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Comment by yobbo | Hacker News Reader

> They told their customers: "1000 Songs in Your Pocket".

That is talking about specs, and it is exactly what the competition did too. Here in the unit "number of songs". Maybe most people at the time couldn't translate GBs into number of songs, but nowadays bandwidth or "surf" is talked about in terms of GBs because it has become familiar through experience.

The iPod had better specs and better design. The original Jobs presentation even puts up a table or 2x2 illustrating how the iPod specs would be superior.

Obviously, one adapts language to audience, but I've never seen a case where this is the real reason for success or failure.

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> The iPod had better specs and better design.

It in fact had less space than the Nomad and was kind of lame

On top of that, it didn’t have wireless! /s.

> It in fact had less space than the Nomad and was kind of lame

Rob Malda, is that you?

But would a Nomad it in your pocket? I have never seen a Nomad IRL, the pictures on wikipedia make it look like the size of a CD player, not something that would fit in my pocket.

I can’t blame you for not getting the reference. It is over 20 years old now.

https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026

Yeah the key differentiator was that the other hard disk MP3 players up to that point used 2.5" laptop harddrives and removable AA batteries and fit in a cargo pocket. The iPod used a 1.8" harddrive and a slim built-in rechargeable battery and fit in a jeans pocket (it was pretty huge for a shirt pocket but could fit in there if you didn't care about it ruining your lines).

The term "laptop harddrives" of course confuses the issue: the Macbook Air first shipped with a 1.8" harddrive before it changed to flash storage.

"1000 songs in your pocket" is not a spec. It was a selling point. Songs, of course, are variable length things, so it's a marketing statement, not a spec. At the time the only way to get this many songs in your pocket was with massive pockets to hold a MP3 CD jewel case. Jobs didn't just build a faster horse when it came to the iPod. It was engineered purposefully to satisfy that desire.

> That is talking about specs, and it is exactly what the competition did too. Here in the unit "number of songs".

The statement isn't just the storage space in a convenient unit but also the approximate dimensions and weight in a convenient unit. But both parts of the statement are describing the problem being solved.

It's a good marketing statement because it focuses on a problem being solved rather than the mechanism by which the problem is being solved. The iPod had a lot of clever engineering but the marketing was always about the "problem" of carrying music with you and the iPod solving that problem.

And I really, really doubt that competing mp3 players talked about "Mega Hertz", as this article's GPT-esque strawman puts it.

Maybe they talked about "Giga Bytes", but I lived through that era and my recollection is that most stats for the mass market were, very simply: number of songs.

It's about triggering emotions, because most people buy with their emotions, word "thousands" make it feels a lot.

> > They told their customers: "1000 Songs in Your Pocket".

> That is talking about specs, and it is exactly what the competition did too.

Good catch. I'd expect something more in the direction of: "All your music. Always with you."

(And when you buy much more music for this product, Apple can sell you the "All" solution again next year, in the form of an upgraded-specs model.)

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