In the summer of 2001, a friend of mine, a Hollywood screenwriter, received a call from his agent: “Get up now in San Francisco. An interesting project is available and you have to be there for the field. “
“San Francisco? Can you narrow it down?”
There was a pause. “Report to One Infinite Loop in Cupertino. Apple headquarters. “
My friend and his writing partner were soon sitting in the lobby with confused expressions – What are we doing here? – when a weak man with jeans and a black turtleneck passed by. “Come with me,” he said. It was Steve Jobs.
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For the next 45 minutes, Jobs went into full presentation mode for this audience of two, before dramatically reaching into his pocket and pulling out a white plate the size of a deck of cards.
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“Imagine,” he said, “a thousand songs in the palm of your hand.” He presented a prototype for the first generation iPod.
The concert involved writing a promotional video that would be sent to members of the press and industry before the product’s release that fall. Naturally, my friend and his partner took over working with Steve, micro-managing everything along the way. It was not uncommon for the phone to ring at 11pm to hear “It’s Steve. I have some notes on the latest draft.” Ready? “
Unfortunately, the video was never made. The musicians they had originally agreed to appear with had to bow, deadlines were getting tighter, and budgets had to go elsewhere. For consolation, Apple paid the two writers with a stack of Mac PowerBooks. Literally a pile of laptops that occupied the corner of the house for months.
My friend was under the NDA, so he couldn’t talk about anything until the launch of the iPod on October 23, 2001, in the foggy, confusing months after the September 11 attacks. And even then, relatively few people paid attention.
Initially, the iPod will only sync with Macs with iTunes installed. When Bill Gates first saw the iPod, his reaction was, “Wow. Very bad. “But when a software update made iTunes available for Windows in October 2002, everything changed. Within a year, the iPod had become what everyone’s consumer electronics wanted.
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My first personal exhibition came through a colleague in the spring of 2003, who had what is now known as the 3rd generation Classic. It was the first iPod with a full touchscreen interface (no more physical buttons or a wheel that actually spins) and included a small (1.8-inch) 10GB hard drive capable of holding about 2,000 songs. Clicking on the virtual wheel and then swiping around it through what I later learned was called “nested menus,” translating me through artists, albums, songs, genres, and several other categories. The operation was smooth and intuitive. And things with white ears? Clever.
Given that I was firmly on Team Windows at the time – not to mention I couldn’t afford $ 500 + for a new music player – I resisted joining the band until the spring of 2004, when I made an impulsive purchase of silver iPod Mini for lunch. It was the size of a large pack of gum and had 4 GB of storage. “I will never need more than that,” I said confidently.
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I quickly became addicted to this thing, especially when I went jogging over the weekend. I used to have a digital music player – something called RCA Lyra, which was shaped like a big, bloated guitar and could hold 60 songs in very low resolution audio – but my new iPod Mini was much better. I soon realized that 4 GB was not enough, so I gave my sister a Mini and bought a 20 GB 5th Gen Classic, branded by U2 in 2006. And when that wasn’t enough, I stepped up to the 6th generation Classic with 120 GB.
I handed over all the iPod Nano models because these little choking hazards didn’t have screens and were designed to be constantly shuffled. But then one night in the late summer of 2007, I saw this ad.
When the ad was over, I turned to my wife. She recognized that look.
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“I have to. Have it. One thing,” I stammered. And as soon as the iPod Touch hit stores on September 5, 2007, I bought one with a 16GB device. Damn the price.
The following year, that touch was always with me. This was the pinnacle of music player technology. How is it possible to make things better or cooler?
Then it happened. When my bulky Nokia phone (remember them?) Died, I bought an iPhone 3G in late 2008. It did everything Touch did. And it was a phone.
Overnight, the iPhone made the idea of a special music player obsolete. And as more and more people entered smartphones, Apple or others, devices like the iPod became less popular. After reaching its peak in 2008 of nearly 60 million units sold, the device, which once accounted for 40% of Apple’s total revenue, declined irreversibly as sales were cannibalized by the iPhone. Soon, iPod sales weren’t even worth their own position in Apple’s financial statements. The numbers were included in “Others”.
Classic was the first to die on September 9, 2014, something that was strongly protested by those who liked the 160 GB model’s ability to store 40,000 songs (Great, considering that the iPhone can transmit about 85 million songs from Apple Music.) Nano was supposed to come out on July 27, 2017, the same day Shuffle, uh, shuffled that death coil. (The mini was replaced by the Nano in the fall of 2005)
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This left only the Touch, which for a while was offered to parents as a starting device, similar to a smartphone for children. It received its latest update on May 28, 2019. Touch lingered for another three years, until Apple announced on May 10, 2022, that once the rest of the inventory was sold, that would be all. Within hours, devices were released on Apple’s website (they’re already sold out) and Apple stores around the world.
Although I haven’t run any of my old devices in years, I feel strangely melancholy about the end of the iPod era. If you grew up in the early 2000s, you’ll remember how the iPod infiltrated popular culture. To be seen with a pair of white wires falling from your ears meant to be recognized as an experienced early supporter of the coolest cutting-edge technology. Together with iTunes, the iPod has made possible the current digital realities of music consumption. And the technology that entered the iPod became the basis for the iPhone, still the most popular consumer electronic device of all time.
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Oh, and the iPod also set Apple on its way to becoming a $ 2 trillion company. Remember that after the iPod, Apple Computers changed its name to Apple.
I still have all my old units, except for the Mini, which I gave to my sister. I’m going to have to put it back so I can put them all on a shelf as a kind of tribute to the device that changed the way we listened to music.
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Alan Cross is a television operator with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a Global News commentator.
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