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Pretty amazing how this little conference changed so much. Jared and I have talked at length about how there were other mp3 players on the market before the iPod and this little video proves there were but also gives the reasons why no one remembers them or why they didn’t work.

Comments to “Apple Music Event 2001-The First Ever iPod Introduction”

JaredB says:

June 24, 2006 at 1:16 pm

I can’t believe I just spent over nine minutes watching a sales presentation from Apple…

Anyway, this doesn’t actually “prove” anything - it’s a sales / announcement pitch, in Apple’s own words, presenting their side of the story.

It certainly acknowledges that there were other players out there that did the exact same thing, they were just saying theirs was better (which may have been true, I’m not arguing that). It’s just that they had a good (or maybe even the best at the time) implementation of an EXISTING design.

One thing he forgot to mention was that huge battery issue on those models though…
Anyway, this clip is an interesting bit of history, but I wouldn’t take it as any sort of objective comparison to other players in the market, because it’s coming from an obviously and understandably biased source.

It’s just like all those video ads that do the same thing, they’re not based on objective facts. I could just as easily write up something that talks about how lame Apple is because of their proprietary, closed source software models, and how and open system like Linux is the clear choice for people who value freedom, and talk about how Apple’s business model is pretty much exactly the same as Microsoft’s, they just haven’t been as successful with it. But all of that wouldn’t be a balanced review or comparison either.

JaredB says:

June 24, 2006 at 2:16 pm

I can’t believe I just spent over nine minutes watching a sales presentation from Apple…

Anyway, this doesn’t actually “prove” anything - it’s a sales / announcement pitch, in Apple’s own words, presenting their side of the story.

One thing he forgot to mention was that huge battery issue on those models though…

Anyway, this clip is an interesting bit of history, but I wouldn’t take it as any sort of objective comparison to other players in the market, because it’s coming from an obviously and understandably biased source.

Dan says:

June 24, 2006 at 6:16 pm

I think the battery issues happened after the presentation so he couldn’t really say much about that. And I think the battery issue was on the 2nd gen., I could be wrong though because that’s when I got mine and started following them.

I just like the part about firewire and usb because it’s true. I remember transferring music over usb back then and it was so damn slow; I would even attribute firewire as one of the huge reasons for it’s success.

The others were the portability compared to the others and of course the UI. You would probably say the marketing but I really don’t remember any commercials back then about Apple other then the iMac and the cube (because they were a joke) and I only heard about the iPod through word of mouth.

Another thing I liked about the presentation, even if Steve was selling the iPod and it was a pitch, was that he really was behind it and almost knew that it would take off as big as it has. Some would say that he is a visionary, I really can’t because he’s done the same to other products but to put something out there like Apple did with other products out there and do something way better is pretty fantastic.

PS I’m over the Apple vs. M$ comparisons because Apple should more be compared to Dell. Like you said they’re manufacturers and the software is there butter.

Dan says:

June 24, 2006 at 7:16 pm

PS I’m over the Apple vs. M$ comparisons because Apple should more be compared to Dell. Like you said they’re manufacturers and the software is there butter.

JaredB says:

June 24, 2006 at 11:59 pm

Yeah, I was joking about that battery thing.

I agree about the firewire thing being good, although I don’t know about how much that played into the mass market appeal, since the average user did not (and probably still doesn’t) know what firewire is.

I’m not sure if it had any significant portability advantages over the other hard drive players out at the time. If so, this presentation didn’t show that. The UI is probably the best of your reasons, although even that I don’t think gave them that huge of an edge for the average user.

If anything, I’d attribute their success with the iPod primarily to two things: (1) their name recognition (both brand name: “Apple” and recognizable product name “iPod”) combined with (2) the perfect timing of the popular mainstream acceptance of P2P music sharing. There was a sudden huge increase in demand for MP3 players, and they were there at the right time to fill it.

JaredB says:

June 25, 2006 at 12:59 am

Yeah, I was joking about that battery thing.

Dan says:

June 25, 2006 at 8:31 am

You know at first the iPod didn’t work with Windows. So firewire was known to all mac users at that point it was a big selling point. More importantly the iPod didn’t work with Windows until gen two when they added usb2 support so it didn’t matter if the majority didn’t know about firewire, mac users did and it
sold giving it a name within the Apple community before it was released to the other 95% of the world.

P2P was a huge factor as well and he did push the size factor a lot he didn’t compare it to anything but the pictures of other players brought the memory back of the mp3 player the size of a portabe cd player (bottom right I think).

Dan says:

June 25, 2006 at 9:31 am

JaredB says:

June 25, 2006 at 3:26 pm

Oh yeah, that’s another factor that I forgot to mention that really played into iPods gaining serious popularity: Windows support. Like it or not, it never would have taken off as much as it has without that, because not very many people own Macs.

Re: the size factor - I actually specifically noticed that he didn’t compare it to any of the other similar devices (HD based) out there. He did flash up images of them briefly and included things like the portable CD players, but that was more of a sales setup to talk about the fact that the iPod was “small”. Of course it was small in relation to anything you can put a CD in, but I don’t know whether it was compared to products that were actually comparable.

Speaking of P2P, though, I wonder (given Apple’s strong pro-DRM stance) if Steve would acknowledge how huge of a role P2P music “sharing” (or stealing, as Apple would call it) contributed to the success of the iPod.

JaredB says:

June 25, 2006 at 4:26 pm

Dave Z says:

June 30, 2006 at 12:21 pm

France just passed a law not favorable to ipod’s current marketing in France.

Dave Z says:

June 30, 2006 at 1:21 pm

France just passed a law not favorable to ipod’s current marketing in France.

nstryker says:

June 30, 2006 at 2:38 pm

thanks for the details and link, dave. very informative.

nstryker says:

June 30, 2006 at 3:38 pm

thanks for the details and link, dave. very informative.

Dan says:

June 30, 2006 at 5:21 pm

you forgot to mention this post being old and the “news” is even older.

Dan says:

June 30, 2006 at 6:21 pm

you forgot to mention this post being old and the “news” is even older.

Dave Z says:

June 30, 2006 at 6:25 pm

ha ha ns, dan

from yesterday’s news - that isn’t old, or you know about it already,or can’t believe you guys didn’t see it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060622/ap_on_hi_te/france_itunes_law

Dan says:

June 30, 2006 at 7:07 pm

Here is a direct quote from that article.

The National Assembly, France’s lower house, voted in March to force companies like Apple and Sony to abandon their closed approaches and hand over exclusive copy-protection technologies to any rival that wants to offer compatible music players and online stores.

And if you read the headline the new law softens the one in March so not only do you have old news but your describing it wrong.

Dave Z says:

June 30, 2006 at 7:25 pm

ha ha ns, dan

from yesterday’s news - that isn’t old, or you know about it already,or can’t believe you guys didn’t see it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060622/ap_on_hi_te...

Dan says:

June 30, 2006 at 8:07 pm

Here is a direct quote from that article.

The National Assembly, France’s lower house, voted in March to force companies like Apple and Sony to abandon their closed approaches and hand over exclusive copy-protection technologies to any rival that wants to offer compatible music players and online stores.

And if you read the headline the new law softens the one in March so not only do you have old news but your describing it wrong.

JaredB says:

July 1, 2006 at 9:04 am

Yeah, this one has been around for a while, but there are some new developments in the article.

I think we shouldn’t miss the main point, though, about how sucky Apple is.

The lock-in business model may be legal, and I don’t necessarily think that France should be able to force them to break it, but the fact (or opinion, I guess) remains that it’s a pretty slimy way to do business.

If you have a whole bunch of songs purchased through the Apple music store, and next year a new media player comes out that surpasses the iPod in every way, many people would not buy it because Apple does everything in their power to make it impossible (or very difficult, and legally against the DMCA) to move those songs onto your new player. [I know you can always burn and re-rip them, but that is a long process for a large library, and still violates your purchase agreement under the DMCA].

This is one of the reasons why it’s hilarious to me that people criticize MS for their shady bundling deals with PC manufacturers, but Apple employs practices like this that are just as “evil”, and the same crowd will criticize one while idolizing the other.

The lock-in model at Dan Cameron 2.0 says:

July 1, 2006 at 9:45 am

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JaredB says:

July 1, 2006 at 10:04 am

Yeah, this one has been around for a while, but there are some new developments in the article.

I think we shouldn’t miss the main point, though, about how sucky Apple is.

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