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Comment by epa | Hacker News Reader

The one thing most people dont realize about why the iPod was popular was because it was actually the fastest device to transfer music to. At the time, music devices were using serial connections if you can believe that, and FireWire was the fastest thing on the market, only available with iPods. This, combined with having the most space (10gb vs 256 mb), combined with windows support on the third version, made the iPod take off.

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At the time, music devices were using serial connections if you can believe that, and FireWire was the fastest thing on the market, only available with iPods.

Can't remember that. Mine had usb, was available before iPod and the speed never bothered me.

Nitpick: I don't think the OP meant USB when he said "serial connection", but USB _is_ a serial connection (as is FireWire)

Ok, fair point. When I hear serial I think something along the lines of rs232 and I guess so do others.

I remember it. I had some Philips MP3 player and I remember the software being horrible and the transfers taking hours at a time. The first time I saw iTunes and an iPod I was sold. iTunes used to be pretty incredible at the time...

Ok. I remember my got-it-with-my laptop mp3 player and my brothers Creative something.

I'm sure both used USB. Mine was actually a glorified usb stick so I just plugged it into my computer.

Nope, most had USB. The iPod was popular because it had a sane interface, and didn't resemble a 1990s CD-player or VCR.

Exactly, the average person didn't care how they were connecting their MP3 player to their computer, as long as they could connect it and the player itself was convenient size and looked nice.

The original iPod was 5 Gigs, which you filled over a 400Mbps Firewire connection. USB was limited to only 12Mbps at that time, so it only managed 3% of Firewire's transfer speed.

Filling the iPod's drive took a couple of minutes over Firewire, but a similarly sized device would take more than an hour using USB.

It was a significant technical advantage until the 480Mbps version of USB came along.

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