Part of the History of Computing curriculum for the year 2020.

Here are the lessons to learn from iPod:

1. Initial Pricing matters. This they should have learned from the Cube. Again, the product has "vastly expensive" tagged onto it.
   
   
2. Differentiation matters. Style is not a differentiation that lasts for very long. Doing things differently is. The iMac teaches that lesson to people who want to learn from it. PCs with a stylish enclosure failed, the iMac was a success. Because in addition to the stylish enclosure it possessed other remarkable features (at least remarkable for the price point) and Apple could follow up on these at least for a while (adding firewire, DVD, CD-RW while keeping the price point). The success of the iMac is beginning to fade because Apple ran out of things to add to it. In summary, the iPod´s only technological differentiation is the FireWire port which can be implemented using standard components. (Ah, I hear "easy to use". Check out the software, will you? It is primitive. That is why it is easy to use. It can not do much anyways.)
   
   
3. The customer matters. While it might be safer for Apple to produce an MP3 player, what people really want is an MP3 recorder. What people want is to share information. Turning off external access to the MP3s might please the lawyers but not the customers. Lawyers don´t pay your bills.
   
   

So, while the iPod certainly has commercial potential, it will not be the raving success to follow up the iMac. Nice try, though. - Discuss