An exercise machine that's effortless to use, you say? :-p

I was a naysayer about smartphones/iPhones -- why would I want all these things globbed into one thing instead of my beautiful modular setup now?

Here, too, I thought -- it's an Android tablet bolted to an exercise bike.

Not saying that either the Peloton or the iPhone were epoch-shattering brilliances. Just noting that, as you suggest, sometimes putting together things that used to be separate is, well, a good and useful thing.

It's all about the experience. Same as all early Apple "i" products... the same tech was already out there, Apple just polished it way better than everybody else.

Actually, you could do much more with non-iPod devices than you ever could with one. Beyond the price advantage, the cheaper alternatives played multiple audio/video file formats, played FM radio and did voice recordings without an additional dongle, and didn't require creating an iTunes account to do something as basic as sync album art.