Long before the music store existed, the iPod was entirely different than other MP3 players of the time.

When I got the first iPod, I also had a Creative Nomad player that had a little more storage and a search function. However, the iPod on the other hand had Firewire rather than USB 1.1, making it a painless process to add and remove songs right before you go somewhere, rather than a hours long process you had to plan in advance. Even more importantly the scroll wheel on ball bearings with made it feasible to fly through a tree of artists and albums with thousands of audio tracks.

The shift in convenience was on the level of shifting from a phonograph to a cassette tape, except that records are more convenient in some situations.

It wasn't the case of any individual feature of iTunes or the iPod, it was that iTunes and the iPod were the killer feature. If you were to have looked at the landscape at that time for MP3 players, there was nothing even remotely like the iTunes+iPod experience. Even the tagline of the very first commercial was ridiculous at the time: "iPod, a thousand songs, in your pocket." That was equivalent to Google giving people 1GB of storage with their GMail account.

It doesn't seem like a big deal now, but in 2001 it was a very big deal.

Congratulations on being oblivious to user experience twenty years after even Microsoft got it.

You're oblivious to user experience not your own user experience. A good usability person can put him/her-self in someone else's shoes, rather than assume everyone else thinks like they do. Since software engineers think very differently from most people good usability people are rare. (Steve Jobs was actually such a person. People forget he knew enough programming and electronics to be dangerous.)

The thing Apple did with the iPod was offer a seamless end-to-end user experience, to allow "normal" people to buy a song and have it appear on their devices legally, simply, and at a reasonable price. This involved software, UI design, hardware design, negotiating compromises with the RIAA (e.g. iPods did not simply act as a file system to prevent casual piracy while not seriously inconveniencing users). This combination of software, hardware, design, and legal wrangling was not replicated by anyone, even approximately, for several years (Sony and Microsoft eventually managed to get something vaguely comparable, but it was too little too late.)

> You're oblivious to user experience not your own user experience. A good usability person can put him/her-self in someone else's shoes, rather than assume everyone else thinks like they do. Since software engineers think very differently from most people good usability people are rare. (Steve Jobs was actually such a person. People forget he knew enough programming and electronics to be dangerous.)

I'm not a usability person, never claimed to be. I am a user who is sharing his experience with using ipods. In order to empathize with other people's experience I need to hear them first.

I feel like I'm being painted like "oh look, another tasteless nerd who doesn't _get_ the benefit of UX that comes in another flavour than a virtual terminal". I have never, ever touched a terminal unless I absolutely have to, right up until about my second year as a programmer, which learnt as an adult. I still think that things like terminals are overrated as far as streamlined work flow goes.

> The thing Apple did with the iPod was offer a seamless end-to-end user experience, to allow "normal" people to buy a song and have it appear on their devices legally, simply, and at a reasonable price. This involved software, UI design, hardware design, negotiating compromises with the RIAA (e.g. iPods did not simply act as a file system to prevent casual piracy while not seriously inconveniencing users). This combination of software, hardware, design, and legal wrangling was not replicated by anyone, even approximately, for several years (Sony and Microsoft eventually managed to get something vaguely comparable, but it was too little too late.)

I haven't had the impression that ipods were such a revolution. Maybe it has to do with where I live.

I'll concede that the ipod was clearly simpler for people who thought dragging and dropping to a USB like thing was intimidating, and at the same time couldn't/wouldn't/had moral qualms about pirating music. I reckon ripping CDs was not a viable option for most people. I think I've only tried to do that once or twice myself.

I don't know where you live, but I think it's pretty well accepted that the iPod was a revolution. It swiftly and thoroughly dominated and expanded the MP3 player market, and set the bar for others to copy. Much like the iPhone did later. And the iPod came at the front end of the Apple renaissance, before they had the consumer mindshare and perception that they do now (in fact the iPod deserves most of the credit for vaulting Apple into that position).

I'm actually traditionally a Windows guy and scoff/roll my eyes at a lot of Apple stuff, but it's pretty undeniable that they've created some amazing, bar-raising products. They've done this by enforcing an uncompromising UX-first philosophy that covers all aspects of product design.

If anything I'm less technical than most HN users. I certainly was back when the ipod was new-ish. I was probably more technical than the average user at the time, though.

I gave concrete examples of the usability of the ipod. I would like it if people argued against those points, rather than some smartass, sarcastic response like the grandparent.

Sarcasm saves a lot of time. Look at how long your second response was without actually getting the point.

"You don't _get_ user experience, twenty years after even Microsoft got it."

Just as terse, no sarcasm.

I don't see how it saves time when it necessitates you to follow up with a wordy response - if you were after saving time, you wouldn't even have responded to my response. But I guess this is yet another case of me not _getting_ something.

Spend less time at your own computer and more time helping other people out with theirs. You'll "get" the reasons for Apple's success, soon enough.

You won't necessarily agree with those reasons -- I certainly wouldn't want everything to work like iTunes or my iPhone in general -- but you will understand why your limited perspective on UX doesn't catch on like Jobs's philosophy did.