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This Week Marks the 20th Anniversary of the iPod and 30th Anniversary of the PowerBook

orthorim said:
Lol OMG what a classic. Another great lesson that came out of this is that tech geeks have no clue what people want or want to buy.
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Bear in mind that the original iPod was expensive and only worked on a Mac (and they were only just recovering from near extinction then). The arrival of PC support and, especially, the iTunes store really shook things up.

Spock said:
That PowerBook video pretty much sums up Apple without Steve Jobs. I am sure that he was laughing his butt off from his office at NeXT or Pixar lol
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The first 2 mins of the video are not the PowerBook, they are the earlier Mac Portable - which was always a bit of a joke considering that it was not much more portable than a Classic Mac (although ISTR it had pretty good life thanks to it's lead-acid battery and was the first computer with a TFT LCD display - which was night & day better than the dim, murky, passive LCDs on everything else around at the time). Even so, it didn't look quite so silly alongside contemporary portables - which were smaller, but of a similar design and probably didn't have the oomph to run a GUI like MacOS.

The PowerBook itself was a hugely innovative and original product - it wasn't the first laptop, but it effectively defined the modern laptop form-factor, with a clamshell design, set-back keyboard and pointing device front & centre. Pretty much all modern laptops are a descendent of that design.

Apple made the best laptops throughout the early/mid 90s - made everything else look like a bucket of spare parts. It was the Mac workstations that were in trouble because much cheaper PC hardware was starting to become usable for DTP, graphics and video. Without the Powerbook, there probably wouldn't have been an Apple for Jobs to come back to.
 
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theluggage said:
Bear in mind that the original iPod was expensive and only worked on a Mac (and they were only just recovering from near extinction then). The arrival of PC support and, especially, the iTunes store really shook things up.



The first 2 mins of the video are not the PowerBook, they are the earlier Mac Portable - which was always a bit of a joke considering that it was not much more portable than a Classic Mac (although ISTR it had pretty good life thanks to it's lead-acid battery and was the first computer with a TFT LCD display - which was night & day better than the dim, murky, passive LCDs on everything else around at the time). Even so, it didn't look quite so silly alongside contemporary portables - which were smaller, but of a similar design and probably didn't have the oomph to run a GUI like MacOS.

The PowerBook itself was a hugely innovative and original product - it wasn't the first laptop, but it effectively defined the modern laptop form-factor, with a clamshell design, set-back keyboard and pointing device front & centre. Pretty much all modern laptops are a descendent of that design.

Apple made the best laptops throughout the early/mid 90s - made everything else look like a bucket of spare parts. It was the Mac workstations that were in trouble because much cheaper PC hardware was starting to become usable for DTP, graphics and video. Without the Powerbook, there probably wouldn't have been an Apple for Jobs to come back to.
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I am not referring to the PowerBook hardware, I am referring to the way it was presented.
 
I'm sorry I returned my first, the first, iPod. I thought that the physically spinning disc was just going to get trashed with dust and dirt/grime. It seemed, at the time, innovative, but clunky. When they replaced it with the touch wheel, I was all over that. It just made so much sense...
 
Whipped this bad boy up for some wall art - lot's of companies making these and charging crazy amounts, I spent $60 on the iPod Classic, $15 on the frame, $15 on the print and a few hours on photoshop - truly a device that changed the world
 

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The 20 years from 2001 to 2021 seem so much less than the ten from 1991 to 2001. I have to imagine that’s mostly because of me (the difference between ages 21 and 31 feel more different than 31 and 51), but also, Jobs becoming CEO was such a radical transition in what Apple was.
 
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Aaron Priven said:
The 20 years from 2001 to 2021 seem so much less than the ten from 1991 to 2001. I have to imagine that’s mostly because of me (the difference between ages 21 and 31 feel more different than 31 and 51), but also, Jobs becoming CEO was such a radical transition in what Apple was.
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Apple got a focus, and stopped wallowing around clueless in the industry. They had so many systems and were carrying so much inventory that they were literally drowning, and the incompetent management was killing them. Burying whole warehouses of outdated parts is not a way to survive for the long term. The crazy projects and staggering around under the weight of the brain dead top management was toxic, and very nearly fatal.

On an aside, steve chose Mr Pepsi Sculley, and that choice was a body blow to Apple. steve also chose Mr Apple Cook. Not typing this to start anything, but thinking 'out loud' that there might have been a better person for the top job, but Apple was running like a top, and sooner or later precession, or nutation, was going to effect it. steve's management was a fight against the lesser and greater of those forces. I, for one, am grateful for the management of Tim Cook, and hope his successor can step in and continue the magic. Long live Apple!!!
 
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matnetik said:
Whipped this bad boy up for some wall art - lot's of companies making these and charging crazy amounts, I spent $60 on the iPod Classic, $15 on the frame, $15 on the print and a few hours on photoshop - truly a device that changed the world
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that back looks really good to have been $60. when I try to find one on ebay shiny backs are usually hundreds of dollars at least
 
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tonywalker23 said:
that back looks really good to have been $60. when I try to find one on ebay shiny backs are usually hundreds of dollars at least
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It didn’t look like that when I bought it, it was super scratched, I used a dremel with polishing pads and Flitz multi-polish cleaner, took pretty much all the scratches out, I was blow away with how well it worked! I mean there are some deep scratches still but it looks great, super happy with it
 
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My first iPod and apple product was the 5th gen iPod video. I loved that thing. Except the sleeve it came with ended up scratching the hell out of it.

but ipodwizard was the forum back then. Modding your iPod with skins and changing the UI was awesome.
 
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the difference of the size of the venue and attendees between the iPod announcement and current day events makes you think...
 
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