“It was the size of a deck of cards, could store about 1,000 songs and no one knew what to make of it,” Matt Hartley reports for The Globe and Mail.
“On Oct. 24, 2001, The New York Times published a story about a quirky new portable music player that was small enough to fit in a pants pocket. The story appeared on page 8 of the paper’s business section. Not exactly prime real estate,” Hartley recounts. “Analysts were bemused. The little device had limited commercial potential, they said. After all, it was made by a computer company. More importantly, it was compatible with less than 5 per cent of the computers in the United States.”
“Well, we know how that turned out,” Hartley reports. “While the global music industry bled revenue, Apple Computers [sic] Inc., as it was then known, locked down the digital-music scene with the introduction of the iPod and iTunes software and, two years later, the launch of iTunes Music Store.”
MacDailyNews Note: It was Apple Computer, Inc. No “s.”
Hartley continues, “While the onset of digital media forced a new reality onto the entertainment industry, it provided limitless opportunity for Apple. And its remarkable turnaround – from niche PC maker to the largest retailer of music in the U.S. – started long before Mr. Jobs pulled an iPod out of his pocket.”
There’s much more in the full article here.
