10 September 2005
The reason why
The iPod will be one of those business school examples of what to do right for the forseeable future. It is successful for reasons that trancsend engineering, design and marketing. It's a well-made product that beat its competitors on basically every level except price.
Compared to what was out at the time:
- It was smaller than anything else on the market because Apple was the first company to take on using Toshiba's 1.8-inch hard drive. This made it more expensive but it's a tradeoff Apple correctly predicted people would be willing to pay the difference for [see also: iPod mini bing the best-selling model until last week].
- Apple spent extra money for quality control, packaging and materials in the manufacturing not just to make it look better but to make it feel better to use. Early MP3 players had flimsy buttons, flexing plastic, bad seams, high defect rates, cheap boxes and manuals, etc. People commented how solid and well-made it felt. Again, spending more money made people more willing to spend money.
- They gave it a good interface. The current one is much better than the original but even then it far outclassed anything else on the market. This was a result of a decision that seems to rile up the nerdiest of people the most, namely ignoring file name and directory structure and using a centralazed database of ID3 information. They also put a damn wheel on the thing [and patented it] which in my opinion is still one of their primary advantages.
- They gave it an entirely distinctive look. This is part of what created the 'mystique' about it and is something that an entirely engineering-oriented company would never do. And even since, no company is willing to "go all the way" on a look, always deciding to offer a range or mix an accent color with a neutral.
You have plenty of people who will always think "oh, it's just trendy" or "oh, it's the marketing". It never was and it never will be.
Compared to what was out at the time:
- It was smaller than anything else on the market because Apple was the first company to take on using Toshiba's 1.8-inch hard drive. This made it more expensive but it's a tradeoff Apple correctly predicted people would be willing to pay the difference for [see also: iPod mini bing the best-selling model until last week].
- Apple spent extra money for quality control, packaging and materials in the manufacturing not just to make it look better but to make it feel better to use. Early MP3 players had flimsy buttons, flexing plastic, bad seams, high defect rates, cheap boxes and manuals, etc. People commented how solid and well-made it felt. Again, spending more money made people more willing to spend money.
- They gave it a good interface. The current one is much better than the original but even then it far outclassed anything else on the market. This was a result of a decision that seems to rile up the nerdiest of people the most, namely ignoring file name and directory structure and using a centralazed database of ID3 information. They also put a damn wheel on the thing [and patented it] which in my opinion is still one of their primary advantages.
- They gave it an entirely distinctive look. This is part of what created the 'mystique' about it and is something that an entirely engineering-oriented company would never do. And even since, no company is willing to "go all the way" on a look, always deciding to offer a range or mix an accent color with a neutral.
You have plenty of people who will always think "oh, it's just trendy" or "oh, it's the marketing". It never was and it never will be.
