual https://www.manualslib.com/manual/576463/Creative-Nomad-Juke...
- kalleboo 10mo ago
  > What does the "no wireless" complaint refer to? "Wireless" refers to radio (e.g. FM radio), it's a (quite outdated) Australianism
  - hagbard_c 10mo ago
    I suspect he was referring to 802.11b WiFi when he said the thing has no 'wireless' option, not the lack of a radio receiver. 802.11b (and 802.11a) were launched in 1999 and as such predate these high-capacity digital music players. 802.11b was not fast by modern standards (raw data rate up to 11 Mbit/s, practical throughput ~5.9Mbit/s for TCP, ~7.1 Mbit/s UDP) so it would have taken a while to dump a large collection to these devices.
- aembleton 10mo ago
  I still think the Rio Karma looked good and it had a good interface: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Karma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Karma I've still got it somewhere but the HDD has died.