If you inserted a CD, iTunes instantly offered to rip it for you, fully automatically. Didn't even need to fiddle with settings, it was literally just pressing 'ok'.
I'd say of the technically challenged there was a subset that used iTunes to buy maybe a few tracks or albums, and certainly not enough to keep them 'trapped' in the Apple ecosystem.
"If you inserted a CD, iTunes instantly offered to rip it for you, fully automatically."
You're correct. I think my memory of product timelines in the early days is a bit hazy.
Even still, I'd love to see data that ripping from CD was a prevalent use case at all in the early days. I believe it was originally intended as an onboarding process / ecosystem-lock mechanism. The assumption: a lot of consumers (at the time) have CD libraries; by allowing them to easily port over to iTunes, we can port their libraries onto our ecosystem; from there, we have them. That was clearly the idea...but I'd love to learn more about how common a use case this ended up being.
