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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

It absolutely did. You may have forgotten, but the early success of iTunes/iPod was in being able to organize your music and get it on your device. iTunes/iPod was the first to really get this right on any kind of scale. And, compared to the competition of the time, they really nailed it. So, a phone that had that integrated was a really big deal, even if it couldn't run any apps (as the first iPhone did and couldn't).

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The first generation iPod was Mac only. The 2nd generation iPod was Mac + Windows but iTunes was still Mac only. Windows syncing was done with third party software (Musicmatch Jukebox)

iTunes did not have a foothold in the marketplace until after the success of the iPod was evident.

The ipod was a complete failure when it was Mac only, and it didn't start picking up steam until iTunes was on windows. When it did start picking up steam, it was ipod and itunes together that sky-rocketed in unison, which seems to lend credence to the idea that it was the itunes ecosystem in conjunction with the ipod hardware that created success for apple in that space.

As far as you "success of the ipod was evident" comment, that seems like solid case of hindsight on your part.

That's not how I remember it. iTunes was released before OS X. It was a time when Apple was more or less a joke of a company, surviving because of the hard-core few who refused to abandon it. Somewhat of an oddity.

The iPod did not work on Windows (which was, what, 99% market-share in those days?) and required this insane thing called Firewire. Firewire. Even the name was funny to me.

I was a Linux fan-boy, patiently waiting for The Year Of The Linux Desktop, and was quite dismissive of that bulky little device, much like everyone else who was a techie. The Rio or whatever is what people were sporting.

And yet it basically destroyed the entire Taiwanese MP3 player market in the US in what, 2 years? Nokia should have seen it coming 7 years later...

I didn't mean first gen. But later. The iPod + iTunes was the first setup that worked well on Windows that I ever used. And I was coming from a NOMAD Jukebox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_NOMAD#NOMAD_Jukebox_Ze...

There was no "early success" for the iPod. It was a failure until the third generation, when it finally got PC support.

Even then, as I recall iTunes was widely bashed? Its UI was obviously Apple UI on Windows, ignoring all Windows UI guidelines.

Even then, as I recall iTunes was widely bashed?

Was?

iTunes is still the same trainwreck that it was 10 years ago.

Apple seems to work hard to keep it the same sluggish nightmare, no matter how fast the hardware becomes that it runs on.

I was being optimistic :-)

I don't use it on Windows anymore - and I only installed it on there out of interest! Same went for Safari on Windows.

It's a trainwreck on Mac too. I use my iPod only when I go on holidays, say 3 - 4 times per year. I dread the moment I have to use iTunes to fill my iPod with songs. It causes me nothing but stress, which is exactly the opposite of what Apple is about.

I only use it on the Mac to turn off the "automatic sync" feature on the iPod, and to do a manual backup of my wife's iPad. I must say that the backup interface for the iPad within iTunes is pretty poor. Not the feature - the interface. Mighty confused.

I use Floola to shove songs on my iPod. Might be worth a look? (Mine is a 6th-gen classic).

Floola looks perfect, will check this out at home. Thanks!

Wait, Windows had UI guidelines?

(Winamp was very popular on Windows, it had no UI guidelines whatsoever)

They didn't really use any of the Windows UI widgets. Tough to blame Windows for that.

The fact that Macs were a small niche was instrumental for the music industry to accept to put legal songs online after the Napster coup. It allowed Steve Jobs to convince them to support trying the model of all songs at the same price because the potential market was so small it didn't really matter if it worked or failed. By being able to conduct a business experiment in a way no one else could, Apple had a huge edge here. The music industry would not have accepted to try such a model directly on Windows at the time and Apple got a huge lead.

That's still quite early in its life. And before the iPhone. The iPhone then capitalized on iTunes' success.

The fact that it got to a 3rd generation implies it wasn't a "failure"

Sort of related to your comment: IMO the common thread in all (recent-ish?) Apple products is that the first iteration is usually rough around the edges and met with the most amount of criticism, then what always seems to happen is that Apple takes the feedback to heart and massively improves on subsequent iterations. Some examples I can think of:

* While the first MacBook Air was crazy expensive and nearly universally panned for lack of a DVD-ROM drive, the MBA was repositioned in 2011 as the ultraportable replacement for the MacBook and is now the best-selling Mac.

* The first iPhone was blasted for its absurd price (due in part to lack of carrier subsidization), lack of 3G, lack of copy and paste (remember how upset people got about this? lol) and no third party apps. By the time the 3G rolled around, most of the software concerns were addressed and the price drop made sales jump $10m from 2007 to 2008.

* The first iPad (also known as the iTampon if you were following Twitter on the day it was announced) was criticized as being a giant iPhone, having a low pixel density (merely 1024x768), and lacking any ability to get "real work" done on it. Each iteration of the iPad has gotten more and more positive reviews due to the incremental changes (mostly in processor and pixel density) made over the years.

It more or less goes without saying, then, that I'm not really surprised that people expected more from the Apple Watch. Apple's really fortunate to have such a great community of rabid early adopters who are more than happy to put its products through the ringer and hold Apple to a higher standard.

In many of those example, people complained about it, but it was still a success. People complained about the first iPhone, and yet bought it in droves.

"Failure" is not determined by "lots of complaints", but by "very few sales"

Implication is even a weaker relationship than correlation.

And as a counter-point, the Surface RT has a second generation and may have a third. Does this imply success, or that MS went "all in"?

GGP is talking about the iPod, not the iPhone. GP is right that iTunes had no foothold when the iPod was released, and Apple had no "empire."

How did this suddenly get redefined to "when released"? If that is the case, Taco's widely criticized assessment was dead on - the iPod was initially a failure.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_ipod_sales.svg

We know that it took off, but that was wholly on the back of iTunes - 0.99 tracks and much easier use than competitors sold the iPod, not some fundamental excellence of the device.

People forget now but while we revile iTunes generally now, at the time it was the killer feature of the iPod, and the initial iPhone success.

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