[ghaff]

>For “greatest comment” I was thinking of cmdrtaco’s comment about the iPod

In fairness, it probably wasn't obvious that Apple had a hit until the 4th generation iPod in 2004. (iTunes didn't even run on Windows to support earlier models when they were released.)

[gonehome]

I’d argue it was - maybe not obvious, but I knew it was a big deal.

The nomad and other players at the time sucked (I wanted to get one for my dad). Plastic, poor build quality, software would often freeze up and crash.

The nomad looked like a cd player, why? Just bad design and not thinking about it.

You’re right though that 2004 it started to really take off.

[ghaff]

I wasn't really into digital music at the time and only had a Windows system in any case. I definitely viewed Apple through the lens of a computer company. I even wrote a research note in 2003 (as an IT industry analyst) suggesting that Apple should perhaps view itself more as a home entertainment company [1]. I noted that they had the iPod and iTunes music download service but I pretty much mentioned that in passing, perhaps because I was really thinking of home entertainment in the context of a living room home theater system.

I did buy a 4G the following year. (It also took me a few years to get an iPhone after initial release.)

[1] http://bitmasons.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/pubs...