there are exact 20 years, Steve Jobs took the stage in the auditorium on the campus of Infinite Loop for a small, almost intimate, music-focused event. What would come out of there, on the other hand, would be inversely proportional to the scale of the keynote: it was on that day, which today celebrates two decades, that Apple introduced the world to the first iPod.
With the simple but killer concept of carrying a thousand songs in your pocket, the iPod overcame initial skepticism — its critics believed that a “mere MP3 player” was below the potential of Apple and Steve Jobs, as he well recalled this article from MacRumors — and became, along with the iMac G3, one of the symbols of Apple’s rebirth in the second era of Jobs at the helm of the company. In a way, if the Apple of today is one of the biggest companies in the world, the iPod is one of the main responsible for that.
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Obviously, the iPod wasn’t just any MP3 player. The simplicity of its interface was unmatched at the time, and the device’s integration with the iTunes Store — a revolution in itself for the music industry — allowed, for the first time, users to have a simple way to acquire music digitally in a centralized environment, safe and easy to use.
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Also worth mentioning is the advent of Click Wheel — or, in the initial versions of the product, the scroll wheel, which physically rotated. Jobs himself, at the iPhone presentation a few years later, recognized technology as one of the fundamental electronic interaction methods introduced by Apple: beyond Click Wheel, we would also have the mouse of the original Macintosh and the multi-touch control of the iPhone.
At this point, it’s raining on wetlands to say the iPod has become a laser-engraved element of pop culture. The image of white headphones became a status symbol, and Apple’s campaigns — such as the memorable advertisements with silhouettes — entered the popular imagination and became an indistinguishable part of the “face” of this then incipient 21st century.
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In fact, a few days ago we saw the launch of third generation AirPods — and it’s not that your commercial has a bit of that feel?
From the original iPod, a complete line of products was born: the “flagship” The line went through several mutations, becoming the iPod photo when it gained a higher definition color screen, the iPod video when it started playing videos, and the iPod classic in the final stretch of its life.
The iPod mini and nano were smaller (and ultra-popular) versions of this recipe, responsible for popularizing flash storage on mobile devices, while the iPod shuffle innovated by prioritizing the randomness of life — and music — in a screenless and extremely accessible device.
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Today, the family survives on appliances iPod touch only — which, despite its name, can best be described as an iPhone without cellular capabilities. The original spirit of iPods may be left behind — the category was swallowed up by the smartphone revolution, along with so many others — but their attitude, their irreverence and their iconic character remain in our hearts.
In this sense, it is worth reading this interview of Tony Fadell, one of the creators of the iPod, with the CNET. According to Fadell, who was initially hired by Jobs for a simple “consulting position”, the device’s development trajectory was tortuous and extremely risky — not even Jobs was initially convinced that such a device would work, and only agreed with the Fadell’s ideas after weeks of meetings.
We had a lot of “damn, is this going to work?” moments. We really didn’t know. […] The work was non-stop, seven days a week.
The interview also touches on the following years of iPod development and some of its key moments, such as Apple’s agreement with U2 to create a special edition of the device, and Fadell’s post-Apple years. According to the executive, he still uses his iPod from time to time — according to Fadell, he is an “excellent mixtape” from the music of the early 2000s.
Who out there still has an iPod to call their own? Leave your memories, your tributes and your considerations below. Here’s my contribution — an already broken (but still functional!) 2005 iPod shuffle, inherited from a friend, and which has been with me for so many moments over the past few years.
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Long live the iPod!
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