When the iPod was declare , few masses outside the walls of Apple saw a product that would dominate the the portable euphony participant market . Yet , rivals have come and proceed , and the one that stay appear content to fight over the small slice of the market Apple does n’t own .
There is one single , overarch reason that the iPod has enjoyed the succeeder that it has : Apple had a design , followed through on it , and did n’t diverge from it over time . It made a simple ware that to this Clarence Day performs the same task that it did on the day it was announced . It might do other things today , but those are secondary . The iPod was all about the music .
But dig a moment deep , here are five interlinked factors that helped create the iPod phenomenon , one for each class of the music participant ’s creation .
1. Total integration
Before Apple unleashed the iPod , no company really did a effective problem of desegregate the participant , the computer , and the software that connected the two . fellowship such as Rio and Creative would ship someone else ’s music software in the box with their player , or sometimes they would include their own nursing home - spring up software . Whatever you beat played music on your Mac or PC just all right — getting that music from the computing gadget to the audio player was no slam dunk .
Transferring music to a portable instrumentalist in those pre - iPod days was n’t ahorribleprocess . But it took the iPod ’s arriver to allow us lie with just how sorry things were . With the iPod , you could stick a certificate of deposit into your Mac , and , 10 minutes later , it ’d be on the machine in your pouch — that was integration on a whole novel point . And being able to automatically synchronise your music depository library by just hooking up the iPod ? That was radical .
That integration was dependent upon FireWire , the conduit that impress the medicine from your Mac to your iPod . Using FireWire was a no - brainer for Apple , since every Mac ship with one , but it still was a groundbreaking determination . In 2001 , nearly every music player on the market used USB 1.1 to transfer your Song from your computer to your player . babble out about frustration . Moving an record album , let alone four or five , was an exercise akin to watch glaciers move . You transferred medicine to your player before you go to bed at dark , so your euphony would be ready to go with you on the morning commute . The iPod ’s FireWire user interface made that process obsolete .
But Apple did n’t get all hung up on FireWire — something the company definitely would have done a decade sooner . When the legal age of ship Macs and PCs boast speedy USB 2.0 ports as received equipment , Apple brought the iPod right along with the trend . FireWire still had a office , but Apple smartly choose to practice the technology with a wider adoption .
My colleague Dan Frakes pronounce it best : “ No other role player made it so easy to get music ( via candle , online services , or , let ’s face it , filing cabinet sharing ) , and then get that medicine organize and onto your thespian . Even today , five years later , the iTunes - iPod integration remain the gold standard ; everything else is still a distant second . ”
2. The interface
Apple designed a product that was drop - dead simpleton to use , even if it sounds definitely lacking when you lay it out on paper . A click cycle , five clitoris , and a sparse hierarchical carte system to navigate your medicine program library ? Nonsense ! Where are the volume buttons ? What about the backlight ? How do I make presets ? And what about a power push button ? It ’s haywire — I need buttons !
And yet , at the announcement , my most vivid store is of that first minute with a fully load iPod . The elegance and simpleness of the twist was stunning . It was so well-to-do to get to a vocaliser , a song , an album , a playlist . The way that the intensity ascendency worked was splendid , as was the way you turn it on and off . Nothing acquire in the way of the music , because it was all about the music .
Apple think about the way that most of us listen to music and squeezed it down to its essence . The party also used admirable constraint to keep from loading up the iPod with features . I might wish that my iPod let me do more thing with my music — delete songs and playlist , reorder playlists , get to different menus quicker , and so forth . And , I really desire features like artificial satellite receiving set support so I can listen toBob Dylan ’s XM Radio show , but the iPod does the “ bet medicine ” thing so well that I still ca n’t opine using anything else .
3. Windows support
While it ’s prosperous for Mac users to push aside Windows , for the iPod to follow it was all-important that Apple make the gadget useable for PCs ( even if Steve Jobs was oh - so - coy about that possibility during the launching five years ago ) . Not only did it have to run on a personal computer , that iPod / iTunes combination had to be as soft to use as it was on the Mac . The fact that Apple did it so speedily — iPod for Windows arrived less than a year after the iPod ’s first appearance — showed that Apple was committed to the iPod as a platform . That ’s what really open up the iPod up beyond its initial market of Mac substance abuser . If you count at the curve of iPod sales , the first adult spike happened after Apple made the iPod Windows - compatible .
4. The iTunes Store
Making the iPod window - compatible set the stage for the affair that really complain the iPod into the stratosphere : the iTunes Music Store . And , like the integration of the iPod with the computing machine , the desegregation of that ecosystem with an easy position to fill the gaping maw of 30 GB of available storage was nothing short of genius . ( As the 14 pages of my Music Store purchase history tells me again and again . )
I was a euphony fiend in the ’ seventy and early ’ 80s . I had a short ton of book at one point , but after the diligence shift to candela , my purchasing habit changed . I did n’t spend as much on music for a number of reasons . But the cost of CDs was a big part of it , as was the reality that I would be replacing many of my old vinyl transcription with fancy ( but not always near ) digital sound .
Apple knew what many of us had been like : rummage through record BIN , looking for music that did n’t cost a lot and listening to the newfangled stuff and nonsense on the record memory board ’s lazy Susan . With the iTunes store , Apple bring that phonograph record store into my bread and butter way , and took my credit card with it . The capability to browse the memory board , bounce from Song dynasty to song , artist to artist , and being able to buy one birdcall or a whole record album , quick , well and cheaply , was an parallel to those one-time twenty-four hour period — if not a vast improvement over them .
5. FairPlay
Including Apple ’s Digital Rights Management technology as a reason for the iPod ’s success is sure to be a controversial factor , but it ca n’t be discounted . If Apple was conk out to sell euphony from the major phonograph record labels , the companyhadto provide a chemical mechanism to foreclose emptor from partake music purchase . There was no way a major label was going to let unprotected MP3 files out of its vault and onto the Internet without some sort of digital right management system . FairPlay was Apple ’s solution .
For DRM , FairPlay is somewhat unobjectionable , and it ’s generous as well , with its five - computer limit . And , if you ’re determined to be a music pirate , burn a CD and pass your music along . You ca n’t do that with any other system of rules without going through some major hoops . Do you remember Sony ’s fiddling rootkit exploit ? Tell me again that FairPlay is evil .
you could paint FairPlay out to be draconian , but the Store ’s sales do n’t consist — by and big , people are uncoerced to put up with it . Do I like it ? Not at all , but the protection really only offends my sensibilities when I run into the fact that I ca n’t play those infernal .m4p files on my SqueezeBox . And , if you want unprotected MP3s , there ’s alwayseMusic , to which my deferred payment scorecard can attest is a nice complement to the iTunes Store . And those filing cabinet work on the iPod . See ? In the end , it ’s still all about the music .
[ Rick LePage , formerly Chief Executive ofMacworldis now an editor in chief - at - bombastic , covering the originative professional beat . ]
