Hacker News Reader

Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

One of the reasons I think Apple has been successful at launching new product categories, where those before them trying to launch the same category have floundered, is they really talk up the problem statement and what the product will do for the user. “1,000 songs in your pocket.” As a consumer, I can understand this, I see the value to my life, and I don’t have to care about what technology was needed to make it possible.

Consistently solve problems for customers (even if the problem was made up) and the company will have fans… until they stop solving the consumer’s problems.

View on HN

The really important lesson from Apple is that they had a cult status in both business and consumer with the Apple II and, in the early days, the Mac. They then lost/squandered it and almost died but astonishingly to all (even to Jobs) were able to recover it via the iPod.

MP3 players were already a thing. I couldn't actually tell you at this point why I first bought an iPod (my first Apple purchase) with I think the 4th gen click wheel. Presumably it was at a technology point where I felt I should probably get one of these things and Apple seemed the best choice.

Well the popular story goes that mp3 players were a thing but either had very little flash storage, or had a big bulky hard drive and terrible battery life. Then iPod came out with a newly developed tiny hard drive, plus a flash buffer so it would only have to spin up the hd every 20 minutes, plus a good control scheme plus a fast port for transferring files plus iTunes which was supposedly better than the competing software options. Though I can't personally verify all that, since I never had an early mp3 player

I've had an iRiver h340 mp3 player with 40gb hard drive, not that different from what iPod offered. But when I got an iPod instead, it just felt so much better, even compared to the custom firmware like Rockbox. Same tech specs, but a vastly superior product — a very common thing that I've seen repeated with many other Apple products, like a Nokia 6600 vs first iPhone just a couple of years later.

This is right, but it doesn't support what the GGP said.

Apple have not historically created new product categories. They have turned fledgling product categories with weird and untried technology into popular and mature ones.

The MP3 player, the smartphone, the tablet, the PC, the computer-in-monitor are all examples of these.

This is why I have this line in my comment.

>those before them trying to launch the same category have floundered

Yes, the mp3 player existed, but they either held only a few songs in your pocket, like the Diamond Rio. Or they held a lot, but looked like a Discman for some reason, like the Creative Nomad Jukebox.

The iPod was the best of both worlds, and the iTunes enabled the user to take the library that they managed and curated on their desktop, and mirror it to the iPod. It’s very easy and elegant.

This took the mp3 player from a thing for nerds and some college students who really liked Napster, and made it mainstream. MP3 players went from some products, to a category with a whole industry around it… accessories, repair shops, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com