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I agree about the iPod, before that Apple was a sad story. They just rebranded the Diamond PMP for the Napster crowd, which was pretty smart. Nobody knew what an MP3 player was till Napster came along:

Diamond Rio MP3 player - 1998

Napster - 1999

iPod - 2001

After that, everything they made was a minimal white box with rounded corners and the rest is history. LOL.

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If I recall correctly, Apple didn't really take off until they released a Windows compatible iPod. That singular decision to leap out of the Apple-only ecosystem is what set the stage for the iPhone and the iPad and all other success thereafter. I wonder what world we would be in if Apple had continued to insist on people switching to OSX hardware before enjoying the benefits of the iPod. I suspect that most of the huge market for Windows users would have turned to the Zune, which the few people who actually own them seemed to like. Image a world where the Zune had won the music player wars.

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