Thread: iPod Evaluation
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Messiahtosh
Apple Historian
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2004-07-05, 14:48

The iPod

The Apple Computer iPod is without a doubt the most iconic electronic music object to permeate the consumer electronics marketplace since the Sony Walkman did in the late 1970’s. The iPod didn’t just instantly become a hit product, it evolved over time and eventually it became the best selling digital music player of all time. Reviewers everywhere were and still are singing its praises, talking about how they become instantly smitten with the diminutive music playing wonder. But what is it about the Apple iPod that separates it from the hundreds of competing products that vie for the same shelf space in retail stores? On the surface there may not seem like much differentiation other than design, but the answer is really “everything is different.”

Introduced on October 23, 2001, the iPod retailed for $399 and worked with the Macintosh platform (meaning: not available for Microsoft Windows) only. It had a 5 gigabyte hard disk based storage capacity, meaning 1,000 songs could be held by the deck of cards sized iPod. Apple relied on a hard disk for storage instead of flash memory or interchangeable CD-ROMs, and uniquely focused on promoting the small size, power, and ease of use of its device.

The ease of use that Apple is infamous for with its Macintosh computer line was something the company wanted to bring to their digital music player. The iPod only has 4 buttons on it and a scroll wheel. The feature that obliterates all of the others, is the iPod’s scroll wheel. It has a touch sensitive wheel on the front, that when spun in either direction, scrolls through lists of songs and menus. Scrolling and selection could hardly be easier or more intuitive, and there are no moving parts to go wrong. It turns out that while the hardware is innovatively packaged and styled, the software interface is what makes it truly unique. Apple saw the music player market as a potential place for them to innovate because there was no working solution for finding one song out of thousands, in a simple to do manner. All of the technology to accomplish this was there and other companies had products with massive storage capacity and small sizes in relatively good looking designs, but navigating their menus was chaotic…and still is.

The iPod uses a 1.8 inch hard drive and is genuinely pocket sized. It also looks extremely stylish, with the front half crafted in a milky white polycarbonate, and the back formed in metallic stainless steel. The iPod just feels exclusive and expensive, but that should not fool anyone into thinking that it isn’t robust. The 2 inch LCD display shows the current track, album title, artist name, and battery level indicator. The main menu on the iPod reveals a hierarchal menu that lists artists, albums, playlists, or extra features and options. (http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html)

The iPod connects to a Mac or PC via a technology called Firewire or USB 2.0. Firewire is a high speed data transferring connection, where one end of the cable plugs into the bottom of the iPod, the other to the port on the computer. The transfer rate of music to iPod is made easiest to understand by saying it transfers the content of an album in about 10 seconds. At the time of its introduction it was the first product to use such fast connectivity, which gave it a reputation of being powerful and fast. (http://www.apple.com/ipod/autosync.html)

What good would a digital music player be, if it didn’t have an integrated software application that helped to organize and synchronize all of this music onto it? Well, there is a free solution called iTunes. iTunes is a software application that makes organization and management of music very simple. Basically, everything that you see in iTunes is what you will see on an iPod. The iPod automatically synchronizes with iTunes, updating music that was since put on the computer. More recently, the iTunes Music Store has caused quite a buzz, because it is a way of legally downloading music for 99¢ a song or $9.99 per album. The iTunes Music Store has a market share of over 70% of all legal music downloads (over 100 million songs sold), according to Nielsen SoundScan. I could write an entire evaluation about the iTunes service, but the important thing to understand is that all of these technologies are integrated in ways that no other company has managed to do. iTunes houses the user’s library of music, it contains within it, the iTunes Music Store, and it synchs with the iPod. New to iTunes is something called AirTunes, which wirelessly transmits music in a lossless quality to an in-home stereo. Simply, you plug in a piece of hardware called Airport Express into the stereo and then a computer with a wireless networking card will send out the music to be received by that stereo.

The iPod sold well but it wasn’t until Apple released PC compatible versions of it that made sales sky rocket. According to Nielsen SoundScan (http://www.soundscan.com/about.html)1 the iPod is currently the #1 selling music player as measured by unit sales, and even higher if measured by revenues. July of 2002 marked the unveiling of the iPod for Windows based computers, and about 6 months later Apple had sold its first million iPods. It is entirely possible that the company will hit the 4 million mark by August or September of this year. (www.ipodlounge.com)2

The iPod is an incredible technology, not just as a stand alone music player, but because it interfaces with so many other useful and powerful technologies. It works with the best place to buy music online, it synchronizes with Macs or PCs in iTunes, it has a fast way of transferring a lot of data, and it is extremely easy to operate. The iPod has become my personal favorite piece of technology for these reasons. It is so loveable because it contains an individual’s music, and since music is considered a universal language, the music we listen to identifies who we are to a certain extent.

I highly recommend for anyone who wants to embrace digital music, to go with the standard that didn’t become a standard because of monopolistic control. The iPod, iTunes, and the iTunes Music Store all became industry leaders and default standards because they are technologies done the right way. Everything is easy, clearly laid out for the user, and accessible to everyone. A lot of companies tried to do what Apple has done, and many are still trying, but the way in which Apple won this music war has been through innovation. There are companies like Microsoft and Sony that have billions more dollars to invest in creating tech solutions, but sometimes the money is not what makes the winner. Apple Computer Industrial Designer Jonathan Ive sums things up quite nicely by saying, “The goal at Apple has never been to be different for the sake of being different, the goal is to be different by doing things in a better way.” And right now, there is no better way.

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