The Fallen #1: iPod

iPod

“We love music, and it’s always good to do something you love,” Jobs, dressed in his trademark jeans and black mock turtleneck, told the audience as he addressed the audience at WWDC on the morning of 23 October 2001.

Apple, best known as the maker of Macintosh computers, was about to take one of the biggest risks in its history, something that would eventually make the company into the powerhouse consumer electronics juggernaut it is today.

The idea was to induct a digital music player which we today famously know as the iPod. Now, 21 years later, since, the last update in 2019 the company has decided to discontinue the production of iPods. So here’s a throwback of one of a kind revolutionary idea that redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared.

Way back when it was released the headline was simple: “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

Before the iPod, MP3 players were either big and unwieldy or small and useless. Steve Jobs tasked Apple Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive and a group of hardware engineers to produce an alternative that could become iconic. Developed in less than one year, the 5GB iPod, holding 1,000 songs, was unveiled on October 23, 2001, for $399. The name came from a freelance copyrighter who, after seeing the prototype, thought of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the phrase “Open the pod bay door, Hal!”

In 2003 Apple introduced the iTunes Store, a massive media library that allowed iPod users to legally purchase music over the Internet and download the music files to their computers for transfer to their iPods. Full-length television programs and motion pictures later became available for download through iTunes as well. The success of the iTunes Store allowed Apple to become one of the leading retailers of music in the United States.

Later releases in the iPod product line featured greater storage capacity, smaller sizes, more colours for the case, game and video playback capability, accelerometer input, and touchscreen interfaces.

Users could plug their iPods into various products to play music on a home or car stereo system, track exercise statistics, or record audio. The popularity of the iPod even led to a new form of Internet-distributed audio program “The Podcast”.

The rise of the iPhone and the coming of all the music streaming subscription services (including Apple Music) cannibalized iPod. And thus the iPods were discontinued with Apple stating:

“Today, the spirit of the iPod lives on. And with our current line of streaming devices — there’s no better way to enjoy, discover, and experience music.”

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