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Re:20 years of the iPod by Retric on Sunday October 24, 2021 @12:29PM (#28979425)
The Archie Jukebox 6000 was freaking huge because it used a laptop sized HDD. It was portable much like a boom box was portable, but at the size of a CD player and a small stack of CD’s it wasn’t clearly better.

The 2001 iPod cost 400$, but it was smaller than a CD player (4.02inx2.43inx0.78in) and could hold 1,000 songs. That’s point where it could start to kill off personal CD players.

Re:20 years of the iPod by FabHK on Sunday October 24, 2021 @01:10PM (#28979856)
Exactly, the Archie Jukebox didn't fit into a jeans pocket. There were MP3 players that did fit into a jeans pocket, but they used flash, which at the time only had the capacity for a few CDs at most. So, it was the iPod with which you could carry your entire music library (or a good chunk of it, nearly 100 CDs) in your pocket.
Re:20 years of the iPod by Someone on Sunday October 24, 2021 @05:12PM (#28981980)
Wikipedia also claims (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series):

“The Jukebox is historically notable for shipping with a user interface and operating system so unfriendly and bug-ridden as to inspire Björn Stenberg and other programmers to develop a superior, free and open-source replacement operating system. This project became Rockbox.[citation needed]”

Anybody know whether that (especially the “so unfriendly and bug-ridden” part; that Rockbox started on that device seems less controversial to me) is true?