July 19, 2004: The fourth-generation iPod brings neat innovations to the popular audio device, including the Click Wheel interface recently introduced on the iPod mini.
“The best digital music player just got better,” says Steve Jobs on the day the product launches. And yet some people feel disappointed.
The iPod’s iconic click wheel had a good run, launching in 2004 with the iPod mini. It joined the fourth-generation iPod’s design later that year. It even auditioned in the odd product concept over the years. Finally, in 2014, the company phased it out with the iPod Classic.
But nothing great is gone forever, as a free new web music player app shows.
It’s Christmas in May, June and July. Many people are taking delivery on the colorful new M1 iMacs. Others are jealously awaiting delivery while drooling over photographic evidence on social media of others’ recent shipments.
And computer setups everywhere are being refreshed with the dazzling new all-in-one machines (see Cult of Mac’s M1 iMac review roundup). Redditor 17parkc is just one example, sporting a brand-spanking-new blue iMac. They even posted a video showing off the upgrade.
May 30, 2013: Apple marks the sale of the 100 millionth iPod touch by launching a new, stripped-down model with a budget price of $229.
The new 16GB music player lacks some features of its high-end siblings. However, the smaller price tag and a savvy selfie cam make it appealing to new customers.
May 12, 2005: Longtime Apple frenemy Bill Gates tells a German newspaper that Apple may have hit it big with the iPod, but that its success isn’t going to last forever.
The reason? Mobile phones are going to steal the iPod’s market share. The good news for Gates is that he was right on the money. The bad news for Microsoft is that Apple cannibalized itself by making the iPhone. And Apple’s smartphone became even more successful than the iPod.
April 9, 2007: Apple sells its 100 millionth iPod. Coming five-and-a-half years after the portable music player went on sale, the landmark event confirms the iPod as Apple’s most popular product of all time.
Until the iPhone arrives a couple months later, that is!
Tony Walker has been an Apple user since 2003. As a college student in his early 20s, he did his classwork on a 12-inch PowerBook G4 and a 3rd generation iPod during downtime at his graveyard-shift job.
Things have changed a little almost two decades later.
February 12, 2012: Months after his untimely death, Steve Jobs is honored with a Special Merit Grammy Award in recognition of his contributions to the field of music with the iPod and iTunes Music Store.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, collects the Grammy on behalf of Jobs’ family and “everyone at Apple.”
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.
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.
