With the 5th anniversary of the iPod, Newsweek spoke with Steve Jobs about the iPod, iTunes Store and Zune as a potential threat.
According to Jobs, one major reason for the iPod's success was its relative simplicity:
Look at the design of a lot of consumer productsthey're really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple.
Meanwhile, courting the music studios to distribute music through iTunes was an 18 month process, with them gradually coming over. During the negotiations, the initial limited distribution to the Mac platform only was seen as a positive feature.
"If we're completely wrong and you completely screw up the entire music market for Mac owners, the sandbox is small enough that you really won't damage the overall music industry very much."
Finally, Jobs was asked if he was worried about Microsoft's upcoming media player (Zune) and its "community" features:
In a word, no. I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.
