FEATURE:
Talking About a Revolution
The iPod at Twenty
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WHEN it comes to anniversaries…
I normally focus on albums. There is an important music device that turns twenty this month. On 23rd October, 2001, the first iPod was introduced. I have discussed the history of the iPod before. I will go on to explain why it was so important for me and so many other people in 2001. Twenty years ago, our music listening capabilities were to be transformed. This article talks about the background of the iPod and the launch of he first model:
“The Creation of the iPod
In the decade before the iPod, Apple had seen the failure of the Newton, a bet on portable computing.
The product took years of development and was delayed several times. When it was finally released, its software (especially its handwriting recognition) was error-prone and given lukewarm reviews.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple as interim CEO, one of his first major decisions was to end development of the Newton.
Yet, just two years after Apple exited PDAs, a new opportunity emerged. In the late 1990s digital music exploded. MP3s fueled this rise as they significantly reduced the file size of music. Rather than a 4 GB hard drive being able to store 6 albums at their file size from compact discs, it could now house 1,000 MP3s.
At the time — thanks to software like Napster — piracy was rampant. In addition, most MP3 players were bulky, expensive, had poor users interfaces (UIs), and non-intuitive software.
Tony Fadell, a former executive at Phillips, was trying to create a software that would (legally) sell music and integrate with an MP3 player. He pitched the service to companies like Real Networks, which in late 1999 had soared to a market capitalization of more than $10 billion as investors bet on the growth of digital music.
After repeated rejections, Fadell was surprised to find Apple was very interested in his concept. He was hired in early 2001 by Jon Rubenstein (who also deserves immense credit for the creation of the iPod) and given a team of 30 employees to develop a portable music player.
Fadell’s big break came when he approached a company named PortalPlayer, which had reference designs for an advanced MP3 players and music software that was largely complete. PortalPlayer began working exclusively with Apple.
The First iPod is Released
Ben Knauss, who was senior manager at PortalPlayer, described the company’s reference designs as “80% complete” when the company began working with Apple.
With a short schedule until a planned release in late 2001, Fadell and his team at Apple began refining PortalPlayer’s hardware and software. Gone were the typical excess of buttons littered MP3 players in the era, and in their place was a scroll wheel that became the defining feature of the iPod.
After an initial prototypes were completed, Steve Jobs became increasingly interested in the project. Knauss described him as spending “100% of [his] time” on the project with daily software and design feedback.
Another major breakthrough came when Jobs went to Japan to give the keynote speech at the Tokyo Macworld conference. Apple employee Jon Rubenstein was meeting with Toshiba who told him they had a new hard drive that was the size of a silver dollar and could hold five gigabytes (~1,000 songs) of data.
This product solved one of the most difficult technological challenges to building an MP3 player and Jobs authorized Apple to sign up as the exclusive buyer of these new hard drives.
In total, it took Apple only about 8 months from the hiring of Tony Fadell to lead the iPod project to Steve Jobs revealing the product on October 23, 2001”.
It was hugely exciting when the first version was introduced. Although it would take until November 2001 until it could be bought, hearing about the iPod was life-changing. At that point, the Sony Discman was very much the go-to device. It was good, as one could buy a C.D. that day and listen to it on the Discman. That was a huge thing back then! I liked owning physical music and being able to move around and hear my favourite albums. It was a slight pain when C.D.s used to skip and there was that lack of reliability with the Discman. The Sony Walkman seemed sturdier and more reliable in that sense! Not only did the iPod offer a way of listening to a library of songs without carrying armfuls of C.D.s. There were cool functions and a great design that, whilst quaint and a little clunky today, was a massive step up from what we had with the Discman. I think the Discman has play, pause, stop; volume control and not much else. The iPod was definitely a technological step up. This Lifewire article outlines what we got with the original iPod:
“Introduced: Oct. 2001
Released: Nov. 2001
Discontinued: July 2002
The 1st generation iPod can be identified by its scroll wheel, surrounded by four buttons (clockwise from the top: menu, forward, play/pause, backward), and its center button for selecting items. When it was introduced, the iPod was a Mac-only product. It required Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X 10.1.
While it was not the first MP3 player, the original iPod was both smaller and easier to use than many of its competitors. As a result, it quickly attracted accolades and strong sales. The iTunes Store wasn't introduced until 2003, so users had to add music to their iPods from CDs or other online sources.
At the time of its introduction, Apple wasn't the powerhouse company it later became. The initial success of the iPod, and its successor products, were major factors in the company's explosive growth.
Capacity
5 GB (about 1,000 songs)
10 GB (about 2,000 songs) - released in March 2002
Mechanical hard drive used for storage”.
I do feel the iPod, though short-lived in its original state, was a breakthrough. The fact that new versions came out and it was being improved on meant that there was demand. Maybe not the biggest technology leap, it did foreshadow streaming in some ways. That ability to possess so many songs and do so without any physical music signalled a way forward. By copying and storing digital/Internet music rather than playing something physical. Whilst not the first MP3 player, it was a geme-changer for sure.
Streaming may be more dominant and used than devices like the iPod. One cannot argue against its importance. In 2008, WIRED wrote how the iPod remained impressive – some seven years after its release:
“Mainly, the iPod allowed Apple to blow up the industry's CD-based business model, by making the downloading of singles both cheap and easy. Among other things, there was grumbling from music execs over the fact that people were able to rip their previously purchased CDs into their iTunes libraries without having to pay extra for the privilege.
As a result of this and the general advance of technology, the music industry is in the painful process of reinventing itself. Whatever emerges, iTunes, now easily the world's biggest music retailer, will have to be part of the equation.
Sales of the iPod peaked in early 2008, with more than 20 million of them clearing the shelves during Apple's first quarter. Not coincidentally, it was the most profitable quarter in company history.
Today, in all its variations, the iPod commands both the U.S. and foreign MP3 markets. It accounts for roughly three of every four digital music players sold in the United States”.
Ahead of its twentieth anniversary, I wanted to do some research and get an idea of how people view it and what role it played regarding music technology and the move away from physical music. Now, we have issues with streaming and how much artists are paid. In 2001, we were not aware of the conversations we would be having twenty years later. The iPod completely changed things for me and made me love music even more. I became a much more broad-minded listener. There was that social aspect where we would all look at what was on our friends’ iPods. Even though I could not afford one straight away, owning that first iPod was a transformative moment! It did change and update through the years and, to be fair, people don’t really own iPods. There is no denying, when Steve Jobs stood on a stage and announced the launch of the iPod on 23rd October, 2001, it was…
SUCH an important day.