[danso]

Perhaps they learned from Apple. The iPod was seen as inferior in terms of features-for-price and the iTunes Eco system most likely did not help it among the hacker-set. So I think its appeal to the fashionable elite crowd played a large part in Apple's mainstream success to date

[rz2k]

User interface design is a very important feature, as were other usability differences like Firewire for transferring tracks from your computer to your device quickly.

Specs like being able to play FLAC, and minor differences in capacity per dollar, and often higher quality DACs did not matter as much as the design that made it easier to use.

It is also worth remembering that competing devices addressed the problem of a large library with search, while the iPod instead used an active matrix LCD combined with a large scroll wheel to quickly navigate the hierarchy of artists <- albums <- tracks.

I had a Creative Nomad before the first generation iPod, and even though the Nomad had larger capacity, it immediately seemed like junk in comparison.

We get stats from phone companies that complain about how much more iPhone users use their data plans, and I suspect that if had similar data for iPod we would find that users simply used their devices to listen to music more than users of competing devices.

Stylish ads may have been a large part of publicizing them, but it was the complete change in interface design that made people actually use them regardless of whether they enjoy gadgets for their own sake.

[owenjones]

Maybe I'm not remembering correctly but wasn't the iPod the first MP3 player to combine a disk harddrive with flash memory? Thereby allowing it to store gigs of music when the rest were touting 64 - 128 MBs of storage?

Seems like a pretty big deal to me.

[jff]

No. The early iPods used a hard drive, the later ones used flash for storage. The iPod was not the first device to provide a hard disk for large storage; look up the Personal Jukebox and the Creative NOMAD.

(I know it came post-iPod, but I loved my Creative NOMAD Zen Xtra. 60 GB drive and it would play all day on a charge, no trouble (wish my Android phone could pull that off))

[Evbn]

Apple added the 16MB flash buffer which was less common.