Whether it’s smartwatches or smart speakers, Apple rarely rushes to be the first company to move into a new product category. But once Apple’s decided to commit, it moves pretty darn quickly — as an iPod anecdote shared (indirectly) by former Apple exec Tony Fadell makes clear.
In a tweet made by the CEO of Stripe, Patrick Collison, Tony “Podfather” Fadell reveals the timeline of the original iPod. And it was pretty mind-blowingly intensive.
January 12, 2005: Apple reports record earnings for the preceding three months, with holiday sales of the iPod and demand for the latest iBook giving the company a four-fold increase in profits.
Apple brags that it has sold a total of 10 million iPods, and rightly so. The massive popularity of the portable music player drives Apple to its highest earnings ever.
A large white room filled with row upon row of just about every Apple computer you can imagine, all in pristine condition. On the walls are framed copies of Apple’s black-and-white “Think Different” ads. Sunlight streams through the large windows, giving everything a warm glow.
Is this heaven? The world’s greatest Apple Store? Nope, it’s Dubai, actually. Home to Jimmy Grewal, a collector of vintage Apple computers and one of the most impressive collections you’re likely to find anywhere.
January 8, 2004: The clumsily named Apple iPod + HP, a Hewlett-Packard-branded iPod, makes it debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Shown off by Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, the prototype device is colored blue, the color used for HP’s branding. By the time it arrives on the market later that year, however, the device is the same shade of white as the regular iPod. It doesn’t hang around for long.
Soccer star Christiano Ronaldo is worth roughly $450 million. He has invested in a hotel chain, owns a $3 million sports car, lives in a $6 million house and has a lifetime deal with Nike worth a reported $1 billion.
But when it comes to listening to music, he’s fine with an iPod shuffle.
Picked up a new Apple device at a big discount this weekend? Now it’s time to sell your old ones and make back some cash for the holidays. Cult of Mac is here to help with a sweet Cyber Monday buyback deal.
Sell your old Apple devices to us today and we’ll give you an extra $15 for each one. This deal ends at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, December 3, so take advantage of it while you can
November 14, 2006: Apple teams up with a slew of airlines to offer the “first seamless integration” between iPods and in-flight entertainment systems.
A special dock would let iPod owners play music and videos on planes’ seat-back displays. The plan promises to rid the world of old-fashioned in-flight movies and airline magazines.
Recent rumors suggest that Apple is leaning on another company to help develop its highly anticipated augmented reality headset. At first, I thought that sounded crazy. Apple Glasses look set to be the company’s biggest new product launch since Apple Watch. Surely Cupertino would keep development of something that important in-house?
But when you look back over Apple’s history of joint ventures, it starts to make more sense. Apple tends to partner with third-parties in very specific circumstances — and Cupertino knows exactly what it’s doing.
October 23, 2001: Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the first iPod, a device capable of holding an entire music library in a highly portable package.
The first-generation device boasts a 5GB hard drive capable of storing “1,000 songs in your pocket.” That may not sound too dazzling in a world in which people can stream the massive Apple Music library from their iPhones. But it was a game-changer at the time!
October 16, 2003: Six months after opening the iTunes Music Store for Mac owners, Apple expands the service to cover Windows PCs as well.
Steve Jobs later quips that making iTunes available to Windows owners is akin to “giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.”
