Comment by Causality1

The key to the ipod's success was, in my opinion, the iTunes store and Apple's excellent marketing. At no point in the ipod's history was it particularly innovative with its hardware in comparison to competing devices but the enormous amounts of work that went into forging an infrastructure-level cultural presence paid dividends when it came to ipod sales. For over a decade iTunes was the place you bought music online, just as now YouTube is where you watch user-created videos and Gmail is where you get a free email address.