Buying In - (Page 64) 64 rob walker one thousand songs—which was a lot more than most popular MP3 players at the time. But it was also quite pricey: about $400, so much more than existing digital players that it prompted one online skeptic to suggest that the name might be an acronym for “Idiots Price Our Devices.” In rational terms, the object seemed to deliver on quality and perhaps would deliver on pleasure—but the cost looked like a big problem. So at first, sales weren’t all that impressive. According to Advertising Age, Apple spent $28 million advertising the iPod in the United States in its first few months on the market, and consumer bought just sixty-nine thousand of them—meaning the company was actually spending a little more than $400 for every device it sold on marketing alone. This called to mind the Newton, Apple’s penbased personal organizer that was ahead of its time but carried a bloated price tag to its doom. Yet within a year or two, it was clear that the iPod was not another Newton. And in fact, by 2007 Apple had sold upwards of one hundred million of its music players worldwide. One of the initial skeptics whom the iPod later won over was, actually, me. While I’m a devoted music fan, and I was immediately attracted to the idea of one thousand songs in my pocket, I was also put off by the price. Couldn’t I really get by with a less powerful but much cheaper digital music player— if I felt I had to have such a device at all? I remember going into an Apple store during this period handling one of the firstgeneration iPods, and telling the clerk it was simply too expensive. A few months later (in the summer of 2002), I bought one, full price. By then I had worked out my rationales: It would make airplane trips for work more bearable; I’ve been an Apple customer since college and believed they made good
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