Walkman, iPod top PC mag's gadgets
updated 08:20 pm EST, Sat December 24, 2005
PC Mag\'s top 50 gadgets
Apple's iPod is the second behind the Sony Walkman in PC World's . "If the Walkman is the aging king of portable media players, Apple's iPod is prince regent. It rules the realm of digital music like no other device: According to the NPD Group, more than eight out of ten portable players sold at retail by mid-2005 were iPods. Yet when the $399 iPod first appeared in October 2001, it was nothing special. It featured a 5GB hard drive and a mechanical scroll wheel, but worked only with Macs. A second model released the following July offered a 20GB hard drive, a pressure-sensitive touch wheel, and a Windows-compatible version."
"But the third-generation player, which appeared in April 2003, proved the charm: A 40GB drive, built-in compatibility with Windows and Mac, support for USB connections, and a host of other small improvements made it wildly popular, despite its relatively high price and poor battery life. Now the fifth-generation iPod threatens to do the same thing for a new breed of portable video players. The iPod is dead; long live the iPod."
The report ranks the iPod as the top gadget of 2001, the year it was introduced, while Apple's Newton MessagePad ranked No. 28 on the top 50 list.
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Joined: May 1999
Nothing Special?
Um, it seems to me (I read) that when the iPod first came out, it was (basically) the same price as any other plain old 5 GB hard drive one could buy....BUT...it came with a cool music player AND synchronized with a very cool music program. Not what other similarly priced 5 GB hard drives where shipping with.
Not only has Apple been FIRST on the consumer market with awesome gadgets, they are generally much cheaper than what the competition is offering.
Then "the market" produces so many competitors, the prices drop, but Apple's don't...by much. This, I guess, has partly earned them the reputation of being expensive.
But it's a fact of history that Apple has often put out products well ahead of its time that have been less expensive (sometimes by a lot) than the competitors of that moment in time. The iPod, the QuickTake digital cameras, inkjet printers, laser printers, panorama stitching software, 32 bit microprocessors, 32 bit color, networking, etc...
Maybe the world can turn a new leaf this year and start believing in the truth instead of the lies of Microsoft and their warped associates who are under Microsoft's gun.