In a recentPlaylistarticle , my co-worker Rick LePage outlinedfive reasons the iPod succeeded . Namely :
It all start so innocuously : cases . Before the iPod , who in reality bought acasefor their portable musician ? Sure , people used trot belts and seat packs for holding their Walkmans or Discmans ( or generic variants ) during drill , but for everyday carrying - around ? It was almost unheard of .
But then Apple released a beautiful widget made of shiny chrome and aerodynamic acrylic paint , and masses felt forged about blemishing it — even though it worked just as well with scratches as it did without . ( Though shell out $ 400 made you a lot more disposed to take supernumerary measures to protect your new music player . ) So short there were wads — and , eventually , C — of cases made just for your unexampled toy .
As the iPod take on off , a raw grocery develop : way to listen to your iPod - stored medicine besides earphone . As I ’ve been known to point out when speaking about the iPod , Apple ’s player change our plan of attack to listening to medicine . With older technologies — LPs , 8 - raceway , cassettes , MiniDiscs — you carried around ( a few ) individual medicine - check culture medium , and once you got somewhere , you needed a player capable of playing back that special sensitive . The iPod enable you to carry yourentiremusic ingathering ( or at least a gravid chunk of it ) wherever you hold up , and , just as importantly , include the player . All you needed was a set of speakers . ( Sure , this was true for most MP3 players , but no other histrion had the iPod ’s market part , even early on . ) So you start to see better “ computer ” ( self - power ) talker systems , verbalizer systems made specifically for the iPod , and connection kit to hook your iPod up to live home and railroad car stereo system . You also examine chargers and other accessories designed to keep your iPod run in these situations .
Then came thedock connector , the grandness of which to the iPod accessory market can not be overstated . Although Apple receive a good amount of literary criticism for getting disembarrass of the iPod ’s received FireWire port in favor of a proprietary connection , it was a diagonal of mavin in retrospect . How so ? Consider :
In other Word , this connection was appealing to both accoutrement vendorsandconsumers , and made producing and buying accessories easier . But just as significant , when it comes to the iPod ’s tenacious - terminal figure success , was the lock - in force : Once you ’ve purchased a few dock - connexion accessories , the next prison term you ’re in the market for a novel player , you ’re more likely to grease one’s palms another iPod , since most of your accessories will work with it . ( Or , to look at it from the diametric perspective , your accessorieswon’twork with any other player . )
In fact , the sorrel connector has been such a success for Apple that Microsoft included a like port in the design of the approaching Zune ; it ’s also making a concert effort to convinceaccessory Divine to create iPod - corresponding Zune - wharfage - connector add-on .
in conclusion , as the iPod ’s gobbled up more and more market part , more and more accessories — dock - connector or not — became available . So many , in fact , that at some spot , accessories bug out toselliPods . The “ iPod ecosystem , ” as some like to call the marketplace for iPod accessories , became a significant factor to moot when buying a player . Walk into any major electronics fund — Best Buy , Circuit City , Frys , Radio Shack , even prey — and you ’re face with oodles of iPod - only accessories : speaker organisation , alarm clocks , chargers , FM transmitters , case , and more . Even traditional brick - and - mortar memory board such as Sears impart a serious natural selection . Contrast this with the stingy accessory offerings for instrumentalist from Creative , Rio , iRiver , and others — many of which are simply generic intersection that mould with any audio player ( include the iPod)—and the iPod looks even more likeable .
At some point all of these factors came together , leave the iPod in an enviable emplacement : iPod deal accoutrement , accessories selling iPods , and the curl - in effect snowballing both . give , it ’s insufferable to decide how many iPods have been sold due to the allure of its goodish accessory market , but you ca n’t ignore the persona of 3,000 - plus accessories in defecate the iPod the most popular product of its form .
