Jobs on iPod's Cultural Impact
October 17, 2006 | Levent OZLER
With iPod's fifth birthday around the corner, Steve Jobs discusses the MP3 player's design, the cool factor and the impact on how we listen to music.
"We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise and the software expertise, including iTunes.
One of the biggest insights we have was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but to manage it in iTunes.
Other companies tried to do everything on the device itself and made it so complicated that it was useless.
Look at the design of a lot of consumer products-they're really complicated surfaces.
We tried make something much more holistic and simple.
When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there.
But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions.
Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there.
We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through."
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