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iPod Turns 10 Years Old Today

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MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
63,481
30,714





Ten years ago today, Steve Jobs took the stage and introduced the first iPod.

The portable music player is seen as being largely responsible for Apple's dramatic comeback over the past decade. It also led Apple down the path into the consumer electronics market. While the iPod has diminished in importance over the past few years, Apple's bottom line is now dominated by devices such as the iPhone and iPad.

Macworld provides a nice story detailing how the iPod came to be:
Behind every successful product lies a problem in search of a solution. The inspirational problem, in the iPod's case, involved the pitiful state of the young MP3 player market in the late 1990s.

Portable MP3 players had been around since the mid 1990s, but Apple found that every one on the market offered a lackluster user experience. Steve Jobs had a strong term for gadgets like that: "crap". Everyone at Apple agreed.
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Initial reaction to the iPod wasn't entirely favorable. Slashdot's famous reaction was "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." MacRumors was also around at the time as well, and much of the reader reaction was also negative. One commenter wrote:
All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field(TM) is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off.
Click to expand...
Of course, ten years later, the iPod has sold over 304 million units.


Article Link: iPod Turns 10 Years Old Today
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/23/ipod-turns-10-years-old-today/
darbus69

darbus69

macrumors regular
Mar 3, 2009
228
36
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

got my 5gb FireWire baby with its 20 minute battery!
 
R

racer1441

macrumors 68000
Jul 3, 2009
1,863
616
Renverse said:
I hope all of those negative commenters eat some delicious crow today. Yum.
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Wouldn't it be great if Steve Jobs, knowing this was coming, sent letters before his death with the negative reviews to the people who thought it would fail with a big picture of him smiling sitting on a pile of cash?:D
 
L

Lennholm

macrumors 65816
Sep 4, 2010
1,003
210
Miss that design, how the buttons are arranged to resemble a speaker element is just lovely.
 
Stella

Stella

macrumors G3
Apr 21, 2003
8,837
6,334
Canada
Expensive, sure, but over all a good product. I really enjoyed mine.

Looks like the iPod Classic is on its last legs... but the original product has morphed into new products.
 
jmpnop

jmpnop

macrumors 6502a
Aug 8, 2010
821
34
Really sad to see Apple not paying attention to one of the best products - Nano is pretty useless (compared to 5th gen), Touch didn't get any update, Classic is dead in Apple's eyes:(
 
vitzr

vitzr

macrumors 68030
Jul 28, 2011
2,765
3
California
Renverse said:
I hope all of those negative commenters eat some delicious crow today. Yum.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, instead of celebrating the brilliance of the iPod, the posters choice is to take a negative demeaning stance, an outlet for revenge, an expression of distain. How revealing of who the author is... So sad.
 
R

rotarydialz

macrumors member
Dec 11, 2008
32
0
It wasn't the first mp3 player and many people didn't think it was the best either. The imitators always wait until Apple hits a grand slam before they get to work on their version.
 
K

KPOM

macrumors P6
Oct 23, 2010
18,024
7,867
The iPod is what eventually got me back into the Mac fold. I purchased it in December 2001, even before it officially worked with Windows. I remember XPlay, Ephpod, and other "hacks" to get it to work with Windows. I even purchased a Firewire PCI card for my Windows XP desktop to get it to run. Of course, I managed to mess up the drive the first time, and took it to one of the brand new Apple stores 40 miles away, where the Genius Bar representative happily restored it.

I do remember the early criticism. In some respects, it was like the reaction to the iPhone 4S. Apple products in many ways fail to meet the hype but then greatly exceed the hype at the same time, if that makes any sense. People are "disappointed" that whatever they release didn't meet some wild speculation, but then realize that it's a great product. It happened with the iPod, the iPhone, the MacBook Air, and the iPad. All were roundly criticized by many "experts."
 
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