“I don’t hate Apple. I don’t even hate Apple-lovers. I do, however, possess deep odium for the legions of Apple polishers in the press corps who salute every shiny gadget the company parades through downtown Cupertino as if they were members of the Supreme Soviet viewing the latest ICBMs at the May Day parade.” - story

In a sense, Apple’s genius isn’t so much the mp3 player itself or the design (which I myself find amazingly underwhelming). It is the way how they combined a successful object with the notion of “upgrades”. In a sense, Apple’s “ipod” is a combination of Sony’s walkman and of cell phones, which also get new (and utterly useless) features continously. Since everybody is literally buying the notion that you just have to get “upgraded” versions all the time, and since Apple manages to maintain an inexplicable extra mystique (supposedly everything they produce is “cool”; note how just years ago, the general public disliked Apple for that very reason: Only utter nerds would use their products), it’s easy to see how Apple has hit the entrepreneurial jackpot. For now.