iPod Fights Back

I, like many, blogged about and linked to ipodsdirtysecret.com. Well, we might all have been played. It appears that the guys spreading the anti-iPod meme don’t actually care that much about the truth, and the fact that there are now better options for when your batteries die ($99 will fix that, still not cheap but better than the $255 they present in the video.)

In this vein, JonnyX forwarded me this link to a blog post collecting Slashdot anti-iPod predictions from its introduction in 2001. Bearing in mind that it has since sold 1.4 million units, the predictions include:

  • “There is no future in a $400 (about $250 too expensive) firewire-only (5% of computer users) hardrive-based (read: fragilee) mp3 player. Any one of these critical flaws might doom the product – take them all together and you have another classic corporate farce.”
  • “There’s no doubt it’s a cool device. They’ll just never sell any of them. The intersection of people who a) have firewire b) have $400 to spend on yet another way to play music and c) are willing to listen to music on headphones is very small. Don’t get it for Christmas–get it in January when it will be down to $199.”
  • “right now is not the time to introduce an expensive MP3 player, no matter how cool it might be (looks great and is so tiny!) … the days of people having $400 burning a hole in their pockets died a few months back. i wonder why they released this right now, of all times. i mean, it just doesn’t make sense. the iMac made sense when it was released. the cube didn’t, and it’s dead. i worry that this will suffer the same fate.”

It’s kind of satisfying to see the kneejerk /. negativity prove so very wrong.

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dave

Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.