[OSButler]

I owned a Nomad Jukebox around the time of the original ipod release and couldn't understand the hype around the ipod, as it was lacking in functionality, specs, and especially usability compared to the nomad. CmdrTaco's quote gets mentioned a few times in this thread, but I shared his opinion at the time, as it just seemed so obvious that the ipod was lacking when compared to other devices on the market. However, it's actually kind of interesting looking back at such events, since they seemed to be so trivial at the time but are now touted as turning points in the industry. Makes one wonder what other "hits" I'll miss out on in the future.

[honkhonkpants]

A lot of people have said this over the years and I still just can't fathom it. The iPod was much smaller than the Creative Nomad of that time, which had a 2.5" HDD and intentionally mimicked the size and shape of a Sony Discman. The iPod had more than double the battery life of the Nomad, which did not charge its batteries from the USB port, necessitating the carriage of the power brick. As for usability the Nomad had a quirk where its user interface would stop responding due to low power supply, but the player would not stop playing, leading to the somewhat hilarious but also very much not funny situation of not being able to stop the music.

[OSButler]

This is anecdotal, but maybe it'll explain a bit more where I was coming from in regards to my reaction to the initial ipod reveal. Back then, my music player adaption went from CD Player, CD Player with MP3 CD support, to Nomad Jukebox 3. Size was not an issue at the time, since I was used to the CD player size and was more looking for ways to get rid of all the CDs I had to keep bringing with me. The Jukebox 3 had the largest HDD at the time, as far as I recall, and allowed me to put my full CD collection on it at that time already. It was also running on a larger battery brick and had an additional slot for another battery to extend its playtime. The batteries were charged in an external charger, so that you could simply swap out the batteries and keep on taking the player with you. It also came with a remote control, which was more of a gimmick, but came in handy every once in a while. The UI allowed browsing through a scroll wheel on its side and you could access the music through various ways (as far as I recall: genre, artist, album, song, and playlist). Especially the scroll wheel was so easy to use compared to the click wheel on the ipod, which appeared to be more gimmicky than useful at the time.

Of course, by now things have changed and I love the fact that I can put all that music on my phone and being able to connect it to all the different devices (bluetooth & audio jack speakers/headphones), so that I wouldn't want to take a dedicated MP3 player, especially the size of the Jukebox 3, with me anymore.

However, at the time of the original ipod release the lack of HDD size in favour of hardware size didn't make any sense to me and I still catch myself thinking like that during some of the Apple release events since, where it sometimes seems like they're taking one step forward and multiple steps back - will be interesting to see what happens during the upcoming Macbook event.

[honkhonkpants]

Interesting, but you couldn't have been using a Nomad Jukebox 3 when the iPod was announced. The Jukebox 3 came out after.

[OSButler]

I'm sorry, I must remember it wrong then. I recall that I had the option to buy either of them at the time and that I had to place a preorder for the Jukebox 3, which kept on getting delayed for quite a while. Also, this was not in NA, but a quick search for the original ipod release date in that country didn't yield any results, so I'm not sure if I'm just remembering it wrong and that there was quite a bit of time in between, or if it actually did become available at a later time in that country.

[honkhonkpants]

I was being a bit US-centric there, wasn't I? Sorry about that!

[FabHK]

The UK was the second market where the iPod was released, if memory serves correctly, and it came out in the UK at London MacExpo on 2001-11-22.

[rconti]

I always thought the sync-cable-doubles-as-power-cable thing was so ingenious. Could you charge any product over USB at the time? I don't remember anyone doing this before Apple did, and it helped that the FW400 cables were the same on both ends. And on top of that, all of the chargers were modular in the way the Macbook chargers still are today; you could swap on the "long cable" end in place of the flip-out prongs, or use the non-North America travel kit tips with any of their chargers as well.

I was sad the day the iPhone started shipping with just a simple USB->power brick with the modularity removed.