I, for one, found the click-wheel to be an innovation strong enough to switch from other MP3 players. I have, and had at the time of the iPhone release, a large music collection, thanks to my interest in jam bands that allow for legal downloads of recordings from their concerts. I tried many mp3 players, both before and after the release of the iPod. None matched the ease or speed of navigation provided by the iPod. There's a reason that, after the release of the iPod, no other MP3 player had more than a tiny sliver of market share. The click wheel was an innovation. Yes, they patented it, so nobody could mimic it. But to claim that it was not an innovation is ignoring its functionality and novelty at the time it was released.

> MP3 players were already pretty mainstream when the iPod came around and it didn't really add much.

That's like saying that cell phones with color screens were already pretty mainstream when the iPhone came around and it didn't really add much.

I think you have forgotten just how different the iPod was.

Let's add the Mac to this party. Do you think that the Mac was just reinventing earlier standards on the market?

> MP3 players were already pretty mainstream when the iPod came around and it didn't really add much.

In the world of techies, perhaps, but it hadn't made much of a dent per-iPad in the mainstream consumer market. http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1695501/ipod-mp3-player-ad...

The iPod didn't add much, when you're a techie looking at technical specs.

What the iPod added was fewer features (yes, that's a good thing when you do it right) and usability. It did what people wanted, and in a way that regular people could actually use. For reasons I can't comprehend, a large number of technical people continue to be unable to see the value in that, but it does provide immense value, and that's why the iPod was so popular for so long.

It's pretty hard to see the iPhone and iPad as anything other than a revolution. Similar to how Windows was a revolution in desktop computing (whether you liked it or not).

"Gaining widespread adoption" was never an area Apple was very good at. They were always good at creating consumer-focused PCs. The initial line of MacBooks and iMacs are good examples of this — minuscule user base compared to Windows, but built to Apple's standards of what a computer should be. Their initial aim for the iPhone was to capture 1% of the market, they hardly expected the success they received.

Even if all they do is do things better and more polished than others, that's something any company would do well to emulate.

And sometimes doing things simply in a "more polished" way is revolutionary.

The early, pre-iPod mp3 players were an absolute mess when it came to navigating your music. That doesn't show up on a spec sheet, but "creating the first mp3 player that lets you actually navigate your music in a simple and enjoyable manner" is pretty freaking revolutionary in my book.

I agree 100% with the first two sentences - but their strong point is exactly that they finish their products too. It is important to execute projects well (enough) and to add polish too - and Apple excels at that. (to be fair, their UX is far from perfect IMHO... but it is apparently good enough)

Saying that Apple is good at "gaining widespread adoption" is kind of like saying that J. K. Rowling is good at "being read".