The iPod remains a per­vas­ive example of a viral epi­demic adop­tion. When did it hit the tip­ping point? I’ve still got my 1G pod although the bat­tery gave up the ghost a long time ago. It cer­tainly wasn’t in 2001. The unit was a lux­ury item and rather expens­ive. I think I paid close to $800 for mine in that first month after intro­duc­tion. A couple iPod’s later, the fas­cin­a­tion still remains, but my atti­tude has moved more towards the util­it­arian value. I picked up a Shuffle for use as a USB key with extras. It con­tin­ues to per­form exem­plary. As nice as the stain­less steel back is from the 1G, the Shuffle makes much more sense and doesn’t mar when treated roughly. It’s there when you need it and holds a charge for ages. My Nano, bought after Apple intro’d the 2G Nano for a song, is the dock that holds my little Nike jog­ging device. Now, that is a cool use. So I have paid Apple my share to sup­port the trend.

This art­icle from wired is a brief nar­rat­ive out­lining the pro­cess at Apple that led to its release in 2001. I recall being aware as many were that the soft­ware on the pod was licensed from Portal­Player, how­ever, this shares some of the other ways in which Apple was able to get a product to mar­ket quickly. It wasn’t the first MP3 player, but it cer­tainly was the best. My little 64Mb Sony pen­cil player (I can’t remem­ber the product name) had the util­it­arian value of the Shuffle in 2000. As the author notes, Apple iden­ti­fied as need, a mar­ket full of products that demon­strated lim­ited innov­a­tion — and offered Apple an oppor­tun­ity to reach a whole new sec­tor. They did this very well. Licens­ing where neces­sary, sub­ject­ing the product to an effect­ive refine­ment strategy and com­bin­ing it cru­cially with a desktop soft­ware. Has any­one tried the crap Sony stuff. DRM is the debate, but Sony tends to rub your face in it, where Apple has hid­den most of it and framed the reminder of its pres­ence in tongue-in-cheek cheeki­ness — ‘Remem­ber, Don’t Steal Music’.