I think the iPod was somewhere in the area where I discovered all the nice to have features and polish of Apple products that made me admire Apple. (I was into PCs long before that but my exposure to Apple was limited and I wasn't all that impressed)
By no means was the iPod perfect, and it was effectively the same product as many other media players that came before and after, other products even had more features sometimes ... and yet the friction of using the iPod was just lower to the point that I enjoyed using it more than other media players at the time.
It's a mysterious process to me finding those places to make use of a thing easier, more intuitive and etc. When something is bad it is easy to see, but there's a step beyond "take away the bad friction" that I'm always wondering about when I'm building things. I never quite reach that Apple-ish feel.
> it was effectively the same product as many other media players that came before and after, other products even had more features sometimes
For me, at the time, the iPod (Classic) was a worst-in-class product (required iTunes, pretended it didn't know what a file was, annoying to navigate, etc.) The iPod Touch was that but also not attractive.
I think one of the things was the iPod wasn't "for" most of us who were face down in our piles of MP3s and managing them and etc.... at least not at first.
One of those cases where the first in the market consumers / enthusiasts weren't the best folks to take your hints from as far as the future of that tech.
Arguably they've long been left behind by streaming services and etc. My piles of files are certainly just ... sitting there now.
Nah, it was absurdly heavy marketing. I don't remember any other mp3 player being marketed at all. The click wheel was also cool, although pragmatically it sucked and nobody ever used it on on anything again.
Also, buying an mp3 player was a bit of a minefield back then, because you couldn't tell if it behaved as a drive or through some elaborate software DRM/obfuscation dance that might even be specific to Windows ("playsforsure," maybe? Talk about an Orwellian name.) At least people knew that the iPod would work.
edit: I mean, it was on every billboard and the side of every bus in solid dayglo colors. Comedy shows like SNL did sketches about the ads. This went on for years.
This might be true, but only if you stay on the "beaten path". If you do anything they don't intend you to do with these devices it ends up being a massive pain and you often just end up getting hit with the ol' "you're holding it wrong".
I feel like product defects are .. a thing everywhere. Holding it wrong was just bad choices related to it, but it's not like that's unique to products tailored to specific use patterns either.
By no means was the iPod perfect, and it was effectively the same product as many other media players that came before and after, other products even had more features sometimes ... and yet the friction of using the iPod was just lower to the point that I enjoyed using it more than other media players at the time.
It's a mysterious process to me finding those places to make use of a thing easier, more intuitive and etc. When something is bad it is easy to see, but there's a step beyond "take away the bad friction" that I'm always wondering about when I'm building things. I never quite reach that Apple-ish feel.