What Was the First Reaction to the iPod?

David Senra, reading Leander Kahney, says the first reaction to the iPod was muted. The audience learned the price was $499 and the player worked only on the Mac. One early reviewer said the iPod stood for idiots price our devices. Sales stayed modest until two years later, when the iPod was made fully compatible with Windows. Apple went on to sell 450 million iPods.

The team loved music and targeted a market full of second-rate products. One of Steve Jobs's talents was spotting markets filled with second-rate products. Early MP3 players on the market functioned poorly. Jony Ive's design effort was to simplify, remove, and reduce. The team were customer number one, building a product they were looking forward to getting their hands on. The first time Jobs played a song on an early iPod prototype, the reaction was that the iPod was going to be so cool.

Looking back, Steve Jobs believed the creation of the iPod was quintessential Apple. If any product catalyzed Apple's reason for being, the iPod did, because the iPod combined Apple's technology base, legendary ease of use, and design. Jobs held the iPod up as a good example of why Apple is on the earth.