How many of you people actually own an iPod? Truth is almost everyone owns an iPod. On April 9 2007, somewhere in California, the 100 millionth iPod was sold and guess what? the world population is 6600 million, making 1 person in every 6 or 7 a proud owner of the music player and making it the music player with the highest sales ever in history. What made everyone own an iPod other than other MP3 players? Can the iPod really outlast every music player that ever made it to shelf or does it have interface so perfect that no flaws can be found?
The iPod was introduced by revolutionary CEO of Apple Computers- Steve Jobs. His name has become a widely known name because of his great success and in my honest opinion, the world’s most ironic success story. For those who don’t know about Jobs he actually got kicked out of the company he started the company, then known as NeXT, was going into the reds after they fired him. Having only sold 50,000 machines in a year they moved on to software development and made games such as “DOOM” and “Quake”. By this time Jobs was already founding another company- Apple Inc. Eventually being the brilliant man he was Jobs bought over NeXT, the very own company that he started and was kicked out of, for a whooping US$429 million.
From his success story, we all know that Steve Jobs was no ordinary man, he had great foresight and literally able to predict the future. In 2001, Jobs announced to the world the greatest media player that ever walked the face of the Earth with the slogan “Put 1000 songs in your pocket”. At the same time, Creative, a local company also introduced the MP3 player. What was the difference between Creative and Apple’s media players? What was Apple’s secret recipe that owned Creative flat on their faces?
Firstly i would say commercialism of the iPod. People in those days were not exposed to playing songs right out from their music players, they would usually need discs or mini-discs which were bulky and very limited. With the Slogan of “Put 1000 songs in your pocket”, Apple directly appealed to the people who had difficulty with arranging their discs, changing discs every time whenever you want to listen to another artist and many more. Moreover the idea of putting a 1000 songs in your pocket was near to impossible at those times. Other than the catchy phrase, Apple had great advertising with the green background, black shadow of a person listening to the iPod and the distinctive white iPod that struck out; Simple yet attractive, the iPod had assured their users of its user friendly-ness and simplicity of design.
The iPod’s user interface (UI) was also way better than the MP3 player’s. Using a unique “clickwheel” which allowed everything to be done by a single finger be it play, pause, stop, volume control, next song, etc; users could select a function and scroll along the wheel by sliding their fingers across- something completely new to the world. Compared to the many buttons that the MP3 player has to offer, it was obvious that the iPod appealed to people of all ages and once again the simplicity of usage. The “clickwheel” was so successful that Apple decided to buy the copyrights for it.
Graphic User Interface also known as GUI was too, one of the major factors of the iPod’s great success. Jobs who saw the potential of GUI in operating systems (OS) definitely know what he was doing when he introduced GUI into the iPod’s OS. For those of the tech noobs that are reading this GUI refers to a visual desktop which could be interacted with by scrolling easily with a mouse or a track ball for the iPod’s case, the clickwheel. Songs were also sorted in various ways automatically when you transfer it over to the iPod which eliminated the need to do filing bringing great convenience to the lazy people who wants to find their songs fast. The backlight was a great addition to the iPod too, allowing the usage of it in the dark.
The design of the iPod was simple and sleek yet durable as well. The iPod uses flash drives which had 10% lower failure rate than that of a hard disk; smaller and able to last longer, Jobs has really done his homework as to perfect the iPod. Rigorous testings were also done to ensure the durability of the iPod when questions were raised to the frail looking iPod Nano when it was first introduced. When it was first released, it was 40mm wide and 90mm long, 6.9mm in thickness and weigh barely over 47 grams. It indeed suited the name Nano but could it stand up to the tests that were about to come? Surprisingly the results has proven that Apple has indeed produced yet another quality product- The nano was dropped from a one story building 5 times before the screen went blank, there was still backlight and music could still be heard. It was dropped from the third story 2 times before the screen went blank completely but music could still be heard and it was finally destroyed when it was run over by an SUV 3 times. Incredible.
Indeed Apple has developed a great product that lived up to its sales. To date, Apple has sold more than 150 million iPods worldwide, increasing their sales boost from 2007 to 2008 by a whooping 50% increment and with the release of the much anticipated i would say “successor”- the iPhone, which would be marketed and designed the same way as of an iPod, with its own multi-sensor touchscreen with “Big Boy” internet experience with WiFI, capabilities of an iPod as a portable media player, it is a quad band phone which meets international standards the world is looking at the next best selling mobile phone. Three cheers for the iPhone! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!
In case you were wondering…
1.None of this was ripped from anywhere HAH! (nothing here ever was)
2.ill probably write about Macdonalds next ^^
3.I love Meiji milk
4.This is for you Apple Fans
