Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes to manage their library, and were hence locked in to the iPod/iTunes eco-system. There was no reasonable alternative.
Manually copying mp3 files to a Nokia or Blackberry just didn't come close to cutting it, and any attempts by those companies to compete with iTunes on the desktop ended in miserable failure due to piss-poor software quality.
> Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes to manage their library, and were hence locked in to the iPod/iTunes eco-system. There was no reasonable alternative.
Sorry, not true. I had a large music collection, and did not bother with iPod in the early days (and when I tried much later, didn't like scrolling wheel). It did not work with OGG Vorbis, nor could it have any moderate amount of storage. My DAP had 40 GB: iRiver H340. This was around 2003/2004.
My collection at that time ('05-ish) was mp3, ogg, & flac, ~33% each. WinAMP was still king (and still is, dammit!) and could even manage my iPod Nano without needing to install itunes bloatware.
A statement like "Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes" is ignorant to the point where I almost feel insulted.
I can't be the only person who downloaded mp3s from Limewire and uploaded to my iPod. I think a lot of my friends did that too. Were the majority of iPod users already locked in by that point through the iTunes ecosystem? If so, what locked them in (the song purchases)?
I always used my iPod Nano with KDE's music player/library AmaroK. I also had a Mac at that time, and purchased a lot of albums too. Since DRM was removed at that time, I either added them to my music library or copied to my iPod via my Mac.
At the end of the day, using an iPod and iTunes neither limiting nor locking-in.
There were quite a few programs that synced iTunes playlists to non-Apple phones. This supports your assertion that people were dependent on iTunes for library management, but not that there was lock-in to Apple hardware. I feel that it was the seamless ease of iTunes/iPod/iPhone that won, rather than a hard moat.
Manually copying mp3 files to a Nokia or Blackberry just didn't come close to cutting it, and any attempts by those companies to compete with iTunes on the desktop ended in miserable failure due to piss-poor software quality.