Amaya Toman Today it is exactly eighteen years since the then CEO of Apple Steve Jobs presented the world with the first ever iPod. At that time, the small and compact device was equipped with a 5GB hard disk and promised to put thousands of songs in the user's pocket. Considering that at the time we could only dream of streaming services and iPhones, it was undoubtedly a very tempting offer.
Just as the iPhone wasn't the world's first smartphone, the iPod wasn't the first swallow in the portable music player market. For its iPod, Apple decided to use a novelty at the time - a 1,8-inch hard disk from Toshiba's workshop. Jon Rubinstein recommended it to Steve Jobs and convinced him that this technology was ideal for a portable music player.
As the CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs was given most of the credit for the iPod, but in reality it was a very collective effort. In addition to the already mentioned Rubinstein, for example Phil Schiller, who came up with the idea for the control wheel, or Tony Fadell, who oversaw the development of the hardware, contributed to the creation of the player. The name "iPod", in turn, comes from the head of copywriter Vinnie Chiec, and is supposed to be a reference to the line "Open the Pod Bay doors, Hal" (in Czech, often stated as "Otevři ty dveře, Hal!") from the film adaptation of the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey .
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Steve Jobs called the iPod a breakthrough digital device. "Music is part of the life of each of us," he said at the time. Eventually, the iPod really became a huge hit. In 2007, Apple could claim 100 million iPods sold, and the player became Apple's most popular product until the arrival of the iPhone.
Of course, you can no longer find the classic iPod today, but it is still sold on auction servers. In some cases it has become a prized collector's item, and a complete package in particular sells for really high sums. The only iPod that Apple sells today is the iPod touch. Compared to the first iPod, it offers more than fifty times the storage capacity. Although the iPod is no longer a significant part of Apple's business today, it is indelibly written in its history.
Source: Cult of Mac
