Home: Updated 2007

History of the iPod

The Apple Coporation first released the iPod on October 23, 2001. The idea was first brought to the attention of Apple by Tony Fadell. Before this Tony Fadell had shopped the idea to Phillips and RealNetworks . Luckily for Apple they hired him as an independent contractor, and the iPod project began.

To begin with the one serious flaw with the iPod, was the price. The machine cost $400 in the US, and many consumers simply couldn't afford this price. The lack of PC support wasn't a strong point to begin with. Steve Jobs soon noticed this error and PC support was promisted soon after the launch.

The iPod was launched only one month later in Europe. This contributed to Apple selling a massive 125,000 new iPods in 2001. Over the years many software updates have been released to fix several bug fixes from the generation 1 iPod's.

One area Apple ran into problems with was Apple Corps, the holders of the Beatles copyrights. They sued Apple for infringement on previous agreements for the iTunes Music Store. Basically Apple Computers were only allowed to use the Apple name in products unrelated to music, the lawsuit was eventually settled out of court. By June of 2003, Apple had shipped one million iPod's worldwide.

The iPod has since become the biggest selling portable hard disk player, and has sold around twenty million units from 2001-2005. A big contribution to this has been the maketing of the iPod, with some of the best ads seen in years. All the ads featuring the coolest tunes playing in the background.

From 2005-2008 Apple slowly began to incorporate colour screens into all their models (except the shuffle). The Touch features the largest colour display yet to be implemented into an iPod.

The iPhone and Touch models (2007) shows Apple's intention to enter into further portable multimedia markets. The Touch (launched in 2007) is the first iPod to use the iPhone's multi-touch graphical touch screen. And the first iPod which provides access to the Internet via a wireless wifi component.

The Touch indicates that Apple want to branch the iPod out from solely being an mp3 player, to a portable multimedia player capable of playing video games, video files, music files, and network the Internet.

The silhouette ads were hugely popular.