

What people said about the iPhone 9 years ago - j_baker
http://garry.posterous.com/what-people-said-about-the-ipod-9-years-ago-w

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CalmQuiet
Critique Steve what you will. Point out iPad's lacking features what you
will... The point to learn from decades of digital naysayers who proved
clueless is:

Predicting how people will use (and how many will buy) is _not_ as easy as it
looks. No where as easy as Monday morning quarterbacking. And Apple/Steve
certainly have no 100% track record. But they have batted >.500 - in a
ballgame (CE & PCs) where batting >.300 is impressive.

~~~
FluidDjango
Plus... it's naive (IMHO) to consider iPad 1.0 as a static target. With the
Release Event behind them you can safely bet they are working on rounding out
expanded features for iPad 1.x, 2.0, etc. And (reliable or not) as the
following AppleInsider article suggests Apple has probably held back
additional features and target audiences:

[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/apple_to_targe...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/29/apple_to_target_ipad_at_business_users_through_new_features_sources.html)

If you try to predict the long-term success of iPad based on 1.0 you just
don't get it.

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liquidben
Good idea: Comparing criticism at the iPad's introduction to criticism at the
iPod's introduction

Bad idea: Cherry-picking quotes that are catchy at best, like those that
complain that new product did not meet unfounded expectations

Worst idea: Saying iPhone instead of iPod.

~~~
j_baker
Yeah.... I submitted this on my iPhone. I'd edit it if I could.

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unexpected
I don't mind continuing to discuss the iPad, but really? We've had the exact
same commentary posted in at least five different articles on HN. If we want
to talk about the iPad, fine, but I don't see why there's a need to keep
having articles referencing how much people hated the iPod when it came out.
The points been made. We can criticize, condemn, laud, all we want, now we
just have to sit back and see how it does.

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bgraves
You probably mean "iPod" - not "iPhone".

Don't forget about the classic Slashdot commentary...

 _> >No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. _

[http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257#to...](http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257#topcomment)

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nym
To be fair the iPod wasn't very good when it first came out. Criticism was
warranted. Yes, it evolved to dominate the market, but that doesn't mean every
new product that Apple comes out with will follow the exact same path of
success.

~~~
roc
Criticism is _always_ warranted.

The pitfall though, is that most geeks criticize the spec sheet. And in the
case of the iPod and iPhone, the spec-list criticism --though still absolutely
valid-- was wholly irrelevant.

It seems if Apple had held no event and released no videos, simply mailed out
a PDF of specs and photos, 90% of the reaction to this device would be
identical.

And it would be just as useful in determining whether users ultimately adopted
the device or not.

------
raheemm
_Proof you can't listen to the commentators and the haters. You must continue
to work on your product with extreme focus. It's easy to armchair criticize
things, but hard to deliver. So... deliver._ \- golden words

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compay
Just because some people on a forum laughed at the iPod when it launched
doesn't make the iPad awesome.

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fjabre
Hindsight is 20-20. I wonder how many on this forum would have said the same
thing about iPod as these guys did.

I resisted the iPod b/c of it's closed system for many years. That's what I
didn't like about it when it came out but eventually my resistance was eroded.
I broke down and got one and haven't looked back.

Today Apple has become the dominant player in tech when they used to be a
niche player. It still amazes me. There is no Pepsi to Apple's Coke. Google
could be it but they seem to be wavering as of late, pun intended.

~~~
gnurant
Think you are right there. The competition somehow get it soo wrong - they
need to up their game.

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keatsta
I've seen variations of this article so many times, where are the counter
examples? What were people saying about the Apple TV, Macbook Air or any other
failure you can think of when it was first announced? The moral here isn't
"The iPad will end up being good, too" as so many people I have seen take from
it, just that it's hard to predict what will be a commercial success based on
stats, or more frankly, how good it is.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Not sure why the Macbook Air is considered such a big failure. Do you have any
data that supports this? I don't, but anecdotally they don't seem to be a
major flop. We have a number of MBAs in our team, and everyone using them are
very happy with them. They still seem to sell when I go into a Mac store.

~~~
keatsta
I mentioned it only based on what I had heard from my own coworkers and such.
Most of the data I'm looking up now show it being a moderate success
commercially, albeit with declining profits. My point remains, though, as I
don't think the majority of the comments made about it at the time of
unveiling were predicting "moderate success".

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maukdaddy
Wait...

1\. Copy/paste text from forums

2\. Post to blog

3\. Profit???

~~~
rinich
You forgot step 0:

0\. Invent an enormous blogging platform and be an all-around cool guy

Garry links frequently get my auto-upvote.

------
kingkongreveng_
People said it was just another uninteresting mp3 player. They were right, no?

Didn't the iPod rise to market leader have far more to do with marketing than
any performance merit?

~~~
xsmasher
No, it became the market leader by ignoring the feature race and creating a
device that was usable by "normal people." It wasn't the samllest, or the
biggest screen, or the most storage, but Apple grew the market to include
everyone, not just gadget freaks.

The clickwheel and iTunes sofware were part of the equation, and the iTunes
store was the other. If I had told you nine years ago that your nontechnical
family members would soon be downloading music from the internet and playing
it on their portable device, would you have believed it? Would any amount of
marking have gotten them to use a Diamond Rio and MusicMatch?

~~~
kingkongreveng_
> usable by "normal people."

I haven't owned an iPod, but I remember setting a couple up for my family on a
PC. It was _NOT_ some cakewalk. I hit problems and syncing later broke.

There was never anything notably usable about the ipod vs. competing models,
especially those with the "drop the mp3 files on the usb drive" approach.

