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Yeah, apple surely could've negotiated price discounts and I'm not sure what the bill of materials cost of the Toshiba hard drives were, but the larger IBM Microdrives were released in late 2000 and were $499 for the 1GB version (https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-1-gb-microdrive/). Even if that's a 100% markup, you're talking about $250 for 1GB.

Hard to build a consumer device with a MSRP of $399 if one of the components is over 60% of that cost. Competing firms estimated the total BOM for the original iPod at more like $200.

They were also surely looking at the potential trajectory of storage improvements too -- by the time the 4gb microdrives had been released in 2004, Apple was already shipping 40gb iPods and selling them for $499.

I had added this paragraph before you posted but probably after you saw my comment:

>> Maybe Apple would have slightly higher storage capacities, but... we're talking about a relatively marginal difference compared to the gulf in storage capacity between these microdrive MP3 players and the flash based MP3 players of the time. An advantage, but not a revolution.

Regardless, it turns out that it wasn't even a capacity advantage, since the Personal Jukebox[0][1] was released in 1999 and offered 4.8GB of storage in a package that weighed 300g instead of the 185g of the 2001 iPod. A difference in weight, sure, but... modern smartphones are often between those two weights, so a few extra grams would have been fine and the Personal Jukebox would have flown off shelves, if storage capacity was the defining feature.

Just telling a compelling anecdote doesn't make it accurate. Apple had other advantages at the time, including the scroll wheel and iTunes, as well as brand recognition. Based on the evidence of what existed at the time, I do not think storage was the compelling thing that made iPod more of a success than the Personal Jukebox.

[0]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/520590/evolution_of_the_mp3_...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Jukebox

Ah, you must not have seen the pre-ipod players. The Personal Jukebox was 2.5 larger than an ipod. It didn't fit in a pocket and the grey plastic felt cheap compared to the ipod's shiny metal back. It really felt experimental, and nothing like the polished Walkmen Sony was making.

That's... also what I'm saying, yes. I think we agree?

iPod was not successful because it was the only thing offering high storage capacity. It wasn't the only one. iPod was successful because it offered a touch wheel, iTunes, and Apple's brand recognition. As you point out, it also had very good build quality. None of these things have to do with some exceptional storage capacity.

Apple’s brand recognition wasn’t anything special at the time. The iPod was essentially their first meaningful entry into consumer music. Compared with say Sony, they were nobody - a recently failing maker of outdated computers.

But compared to the brand recognition of Remote Solution? The Remote Solution Personal Jukebox beat iPod to the punch by 2 years on offering a high capacity 5GB portable MP3 player, but it was not some runaway success. Apple's brand recognition was far higher than Remote Solution, which certainly was a factor in helping iPod to succeed where Personal Jukebox did not. (Not the only factor, of course, but one factor.)

Apple's brand may not have been as good as Sony in the music space, but Apple was still a very well-known brand, even if they were struggling at the time.

As has been said elsewhere - it didn’t beat apple to anything because it was giant, had a poor UI and no meaningful companion software. It was a prototype that wasn’t ready for the market. Nothing more.

Comparing the iPod to junk that happens to match on one spec or another tells us nothing.

> As has been said elsewhere

Elsewhere... as in the comment that I replied to? Which you then replied to me?

I was literally in agreement with the "elsewhere" that you're referring to. Your comments are confusing to me. Storage capacity was not the thing that made iPod successful, even though the anecdote at the top of this thread is trying to make that argument. There were a number of other factors that were more important. That's what I said and that's what the "elsewhere" also appears to have said. That's exactly what you just said too, so you're literally agreeing with me, but you want to argue for some reason.

Still, "Apple" was a much better brand than {someone no one has ever heard of}, which matters for something like the Personal Jukebox.

> "Apple" was a much better brand than {someone no one has ever heard of}.

This is of course true, but not relevant.

The personal jukebox was a junk product. Nobody would seriously imagine that the reason it didn’t win against the iPod was the brand.

Now imagine it the other way around - if apple had released the jukebox, and ‘remote solution’ had released the iPod.

Startups with no brand succeed all the time, if they have a great product.

> Now imagine it the other way around - if apple had released the jukebox, and ‘remote solution’ had released the iPod.

They probably would have both failed, in that case. Apple for delivering a product that wasn't good enough, and Personal Solutions for having no brand recognition and no retail partnerships/network.

> Startups with no brand succeed all the time, if they have a great product.

Launching a physical product back then wasn't as easy as launching a Kickstarter and eventually transitioning to an Amazon listing. Just having a good product didn't mean you knew how to get it into the hands of customers. Things are much easier these days, and even so... lots of good products still fail to reach market for reasons that have nothing to do with the product itself.

The design on the Personal Jukebox is rough. It reminds me of those cheap no-name PDAs from the late 90s/early 00s that were less capable than the earliest Palm and Newton models and more like toys than tools.

I think the whole anecdote sounds like a story that's been told a few too many times (including variations of Toshibas helpless product department making stuff they didn't know how to sell), because finding "that one thing" that made a difference" makes for a good story.

Rubinstein saw the drive and realized that the price level and size was perfect for their product idea. And he had buy-in from the higher ups so they could negotiate a certain volume and price that made the project feasible.

That doesn't mean another company couldn't have been successful with a smaller 1GB drive (seeing the success of the smaller iPods later on) or a physically bigger 5GB drive (people were still carrying around walkmans and CD players).

What Apple managed to pull off was making a device that was easy to get music into (with iTunes) and easy to use (with the clickwheel) and, yes, compact and with good design and marketing.

100% agree with your entire comment. That is exactly what I believe too, based on the evidence I've seen. That anecdote is entirely too clever to be accurate. It was probably built on a kernel of truth, but it has been embellished to a degree that appears to make it contradict the reality that existed at the time.

By that time competitors had 1.8" HDD with similar capacities. Creative also had a 40GB MP3 player with a 1.8" drive in 2004, the Zen Touch.