Word: ipod
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...little story. Call it the Parable of the Concept Car. "Here's what you find at a lot of companies," he says, kicking back in a conference room at Apple's gleaming white Silicon Valley headquarters, which looks something like a cross between an Ivy League university and an iPod. "You know how you see a show car, and it's really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws...
...Jobs doesn't care just about winning. He's willing to lose. He has done it often enough. He's just not willing to be lame, and that may, increasingly, be the winning approach. The iPod proved that design and ease of use are at least as important as increased functionality, and the iTunes Music Store proved that goes for smoothly integrating physical devices with online services too. "I think the definition of product has changed over the decades," observes Tony Fadell, vice president of engineering in the iPod division, who played a key role in conceiving and building...
...talk would not sound so blunt. But because he looks and acts like such a cool guy--this is the guy who put Lennon and Gandhi on thousands of billboards-- the words are bracing, to say the least. And yet that approach produces shiny, innovative things like the new iPod. Even though it costs the same ($299) as its immediate predecessor, which Apple introduced only 15 months ago, the new iPod has more memory (30 GB as opposed to 20 GB), and it's thinner (0.43 in., as opposed to 0.6 in.). Plus, it plays video. The screen is just...
There are other portable video players out there, but none look as nice or are as easy to use as the new iPod. And it works well--seamlessly, as Jobs would say--with the iTunes Music Store, which gives users a quick, legal and reasonably cheap way to buy video content (which so far consists of music videos, some charming Pixar shorts and a few TV shows from ABC, including Lost and Desperate Housewives). That is the kind of integration that Apple's approach makes possible...
...iPod's potential is so huge, it inspires even Jobs to a burst of understatement. "There is no market today for portable video," he says. "We're going to sell millions of these to people who want to play their music, and video is going to come along for the ride. Anyone who wants to put out video content will put it out for this. And we'll find out what happens." Yes, we will. We're all coming along for the ride, and we all know who's going to be driving...