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Admittedly, they were kind of right about the iPod. The first and second gen iPods were massive failures for apple and sold fewer units than the Newton. The third generation barely broke even on r&d. Things didn't turn around til gen 4 and particularly the Mini, largely because Creative shot themselves in the foot with the Zen when they tried and massively failed to bury the iPod once and for all in 2004. The genius idea with the Zen Touch was to basically copy Apple's UI design, and try to also be a premium device at a similar price, but without using the premium materials. People ended up just seeing it as a cheap knockoff of the iPod, and largely ignored it moving forward. Other competitors ended up getting lost on weird side projects like turning everything into a dedicated video player or making stationary home devices for a hifi system. The iPod's success was largely predicated on Toshiba getting really good at manufacturing tiny spinning hard drives, pricing a premium product only slightly above the competition's more cheaply built flagship product pricing, and their competitors making a bunch of huge blunders at the same time for several years.
I don't know, these criticisms have strong slashdot's initial review of the iPod energy. you know, "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame."
it looks pretty groundbreaking and I think it will do well, and eventually there will be a more affordable version. look forward to trying it out.
Admittedly, they were kind of right about the iPod. The first and second gen iPods were massive failures for apple and sold fewer units than the Newton. The third generation barely broke even on r&d. Things didn't turn around til gen 4 and particularly the Mini, largely because Creative shot themselves in the foot with the Zen when they tried and massively failed to bury the iPod once and for all in 2004. The genius idea with the Zen Touch was to basically copy Apple's UI design, and try to also be a premium device at a similar price, but without using the premium materials. People ended up just seeing it as a cheap knockoff of the iPod, and largely ignored it moving forward. Other competitors ended up getting lost on weird side projects like turning everything into a dedicated video player or making stationary home devices for a hifi system. The iPod's success was largely predicated on Toshiba getting really good at manufacturing tiny spinning hard drives, pricing a premium product only slightly above the competition's more cheaply built flagship product pricing, and their competitors making a bunch of huge blunders at the same time for several years.