Launched on October 23, 2001, the iPod has become the icon of the decade.
You don’t need much imagination to see why. Imagine no longer needing
to take CDs or DVDs with you when you travel — your favorite music and
videos fit right in your pocket and you can leave your precious content library
at home. With the iPhone and iPad, you can extend this convenience to books,
magazines, documents, Web sites, e-mail, and even software applications.
How the first device came to be called “iPod” is still, to this day, a mystery,
but the word not only stuck, it also spawned “iPhone” and “iPad.” Some say
a freelance copywriter came up with it after thinking of the phrase “Open the
pod bay door, Hal!” from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. According to a
team member quoted by Steve Levy in The Perfect Thing (Simon & Schuster),
back in 2001, Apple chairman Steve Jobs “just came in and went, ‘iPod.’ We
all looked around the room, and that was it.” It’s certainly true that Jobs rode
hard on its design and user interface, making all final decisions. When one of
the designers said that obviously the device should have a power button to
turn the unit on and off, Jobs simply said no. And that was it.
When I first encountered the iPod, it fulfilled my road warrior dreams — in particular,
the dream of filling up a car with music as easily as filling it up with fuel.
After nine years of grabbing every iPod model released, along with iPhones and
the iPad, I still use older models with my home stereo, my beach boom-box
speakers, and my sports outfit. And, of course, I use a fully loaded iPod classic
in my car connected to a custom in-vehicle interface adapter. I’ve also used a
cassette adapter, and even an FM radio transmitter, to make a iPod work in a
rental car or boat (see Chapter 5 for many of these accessories).
There were other MP3 audio players when the iPod was introduced, but none
that offered as much capacity for holding music, and none that could change
the entire experience of acquiring, playing, and storing your music the way
the iPod did. And that’s because the iPod is not alone: it is an integral part of
an ecosystem that centers on the iTunes application on your computer, and
includes the iTunes Store and App Store on the Internet.