A smaller form factor was a piece of the iPod success, but I personally don't think it the reason in itself.
but for me, for the ipod to have been this *great* device, it would have had to bring some industry wide positive effects
To an engineer, iPod and iTunes are seperate products. To Apple and Apple's customers, they are one product. It's very similar to the arrangement between Mac hardware and Mac OS X. It's the two together that make the whole package work.
Apple could have just sold the iPod as-is, but they realized the method of buying music was a major obstacle to portable music player adoption. So rather than wait around for somebody to solve this, they came up with their own solution.
Apple basically breaks even on the iTunes store. They run it because they know that the vast majority of sales are going to iPod owners. If they didn't know that to be the case, it wouldn't be cost effective to keep running it.
If the industry was laid out with a bunch of so-so media players and free-standing music services, the well-designed music players and likely all music would be more expensive. As it stands, iPod is the market leader and it's also almost among the most affordable. If all music players were free, I think most people would choose an iPod.
So I understand what you're saying, but the model you suggest has its own potential gotchas.
by Scott Stevenson — Oct 31
I read all of them. :)
Just having a smaller form factor
A smaller form factor was a piece of the iPod success, but I personally don't think it the reason in itself.
but for me, for the ipod to have been this *great* device, it would have had to bring some industry wide positive effects
To an engineer, iPod and iTunes are seperate products. To Apple and Apple's customers, they are one product. It's very similar to the arrangement between Mac hardware and Mac OS X. It's the two together that make the whole package work.
Apple could have just sold the iPod as-is, but they realized the method of buying music was a major obstacle to portable music player adoption. So rather than wait around for somebody to solve this, they came up with their own solution.
Apple basically breaks even on the iTunes store. They run it because they know that the vast majority of sales are going to iPod owners. If they didn't know that to be the case, it wouldn't be cost effective to keep running it.
If the industry was laid out with a bunch of so-so media players and free-standing music services, the well-designed music players and likely all music would be more expensive. As it stands, iPod is the market leader and it's also almost among the most affordable. If all music players were free, I think most people would choose an iPod.
So I understand what you're saying, but the model you suggest has its own potential gotchas.