A Brief History of the iPod

antdude writes "MacSlash mentioned MLAgazine's article on a brief history of the iPod. It all started on October 23, 2001 with the release of one of the most important products from Apple in its history."

Comments

Uh, no.

[GeorgeH]

"It all started on October 23, 2001 with the release of one of the most important products from Apple in its history."

Uh, no. It started when Tony Fadell had the idea of creating a digital music player and tying it to an online music store a few years before the iPod came out. Inside Look at Birth of the iPod on Wired News covers the stuff that happened before the iPod came out.

Re:I think I can hear...

[pslam]

Also, I find it interesting how many ipod-clones are coming out. I guess it's true what Steve J. once said about "imitation being the greatest form of flattery"

Apple was not the first to make a hard disk portable player. They were the first to ship one with a 1.8" hard disk, which hardly makes everything else a clone - they just got there second. Nobody was really taken by surprise, and the major MP3 companies were already well into designing their own.

Apple was also not the first to make a mini hard disk portable. They were the first to ship a 4GB 1" hard disk player, and then only just. They were beaten by many companies to ship a 1" 1.5GB HD player (including where I work) - but they had a supply of 4GB drives before everyone else. In fact, Rio even managed to announce and demonstrate their own 4GB player hours before Job's keynote speech. Spot how he deliberately missed the comparison of the Mini iPod to the Rio Nitrus (a 1" HD player), and instead picked a Rio 256MB flash player as a convenient strawman.

It's slightly irritating that Apple's reality distortion field now makes it possible for everyone to claim that all other players are "clones".