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iPod Turns 18: Here's What People Thought in 2001
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Funny as Sony celebrates the 40TH Anniversary of Walkman ... BOTH the iPad and Walkman of lingered to levels shameful of their former glory yet BOTH in their respect companies' home countries STILL rock: Apple in USA, Sony in Japan. And yes many of the haters/nay-sayers where HUGE Sony Walkman fans of old.
Now ... in terms of audio quality Sony STILL kills with their modern internal digital storage/MicroSD expansion line of digital audio devices, however we all know Apple almost fully killed the Walkman brand singlehandedly if not only dethroned it.
now ... was it mr Brundle-fly who had the first Apple iPod commercial or some random fool dancing away? lol.
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sorry iPod was successful to Mac Users only - recall FireWire400 connection was Mac ONLY the first year & half; unless you had a Sony Vaio laptop/desktop. Even in beginning of 2ND year with the release of a USB iPod .... it wasn't until half-way when a third party software company made a sync software for Windows did Apple quickly embargo it, purchase it and integrated it into iTunes did MASS SALES aplomb the earth. how does everyone forget this?!
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Apple was loosing music sales, and after purchasing Beats Inc that gave them Apple Music for streaming. Music Sound quality .... yeah you Gotta look to Sony for digital portable music players.
Meh ... iPhone, HomePod (rebirth of the Apple Speaker or whatever it was called), the last decade of iMac was the Apple Twentieth Anniversary in evolution ... iPad & Siri ... yeah that's the Apple Navigator. Say what you said again looking at my rebuttal and try to refute that honestly ?
gotch'ya lol. but ...
Sony has really REALLY evolved their Walkman lineup due to being kicked in the arse, out the thrown house, etc by Apple .... and ...
(watch the video) ..
3hz-100Khz ... 3hz!!!! Jesus!!
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I remember thinking at the time that what it needed was a way to upload and store digital images from my newly bought digital SLR.
It was way beyond anything I could have imagined at the time that they would launch a phone where digital photography would become so important.
It started a pattern that I've seen repeated over and over since:
Apple launch something and you go 'Huh?' what did they do that for? I don't get that at all.
Then you think, 'I really don't need that'. 'I'm not going to buy it until it's cheaper/can do XXX anyway'.
Then you give it a try or maybe someone buys you one.
Six weeks later you can't live without it.
They not only anticipate need but they create desire and they are way better at seeing where we are going than we are.
The more you use their products the more you find uses for them you didn't think you needed.
Who buys an alarm clock, compass or egg timer any more? When was the last time you bought a map in a service station?
It was way beyond anything I could have imagined at the time that they would launch a phone where digital photography would become so important.
It started a pattern that I've seen repeated over and over since:
Apple launch something and you go 'Huh?' what did they do that for? I don't get that at all.
Then you think, 'I really don't need that'. 'I'm not going to buy it until it's cheaper/can do XXX anyway'.
Then you give it a try or maybe someone buys you one.
Six weeks later you can't live without it.
They not only anticipate need but they create desire and they are way better at seeing where we are going than we are.
The more you use their products the more you find uses for them you didn't think you needed.
Who buys an alarm clock, compass or egg timer any more? When was the last time you bought a map in a service station?
If only the MR commentariat had the slightest introspection today. This is pretty much any thread here still. Just replace iPod with emojis or whatever.
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Ironically I just bought that album on vinyl.
I still have my original iPod but my favourite iPod was the Nano. It was perfect for all uses and in my opinion was a flawless product.
Obviously the iPod is now rendered completely obsolete by smartphones but they were a great product in their day.
Obviously the iPod is now rendered completely obsolete by smartphones but they were a great product in their day.
I still have my launch iPod. The Battery still holds a charge as well. It will let me charge it all the way. Someone once offered me 1500 for it and no matter what..I’ll always say no. Just like my MJ rookie card. Nope can’t have them.
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People will mock the nay sayers...
but please... when everyone wanted Apple to compete against Microsoft and its mega Office suite and their dominant Explorer browser and get bigger market share of the computer business...
Steve Jobs pops up with a digital walkman. Apple hardly made consumer electronics back then, even worse digital players were already on the market and they were not anything amazing.
No one could have seen how successful the iPod was going to be, especially at that price. Remember there was no onilne music store back then. Not even Jobs expected it to be so successful... and competition less!!
but please... when everyone wanted Apple to compete against Microsoft and its mega Office suite and their dominant Explorer browser and get bigger market share of the computer business...
Steve Jobs pops up with a digital walkman. Apple hardly made consumer electronics back then, even worse digital players were already on the market and they were not anything amazing.
No one could have seen how successful the iPod was going to be, especially at that price. Remember there was no onilne music store back then. Not even Jobs expected it to be so successful... and competition less!!
Apple knew what they were doing. Music piracy was rife and iTunes that allowed you to buy music legally didn't launch until a year or two after the original iPod. The iPod was a very well designed product & the signature white earphones made it stand out. I think Apple were one of the first to put a hard drive into a music player (5GB, 10GB), whereas the rest of the market were using slow USB based storage with capacities of around 32MB to 128MB common.
I remember the original software to load music onto my iPod was an infuriating pile of crap though. iTunes was not much better.
Music still sounds amazing through it. I hacked mine in 2003 to play back lossless. Anyways don’t give me this whole death of HiFi crap. HiFi is still alive and well. You really should go down a wormhole today and figure out how to get your hands on actual masters like us HiFi heads do.
Link to the original thread is in the first post. Funniest post is by a user who is no longer on MR.
Here it is:
hahahahahahaha
Well, I really hate Windows (used it for 20 years because of no other choices, now I’m really glad I don’t have to use it anymore).
I got my first iPod around 2004 or so, a 30GB iPod Photo. I still have it and it still works and lasts several days on it's original battery.
I also still have my 160GB Classic, it too still works and lasts forever on it's original battery.
I never use them anymore though, I started using my XS Max in my car for music last year so the classic went into a drawer.
I also still have my 160GB Classic, it too still works and lasts forever on it's original battery.
I never use them anymore though, I started using my XS Max in my car for music last year so the classic went into a drawer.
Actually, Apple’s original goal was to sell 200,000 iPods a year. They basically hoped to sell them to about a fourth of new Mac buyers. They were definitely successful before Windows iPods were released.
On the other hand, though Steve was initially resistant to opening up to Windows, there is no question that iPod took off in a way no one could have ever expected. But, their strategy still was to use iPod as a way to lure people to Mac, which Steve always considered the real reason for making iPods.
i was living in literally the middle of nowhere on an island in the North Pacific Ocean when I got the news of the iPod. I literally was immediately working out a way to obtain one as soon as I could.
The thing is, it's basically the same type of comments people make now, Apple doesn't innovate, they have no ideas, blah blah blah. I mean, it's funny seeing that people were saying that way back then so I don't give it much notice when people still keep saying that now.
Guess most don't remember what we had before this, what we had was abysmal, and weak. Before iTunes was Cassedy & Greene's SoundJam MP, since Macs had no MP3 player software at that point. If you wanted to play digitized music there were hacks, and some lackluster products such as the Rio series of products. I had just gotten a new Mac deal where you got a Rio player with 64MB of memory, which could hold 8 songs. Let me tell you, you got very tired of those 8 songs.
There wasn't much choice for people at that time for all the Rio players were crap, with crappy software, with crappy interfaces similar to the crap we had to suffer through with those PDA's by companies like Palm. The interface hacks to get the software to talk to your Mac, and each other was horrendous. When Palm came out with a phone with a Palm PDA in it that I say it gave rise to the iPhone.
The iPod was a game changer, and took everyone a long time to compete to the level we are now, the Newton while beloved just wasn't mature enough to be usable. Yes I had a modem for the Newton, and one for the Palm Pilot, but before there was highspeed internet everything was like a junior high science experiment. Just how many of you can remember when Windows 3.0 came out, before there were things called browsers, and one needed to direct dial phone numbers to online bulletin boards to access anything online. There was no "WWW", and your puny 1600K modem was all you had to access other systems?
Be glad you haven't, it was frustrating, and complicated times where you spun your wheels for hours updating the latest Photoshop updates.
There wasn't much choice for people at that time for all the Rio players were crap, with crappy software, with crappy interfaces similar to the crap we had to suffer through with those PDA's by companies like Palm. The interface hacks to get the software to talk to your Mac, and each other was horrendous. When Palm came out with a phone with a Palm PDA in it that I say it gave rise to the iPhone.
The iPod was a game changer, and took everyone a long time to compete to the level we are now, the Newton while beloved just wasn't mature enough to be usable. Yes I had a modem for the Newton, and one for the Palm Pilot, but before there was highspeed internet everything was like a junior high science experiment. Just how many of you can remember when Windows 3.0 came out, before there were things called browsers, and one needed to direct dial phone numbers to online bulletin boards to access anything online. There was no "WWW", and your puny 1600K modem was all you had to access other systems?
Be glad you haven't, it was frustrating, and complicated times where you spun your wheels for hours updating the latest Photoshop updates.
I've never not hated iTunes lol. I've always been a drag and drop guy. My first serious DAP (in 2005) was an iRiver iHP-120
(iPod clone)
Currently using a iBasso DX80.
I knew you could set up the iPod to be drag and drop but I always went the alternative route buying different DAPs. The UI and hardware was top notch on the iPods though. Anyone could pick one up and navigate with ease even if they never used one before.
(iPod clone)Currently using a iBasso DX80.
I knew you could set up the iPod to be drag and drop but I always went the alternative route buying different DAPs. The UI and hardware was top notch on the iPods though. Anyone could pick one up and navigate with ease even if they never used one before.
2001: Apple is dead with a laughable product called iPod
2019: Apple is dead without any revolutionary product like iPod
2019: Apple is dead without any revolutionary product like iPod