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This is point-on. It’s the exactly same with all of those myspace and facebook killers

http://twitter.com/richanomix

Well written.

And project management apps shouldn’t call themselves a basecamp killer?

The martial art of Judo takes a similar philosophical stance:

The word “judo” shares the same root ideogram as “jujutsu”: which may mean “gentleness”, “softness”, “suppleness”, and even “easy”, depending on its context. The use of jū in each of these words is an explicit reference to the martial arts principle of the “soft method”. The soft method is characterized by the indirect application of force to defeat an opponent. More specifically, it is the principle of using one’s opponent’s strength against him and adapting well to changing circumstances. For example, if the attacker was to push against his opponent he would find his opponent stepping to the side and allowing his momentum (often with the aid of a foot to trip him up) to throw him forwards (the inverse being true for pulling.)

Trying to use force to fight someone who is larger and stronger than you isn’t very effective, but being larger or stronger is a difference, rather than an advantage. Judo uses these differences to create an advantage, deflecting force in the direction it desires.

It seems pretty obvious that you need to innovate in a different direction from the market leader in order to succeed. I suspect Microsoft was attempting to do this with the Zune with that whole “social” thing, but people couldn’t bring themselves to ‘squirt’ each other with songs (and the T&Cs were onerous).

I’m working on a project right now in an existing market where there’s a clear market leader, but we’re attacking the same problem in a different direction (but we can easily replicate their solution, without diluting the value of the initial concept, once we’ve got some traction).

Unless you’ve got a massive warchest and are willing to spend it (Microsoft and the XBox), it’s the only way to go.

I agree, Apple definitely has a leg up. They are going to be hard to beat. What I really wonder is 10 years from now when we look back at this who will be on top.

The real question is who will out Netflix, Netflix?

That means superior industrial design,

Apple is very good at industrial design, but they aren’t the only game in town. This can be done.

an iTMS-beating catalogue of content,

I don’t see why. Find someone else’s iTMS-beating catalogue (amazon, perhaps?) and plug it in. Amazon makes most of the money instead of you, but you can still claim you “killed” the iPod.

and a better desktop experience than iTunes.

Winamp in the 90’s was a better desktop experience than iTunes. Ugh, ugh, and ugh.

It seems pretty obvious that you need to innovate in a different direction from the market leader in order to succeed.

Actually, I think Apple is a great example of why this is not true at all. Disruptive incrementalism is quite sufficient. Witness the iMac.

What is iTMS?

Tangentially speaking, I gotta agree with Cory on one point. I still rock Winamp instead of iTunes.

I’ve got to agree with Cory on all three points, and I’m not sure that the iPod’s success in the market is evidence against them.

My Mini-player, while far from perfect, surpasses my Nano in all areas mentioned. My Nano and iTunes just couldn’t ever seem to get out of my way so I could do basic music player stuff in an enjoyable way.

This post implies that when there is a dominant market leader that you shouldn’t try and compete. That seems very silly as almost all companies are created to compete in an existing market rather than trying to create a new one.

Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack and Ruby on Rails have all entered markets with strong dominant leaders. While your success is admirable, none of those products have clinched a significant market share. Project management is still dominated by Microsoft Project, CRM by Siebel and Oracle, Intranet by Microsoft Sharepoint, and application frameworks by Java and .NET.

Please note, I don’t aim to diss these products as I love them, but I am just pointing out. There is no reason another music player can’t (and should) try to oust Apple. They may even try smaller niche markets as your products have done.

The same argument could be directed back at Apple and its iPhone gaming strategy, which Greg Joswiak thinks will oust Nintendo and Sony’s handheld gaming systems.

Does david’s logic also mean that OS X is not a Windows killer simply because windows still dominates the market share?

:)

To follow Mauricio’s line of thinking and apply your own definition of success (by citing RoR and Basecamp) – given the number of sales of other MP3 or music players there are MANY other successful music players out there, as far as I can tell. Sure, the iPod is still the iconic music player, but there are a LOT of people who have chosen other options instead of the iPod for a variety of reasons.

Conceptually, I agree with David’s statement. That is, I would agree with him if a company was billing itself as the “iPod killer”. And maybe some are. But the link that he provides to back up that statement is a collection of news articles where CNet, LockerGnome, TG Daily, Google Shopping results, and a personal blog (among others) are the ones using the “iPod killer” terminology.

That doesn’t take away from his point though. I think it might be made stronger by saying that Apple must be smiling whenever a blog posting or a review uses that phrase. Because that shows that, in the customer’s mind, Apple is the leader. And since they are the ones who hand over the cash, that is a very, very good thing.

Similarly, the iPod never intended to kill anything. I see the expression “_” – killer as an attempt to cash in on the awareness of a certain product/service.

Focusing on creating a great offer and then polishing it with time would be a good path to lasting success. Climbing on a soapbox and shouting that your offer just killed something people already love is a very confusing message.

Choosing to compete with something people already love, without adding a new set of possibilities to the table raises the question “why would I buy from someone who can’t think of their own idea in the first place?”

iPhone-resembling phones are seen as iPhone knock-offs. All that I’ve seen so far have terrible, unusable UI.

The successful MP3 players out there have their own features that make a real difference, like hi-quality recording, etc. Apple’s offering of device+software+service has created a very well-known offering within a sweet spot of pricing, usability and convenience, with unified user experience. They have made their mistakes, and polished for years.

Cheers!

What’s wrong with being the Zune?

A lot of people would relish the opportunity to be a moderately successful, good product in a huge market.

We don’t all have to be iPods or even iPod-killers.

I don’t think DHH was saying that you can’t beat Apple. He’s just saying you can beat Apple by trying to become Apple and just doing what Apple does.

I agree.

The question, then is what does Apple do?

The answer, I believe, is taking existing hardware, coupled with existing software, slapping a black or silver finish on it, and marketing the shit out of it.

What’s wrong with being the Zune?

A lot of people would relish the opportunity to be a moderately successful, good product in a huge market.

The Zune is produced by Microsoft, who by their own terms have to dominate a market to be successful in it.

I amazed you like iTunes, David. It’s the epitome of a bloated, overdone, over-featured, “all things to all people” app – the exact thing you wouldn’t create at 37s.

Genius panel? Cover-flow? Completely obscuring burning to CD and ripping to MP3 ? Mixing selling music and playing music metaphors into a single interface suited to neither? Come on – none of this stuff is good. iTunes looks so much more like a 1995 Microsoft app than something put out by the post-resurrection Apple.

It’s the epitome of a bloated, overdone, over-featured, “all things to all people” app – the exact thing you wouldn’t create at 37s.

Quite probably, but at least it’s got the basics of purchasing a track and syncing it to the player right. Something competitors still struggle with.

GeelWonder, you are clueless. The reason that nobody has made a player that can match the iPod is that they have people like you in charge of doing it – you just don’t get it.

Sure, there were existing portable and desktop MP3 players when the iPod & iTunes were released, but Apple did a hell of a lot more than slap on a black or silver (or white) finish.

Existing hardware? One of the biggest reason no MP3 players really took off before the iPod is that they were either way too big to put into a pocket, or they didn’t have nearly enough storage. The iPod was the first one to combine small size and large capacity by using the first available 1.8 inch drive, which had never been used in another product. Another reason was that the interfaces were too clunky for scrolling through lots of songs, which was alleviated by the iPod wheel, which was also a first for a portable player.

Existing software? While they did NOT write the OS for the first iPod, they did design the interface, which was a big reason for its success. They did buy an existing MP3 player for the desktop to create iTunes, but they completely revamped the interface and inspiring the browsing interface that everyone else has copied now, instead of just using simple files and folders. In addition, they made it dead-simple to rip a CD and sync it to your iPod. You could do all of this before iTunes, but it damn sure wasn’t mass-market easy. And don’t forget about mobile OS X – let me know when someone writes a mobile OS that competes with that (I guess Android comes close).

While some people look at simple lists of features and think that the reason Apple has been successful is simply marketing, the millions of people who buy iPods do it because the iPod+iTunes experience is far more pleasant than any of the alternatives. Until one of their competitors actually figures that out (Zune seems to have come the closest), iTunes will continue to be dominant.

Ultimately I think the problem is one of features and choice. In terms of portable music choices I think we’ve pretty much seen the saturation of features and convergence devices.

The next logical step was the iPhone. It’s now the most successful smartphone on the market if you’re to believe the press.

Perhaps the focus should be on some technology that blends music stores and features. iTMS is a killer app for me. That said, there are some massive holes in it. I’d love to see some kind of integration with hulu, iTV, and twitter maybe. So I could see what folks I associate with are enjoying right now, find local schedules for programs I have paid to download, and see free online archives of programs I currently download and enjoy so when I’m ON my computer I can watch them.

That’s not a new product though. And that’s not a product your could easily monetize given its reliance on other proprietary systems at its core.

All these reasons and more make me think that the pundits are right when they say the iPod market is tapped out and Apple should move on to the next big thing. (Bringing back the Nintendo PowerGlove?)

I’ll echo Paul Hart above, the only way to “kill the iPod” is to design something entirely different that solves the same problems (listen to music on the move) in a different way.

Perhaps there’s an unmet customer need or market for creating non-self-promotional and cultish products :)

GeelWonder, you are clueless.

That may be. But your chronology et al. is out to lunch.

The reason that nobody has made a player that can match the iPod

Creatives not only match but beat Ipod hands down for the types of usage I need. The Nano, when it eventually came along, started to do somethings more like the Zen had been for 4 years.

is that they have people like you in charge of doing it – you just don’t get it.

I get it. I run Ironmans in my spare time. A hard drive isn’t going to cut it when I’m out for a long run. Not being able to buy a battery at a corner store isn’t going to cut it when I’m out for my long ride.

They do use existing hardware (as they did with the iMac, as they do with RISC processors, and many other ‘innovations’), and they do use existing software (like when they took FreeBSD, closed-sourced it and named is OS X ).

You don’t agree with my points, that’s fine—no skin off my nose.

“a better desktop experience than iTunes”

That at least, should not be hard.

To out-Apple Apple means a stronger vendor lock-in? No thanks.

My cousin Shivaja is an iPod killer. She keeps droping them over and over

By definition, labeling something as an iPod killer simply just makes everyone view it by its features. The tech industry needs to learn that features don’t sell products. Most of Apple’s products have less features than any of their peer equivalents.

I was just searching your archives for that post you wrote about how no one would ever be able to out-Sony the Walkman.

I don’t think you can beat Apple at their own game, but you can try to get to the future before they do. Apple integrated the store and the device and used industrial design to win users’ hearts. What is next?

What is the iPod not doing? What technologies are on the horizon that could be used to design the future of music players?

Still not an easy task, but you’re not trying to build a better MP3 player. You’re trying to design the future of music purchasing and listening.

The only iPod killer will be the iPhone.

John Gruber basically said the same thing about two and half a years ago.

When I was shopping for an MP3 player a few months back, I looked at the iPod and I just didn’t see anything that made it stand out from the rest. Yes, it’s got a great design, but so do many of the others. What’s the real difference between the clickwheel and the Zune’s d-pad? If you like one or the other, great, but that’s personal preference. I ended up picking the Zune and let me tell you, wireless sync rocks.

The iPod has mind-and-market share right now, but I can’t see how or why it deserves it. Can anyone explain why that is so without parroting Apple sales literature?

Why would someone introduce another MP3 player when there’s already so many of them on the market? Unless you’ve developed something that is truly original, what’s the point?

Look at Mac vs PC. Windows PC have at least 90% of the overall market but that doesn’t mean Apple can’t surive with 10% of the market.

“Now replace Microsoft and the Windows with the gorilla and blockbuster in Apple’s niche. Is Mac setting itself up to be a Windows?”

I’m not a big DHH fan—in fact I think he’s probably a very nice, very misguided guy on a lot of things.

But I think he’s right here. Trying to outdo someone on their own turf, with their own tactics, is a losing battle.

I think of all these individual copies of virtual albums in people’s pockets and it strikes me as completely unnecessary.

I want access to all my media wherever I am, not a subset. I want an MP3 player that receives my music in wireless streams. I would happily pay some central company to own the rights to an album if they’re happy to stream it to me.

Perhaps such a device could “kill the iPod”.

iPod is overpriced. Nothing special, really. Just a hype.

For folks not really understanding DHH ’s position in this post, simply read The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton M. Christensen

I also love iTunes, but since I got on the Pandora/iPhone train, my use of iTunes has plummeted. I haven’t seen a better device than the iPhone, but Pandora is absolutely doing something different. Those guys haven’t completely figured it out yet, but they seem headed in a great direction.

@GeeIWonder I’m sorry to hear that… I’m a huge DHH fan!

i

wow… i think’s ‘apostrophes kill this nice comment form!

epic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

@Kevin: Yeah, some of his fans are fans enough for all of us. ;)

This is more than just marketing-think. Once you get “xyz killer” in your head, you are a follower, not an innovator, right from the start.

Sansa Clip + Napster = Apple experience if not better.

It’s rare that device makers bill themselves as iPod-killers, it’s usually the consumers that like to see a big bloody battle and so they try to set everyone against each other.

Of course the dripping irony here is that you’re saying there can only be one media player and it must be the biggest and best and work for all situations, that there always has to be a king yet when it comes to talking about 37signals or Basecamp you usually preach that it doesn’t always have to be an all or none situation.

I cannot stand iTunes. It is so very difficult to use. I have seldomly ever been as frustrated with a piece of software. It is so restrictive and counter intuitive. It makes no sense. The Apple hardware is nice, however. I own 5 MP3 players and 1 iPod. I will not buy another iPod until they get rid of iTunes. I am flabbergasted that anyone likes iTunes.

Where Apple is doing well is the accessories. Things like docking ports from 3rd party vendors. I wish my Sansa used the same type of port the iPod does. What is hurting the iPod “killers” is they do not standardize and instead use special proprietary ports. Only the headphone jack is standard. Why can’t I buy an after market dock to play all my MP3 players in my car?

I do not get you “apple lovers” ...

Seriously, iTunes …. hah?

From its inability to sync multiple iPods to its “central” computer to the rather strange way of handling albums to its inability to provide custom titles to the tracks that iTunes has no clue how to lookup; it deserves a status of crap-ware in my dictionary.

It was one annoying experience to use that piece …. I can not even say software. It has “my way or no way” written all over.

iPod …. well maybe you got a point about iPod but iTunes … common you gotta be a bit more in tune with yourself …

I agree that anyone that sets out to “kill the iPod” is already in the wrong frame of mind.

But the thing with technology is that it moves so quickly, we tend to forget its past very quickly also.

Anyone remember Prodigy? Dialup? Bag phones?

All technology products die at some point…they are either replaced, transformed into something else, or they just become “no longer useful.”

If nothing else, the natural progression of technology will determine not IF, but how and when the iPod is “killed.” Sooner or later someone smarter/better/faster comes along.

everybody likes ipod in china, it is a expensive toy.