[mdpane]

For most of the iPod's lifespan it was not the best product on the market, it was just the best marketed.

I wouldn't say it was just better marketed, although that is true. It was also better designed, both in its hardware and software. An iPod in your hands felt and looked great and the scroll wheel made it intuitive to use. Anyone could easily pick it up and check out what you had in your library.

Before I had one, I had an iRiver iHP-120[0], which had a plethora of features an iPod didn't have. But it was ridiculously hard to use if you didn't know what you were doing.

[0] http://edmundstarbanks.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/iriverihp...

[porsupah]

Indeed. I was once engaged on a project to develop a new personal media player. QA had quite a selection of other vendors' PMPs, so we could learn from their mistakes: and ye gods and little fishes, poor UIs were abundant, not to mention often sluggish to respond.

(Sadly, ours never came to be, but that's a long and occasionally hilarious - in the DailyWTF sense - tale. Suffice to say, if your application crashes on trying to close any file, and the vendor's recommended workaround is to never close files, get ready for interesting times)

[judk]

The scroll wheel was a gimmick in the tradition of the Apple hockey puck mouse, that was worse than the obvious alternatives (a regular rocker is much easier to use for scrolling through long lists) but people bought because they look cute and trusted Apple's supposed design insight.

[dingaling]

> and the scroll wheel made it intuitive to use.

It was only 'intuitive' if someone showed you how to use it, which means... it wasn't intuitive.

They dropped that interface element quickly enough.

[Amezarak]

I too have never understood how the scroll wheel could be considered intuitive. The first time I saw one I was somewhat baffled until my friend showed it to me and even then it was always a struggle to control.

Intuitive (to me) would be the scrolling on other players...hit up it goes up one, hold up and it goes up increasingly fast. Maybe that's boring but it's completely obvious how to work it when you pick it up.

[nitrogen]

Anyone could easily pick it up and check out what you had in your library.

This is subjective, of course. I'm lost every time I have to change songs on a friend's iPod classic :-). Give me traditional buttons or a touch screen any day.