I wouldn’t read it that way. Jobs was good at noticing something would become possible 2-3 years before the rest of the industry. Flash-based players existed back then, and would have followed the trajectory the iPod jumped on a few years after it launched. The iPod interface was middling. (iTunes really, really sucked, but the device was nice)
Enabling podcasts was a big deal though. I’ll give them that.
iTunes was amazing. It’s UI was so successful it guided most of the Mac’s for next decade: Coverflow and Spotlight are direct descendants.
Every major OS has Spotlight-like UI these days. You can thank iTunes for the search-as-filter paradigm.
It also did everything you’d need regarding MP3s. You could rip CDs, organize and burn them, have the lyrics and album artwork show neatly while displaying a cool set of animated waveforms…
I miss it dearly. The fact that it became a behemoth and later Apple Music was a tragedy.
> Every major OS has Spotlight-like UI these days. You can thank iTunes for the search-as-filter paradigm.
I think your Apple bias is clouding your memory.
Apple certainly didn't invent the Spotlight UI. Quicksilver did it before on OS X, and my memory is hazy, but it also might've been inspired by another app.
iTunes also didn't invent the search-as-filter paradigm. I remember using something similar on foobar2000 in the early 2000s, and it might've been available even before in some Winamp plugins. Again, hazy memory, and it's difficult to track down these things now with any certainty.
I'm not arguing against your love for iTunes, but I think you're overstating its influence on software design.
And before Quicksilver there was LaunchBar, which pre-dates OS X having originally shipped for NeXT. I believe I starting using LaunchBar during the OS X public Beta, and I still use it.
You can download all of the old version of LaunchBar including for NeXT:
Apple didn't invent much. Quite a bit of their hardware design is inspired by dieter rams, a lot of their software is inspired by similar features from other operating systems. Most recently, the iOS widget system.
What apple does is perfect that design. iTunes didn't invent search-as-filter or the general UI layout, but it certainly perfected it.
Every public source tells the story that the iPod went from idea to introduction in 9 months. Jobs also never wanted iTunes on Windows. He was dragged kicking and screaming into doing it.
Enabling podcasts was a big deal though. I’ll give them that.