Lots of people claim that Apple’s iPod is innovative but I’m not sure everyone agrees on what, specifically, is innovative here. I personally don’t see anything amazingly innovative in the iPod unit itself, and have always thought that the real innovation was in the whole music system (which may not even have been Apple’s idea) - from the unit to the online store to the way the iPod first shipped without DRM to gain marketshare.
So what exactly is it about the iPod unit that is so amazingly innovative?
As an early adopter of the Rio, then moving to the OG iPod the innovations where: in order of importance to me, the user
easy to get songs on (plug it in, click put mp3’s on ipod, done)
storage space (lots more than Rio)
batery life (rio took AA’s! That lasted like 30min)
physical interface design (click wheel)
gui (itunes syncing, playlists…)
The innovation for me is not in the music store at all. I was a late adopter to iTunes music store, mainly because I felt the songs should be $.50 since you are not buying anything physical. If you break down the cost of a CD, physical CD, Printed booklet and graphic inserts, jewel case, shipping, distribution…) I always thought the iTunes song’s where over priced, $2 more I can get the CD… I still do not use the iTunes music store very much, I’ve probably spent $20 there total.
Just like some people have blind apple love, you really need to get over your blind apple hate, its getting drawn out.
It’s easy to forget these things, but I bought the first-gen iPod, and this is what I recall being innovative at the time:
Form factor (the competitive Nomad echoed a CD player)
Color & materials (white & titanium! Whaa?)
Built in battery with a totally sealed case–Cool!
Charge & sync via Firewire, plug & play baby! No charger!
Minimal physical UI (multifunction wheel, no power button etc.)
The fact that it came from an American computer company, not Sony
The way the backlight dimmed on and off–Neat!
The use of the Chicago font, referencing the fun of the original Mac
The out of box experience. “Designed by Apple in California?” Nice.
Firewire! Before USB2 it was the only thing that could make it work and…
It only worked on a Mac, back when no one had macs. Genius!
Auto-sync’d all music with iTunes (most sync at the time required intervention)
iTunes managed your MP3’s vs. using the filesystem
And finally, for many of us, it was our first MP3 hard-drive player. 2,000 songs in your pocket?! No way! You never forget your first…
Sorry you feel that way. Especially considering your list.
iPod the innovations where: in order of importance to me, the user
easy to get songs on (plug it in, click put mp3’s on ipod, done)
storage space (lots more than Rio)
batery life (rio took AA’s! That lasted like 30min)
physical interface design (click wheel)
gui (itunes syncing, playlists…)
I assume you mean connectivity to the computer. Okay, so the unit has a port. Was the decision to add this made by an IDer or Engineering or Marketing or …? Just want to know where the innovations fall.
So someone decided to use a hard drive to store more music. Is this a decision only an IDer can make?
Is this the same battery that wasn’t designed to be replaced? the one that got so many users angry and upset? And like before, is this an IDer innovation or someone else’s?
You mean the click wheel the B&O phone had in 1998 and which I’ve heard was also on one of their CD players? Is it really that amazing considering someone else was using it? Or did Apple make use of it in an “amazingly” new way?
And here I’d simply tell the moderator he needs to read with comprehension turned on. The discussion concerns the Device - not iTunes.
The innovation for me is not in the music store at all.
Okay, so you think the device is innovative. But what parts of it are ID innovations? Battery life and having a port and skinning a hard drive don’t seem especially innovative - from an ID perspective - to me.
Just like some people have blind apple love, you really need to get over your blind apple hate, its getting drawn out.
And you should behave more like a moderator and keep personal opinions out of your comments. You’ve already driven off some worthwhile people. Considering how dead this forum has become, a worthwhile and even passionate discussion should be welcome, I’d think.
a lil’ context, at the time i was really into cds because i liked to liked to look in the liner notes to see who produced the records and what songs may have been sampled, i mean i thought napster/digital music in general more a computer thing. so i did not have reasons to be checkin for this type of device…i remember quite vividly , a friend walking into class late with the white headphones in his ears, and my teacher asks him “do you have an ipod?” he says “yeah” and i ask “what in the world is an ipod” and they both procede to educate me on the glories of the aforementioned ipod, about its simple interface, large storage compacity, neutral styling, and blah, blah, blah, an on and on…
it went on for about 10 mins, but towards the end we were talking about itunes and i said somethng like “i like having the album art and the cd book” to which they answered “on itunes you can (or maybe it was “you will”?)” and i remember thinking that was cool. that having this online marketplace where you could get the music album art, get/arrange playlists was pretty smart on their part…i was not enamored with the styling though i would not say disliked it.
i think apple came out with a good product with a “killer app” at just the right time, with a form factor and material/finish that kind of stradled the line between the younger and older crowds, without itunes i don’t know that the ipod is as successful. previously if you bought other digital players, where did you get your music? even if you did not particularly intend to use itunes, knowing that you would have this existing marketplace to get it had to be a factor for many…
Form factor - but considering that this was the most efficient way to skin an existing/current technology - which is what they were going for with the increased memory - is the form really so innovative? I remember seeing this the first time and thinking “They did the obvious and shrink-wrapped a hard drive. About time someone did it.”
Color & Materials - Perhaps. Although I know designers who have back then and even today wanted to use materials like titanium (or any real metal) but those get costed out. Is the fact that Apple goes with those decisions the innovation or simply deciding on them from an ID perspective?
Built-in Battery - as stated, some people don’t consider that an innovation. There have been plenty of sealed batteries in electronics. Not only that, this one also made a lot of people unhappy for a time. And if it is innovation, I’m not sure an IDer made it. Did Ive decide on this or did Jobs?
Firewire - again, was this an IDer innovation or an engineering/marketing innovation?
Minimal physical UI - as mentioned, the click wheel was afaik used by B&O. And I recall other devices that activate without dedicated On/Off buttons, so the concept itself wasn’t new.
Backlight dimming - I wasn’t aware that was an iPod innovation.
Chicago font - that’s innovative?
out of box experience - Please explain this one.
It only worked on a Mac - is that an ID innovation(?) or a marketing strategy?
for many of us, it was our first MP3 hard-drive player - this is ID innovation?
I’m asking these questions because many of the innovations I’m hearing don’t sound like ID innovations. They sound like innovations that could have been made by marketing or engineering or even just a consumer (I know people were saying someone should just sell a hard drive with controls prior to the iPod; lack of memory was a big issue in the early players). I was hoping to hear what it was specifically that the ID team brought to the iPod. I’ve read articles but not read a breakdown of the kind I’m trying to put together now.
As you said, ID is more than just skinning the box. Now that we are talking about more than that you seem to want to back away from that assertion?
Dude, I would focus on your own behavior, not mine, judging by the volume of complaints that have come in about you over the past week. Your argumentative fashion has done far more to drive posters away (who craves the attention?) but at least I didn’t run away from being a mod because someone wanted to know how to back up their iPod.
It really doesn’t seam like you want to have a conversation to me. Maybe I am misreading but it seams more like you want to simply shut down anyone who doesn’t agree. You don’t like the iPod, that’s cool, there are alternatives (some look, feel and smell just like an iPod), lots of people do like it, even love it, let it go.
Not at all. I’m trying to see things from a different perspective.
You don’t like the iPod, that’s cool, their are alternatives (some of with look, feel and smell just like an iPod), lots of people do like it, even love it, let it go.
Never said I didn’t like the product. I said I didn’t understand the fanatical behavior of designers when it came to this device; the apparent inability to see it objectively. You truly need to read with some comprehension.
Dude, I would focus on your own behavior, not mine, judging by the volume of complaints that have come in about you over the past week. Your argumentative fashion has done far more to drive posters away (who craves the attention?) but at least I didn’t run away from being a mod because someone wanted to know how to back up their iPod.
No problem, Mike. I don’t want to spoil your forum. I’m gone.
I think csven’s argument of breaking down all the little bits of innovation into “a marketer did this, an engineer did this, and even I, csven, thought of the obvious and shrink-wrapped a hard drive, so it can’t be innovative”…all really denigrates the value of ID in that somebody had to have the vision to put it all together, edit-out the parts that didn’t fit (e.g. the CD player form factor), and nurse the new thing through to introduction.
Before the iPod, there was the Rio, and the Creative Nomad. The iPod changed all that. The innovation was in the vision for the product, which emerged (most likely but I don’t know for sure) from the relationship between Jobs and Ive. The vision guy and the guy who can make the vision happen. You wanna boil it down to what specific toolset could come up with overmolding a clear sheet over the plastic? Oh, yeah, any Taiwanese factory could do that. Vision, I’ve found, is a rare commodity in ANY corporate setting.
Yo: “As you said, ID is more than just skinning the box. Now that we are talking about more than that you seem to want to back away from that assertion?”
Well said.
Csven,
It seems to me like you are defining yourself into a corner. According to your post: colors/materials must be entirely new, consensus on quality is necessary, UI is apparently off-limits. multi-disciplinary cooperation is a disqualifier, etc. Given your rules, there is no such thing as ‘industrial design innovation’ at all.
All of the innovations I list are innovative to the category, not the world.
And yes, I do think that designers were involved in many of the decisions you write off to marketing or engineering. Apple has a culture of user experience design, and I don’t think they’d define ID so narrowly. Remember, Steve Jobs in their official “Chief Design Officer.”
Do I need to pull this picture out again?
This was the inventor of the category:
vs.
Actually these photos remind me of another innovation: the name! Creative was being incredibly obvious with their CD-player design and “Digital Jukebox” label.
no doubt, but part of that vision obviously included itunes…
it was a [design buzzword] wholistic [/designbuzzword] approach where not only could you get the product but also content from basically one source…plus consider that the digital music market and consumers may not have been ready at the time when the 1st joints hit the shelves, who had mp3, .wav, & wmp and some other audio formats which might have been confusing to some, the apple comes along with itunes that seemingly made the process simpler…
so maybe it was not just the product-ipod maybe it was a [designbuzzword] synergistic [/designbuzzword] union of all disciplines executing well and the time being right…
I’m not asking you to take your ball and go home, just don’t throw it in people’s faces and expect them to smile back. You can challenge but no one else can?
CG_ I had completely forgotten that Creative product. At the time I actually thought it was a CD player that played mp3 encoded CD’s… but then I have poor reading comprehension I guess.
I think if there’s one thing that’s especially innovative about the physical device, it’s the size. You only have to compare those pictures above to see how much smaller and more compact it was in comparison to the competition. Something you can slip into your pocket is a lot more useful than something you have to carry around in your hand. Even now, the iPod remains slimmer and smaller than any mainstream competitor. It’s hard to remember now (only a year later), but the Nano did indeed seem “impossibly small” the first time I held one.
And yes, it’s easy to say, “Let’s make it tiny”, but it’s clearly pretty hard to pull off in practice. And you can say it was the engineers that made it happen, but I imagine that engineers were responsible for the Nomad, and look what they came up with. I’m guessing at Apple they had either Jobs or Ive telling them “smaller” every time they showed a prototype at a design review. Is that ID innovation, engineering innovation, or tyrannical vision? Does it matter?
A close second on the innovation list would be the controls. Not just the actual clickwheel, but the way all the controls are edited down and clustered together. Think you could navigate the tiny scattered buttons on that Nomad in the dark? Most people can pick up an iPod for the first time and figure it out in less than 15 seconds. That’s incredibly important if you’re someone like my dad, standing at a kiosk in a store trying to make a purchasing decision about a new type of product you don’t completely understand. Even that Sony in the other thread, which is far better designed than the Nomad, has a big button labelled “Option”. WTF does that do?
A tutor of mine always used to say that ideas are cheep, and would place great emphases on the execution of ones ideas. Below is a ministry of sound (a UK club) mp3 player with a clip mechanism. This off the shelf turd has been on the market for months, where as apples new shuffle is only just beginning to ship.
The new shuffle isn’t particularly innovative, but is definitely well crafted with the usual apple flare.
Innovation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. This pink little minge clip has probably been rattling around a factory in china for well over a year.
For the record - the Nomad was done by a consulting ID firm, was pretty popular despite it’s relatively high price, and won a few awards (Editor’s Choice, Popular Mechanics, CES 2000).
The mandate from Creative was two-handed use, in order to be analogous to a CD player. Engineers did not design it - a team of ID’ers did.
The point however, is that Creative told them what they wanted, and the ID team did exactly that. The ID team did not question Creative and did not look at the product holistically, in a manner like Jobs and Ive probably did. This is why it was a limited success, and a blue hockey puck once the iPod emerged.