A Bunker Year for Apple - The Dawn of iPod
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Apple kept making “Cute” computers, slowing building market share, feeding its loyal base and attracting 15 year old girls in love with the idea of a pink or orange computer and various kitty cat lovers and the like.
And then, in 2001, Apple released its portable mp3 player, the iPod. It was a product long overdue.
Computer users had been ripping, downloading, and trading mp3’s for several years at that point, with no way to make that music portable other than burning it into a standard CD compatible with most home and car audio systems. This limited the number and size of the songs that could be made portable, severely limiting the users options.
Otherportable digital music players that had premiered prior to 2001 had been extremely limited, using flash memory drives that only could hold 20-30 songs.
The iPod was a revolution compared to other mp3 players of the time, with competitors only recently catching on. With its large LCD display and intuitive interface, a user could navigate through a 5 Gigabyte hard drive, large enough to hold approximately 1,000 songs.
That 5 GB limit has grown exponentially since 2001, all the way up to 60 GB iPods of today. Apple worked with a variety of companies to improve its connectivity, making the iPod “plug and play” compatible with may user electronics (Home Stereo Systems, Car Audio Systems, Etc…)
Apple left behind their cutsie designs and colors initially, favoring a sleek, industrial box. Still trendy looking in this regard, it eventually began adopting color cases and pointless U2 decals. Still, the iPod was built on simplicity.
More recent iPods have featured color screens, and the ability to store photographs. Capabilities of future iPods are a closely kept secret, but one persistent rumor has been the inclusion of AM / FM radio compatibility in future models, a feature which has already been present in iPod competitors for years. A recent industry report says that Apple is in talks to release a “Video” iPod by September, capable of playing back full motion video with sound. A user could theoretically download a music video as well as just its song from Apples iTunes service.
The only major complaint in regards to the iPod has been battery life. While some 1st generation iPods are still running on their original batteries, eventually they do die out. However, Apple does offer a “Mail-In” service for $99 dollars to replace an old battery. This of course is an alternative to doing it yourself, which requires a $29 battery, a flathead screwdriver, and apathy about voiding a manufacturer warantee.
There are competing mp3 players in the market. Rio, Creative, Dell, and Sony all make excellent mp3 players in their own right. But none offer the combination of a removable battery, intuitive control, capacity, and “cool” factor of the iPod.
In fact, you could really make the argument that the iPods success is mainly due to its “cool” marketing. It has been promoted on TV, in movies, magazines, and so on. More so than any mp3 player on the market. And if there is one thing that Apple has excelled at, its brilliant marketing. Beyond the famous “1984” commercials, the “Think Different” ad campaign, you have one of the most subliminal product placement campaigns from a major corporation. Just pay attention the next time you’re at the movies or watching TV... I guarantee you that the “Hero” will be using a Mac, while the villains always useIBMCompatible “Windows” based PC’s.
Next: iTunes and the Mac Mini Prove Themselves >>
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