Blog 4: EOTO #1: History and Impact of the iPod

As we all know, technology has been advancing at speeds that are only getting quicker and quicker over time. We as a society basically have no choice but to grow and learn with new technology all the time. But from where we are technologically compared to years ago, it’s very eye-opening. The growth and possibilities seem endless. MP3 players specifically have gone a long way, but thanks to Steve Jobs and Apple, the iPod paved the way for not only portable music. But music in general.

History of the iPod

Portable MP3 players before the release of the iPod were nothing short of devices that never lived up to its hype. Although the creation of portable MP3 players itself was a huge accomplishment for the advancement of technology, the devices were never up to par. There were always some things off about them, whether it be because of the buffering or skipping, or the devices end up being too big to carry. The iPod changed everything people thought they knew about technology and portable music. The iPod was released in 2001 and has since then changed the way we listen to music. The first-ever iPod could hold up to 1000 songs, could last over 10 hours, and was super small, smaller than any portable mp3 player to come out yet. The iPod weighed only 6.5 ounces and was 2 inches by 4 in length and width. The main attraction for the iPod was to be pocket-sized, so it was not such a hassle to bring around. What allowed the iPod to have so much content was the minuscule hard drive internally. The hard drive was insane .2 inches in width, which back in 2001, was unheard of. What was also unheard of back in 2001 was the 5GB or 10GB the iPod had. Mp3 players that came before the iPod usually had either a 64 or 128MB storage capacity. 

Another huge attraction about the iPod was the scroll wheel it had. The scroll wheel had all of your basic functions, such as play/pause, skip, previous, etc. People were amazed by its’ design and feel. What many people don’t know is that Apple hired an entire engineer team from the company Toshiba, and had them create the design of the iPod that we are so used to today. When the first iPod came out, it was instantly a hit. Apple spent approximately tens of millions to advertise and market the iPod, which was seen as a huge risk. It turned out to be a huge success, as those silhouette iPod advertisements you may or may not remember, still to this day, remain one of the most profitable marketing campaigns of recent memory. Within a year and a half, 390 million iPods were sold until it was later taken off the market for the next generation iPod.

Impact of the iPod

As great of a device as the first-ever iPod is, the impact it had and left may be even greater. Although previously mentioned, the size of the iPod was the smallest size seen for a device with such capabilities. The iPod’s tagline was, “1000 songs in your pocket.”, as the size was always actively pushed to its consumers. Mp3 players before the iPod were prone to skipping and buffering. The slightest movement or contact with the player would cause the music to be interrupted by undesirable skipping noises. The iPod introduced skip protection, which ceased any buffering or skipping of music. How it worked was that the iPod would preload about 20 minutes of music directly to the memory cache, not the hard drive. Almost every other device would do the opposite and send information to its hard drive. No matter how rigorous one touched or moved the iPod while playing music, it would never skip or buffer. This was a huge discovery, and a huge problem solved with portable mp3 players. 

The sheer speed the iPod had at the time is absolutely fascinating. It was 30x faster than any portable mp3 player to come before it. It took the iPod about 10 seconds to download an entire album of music and compared to its mp3 player counterparts, it took an average of 5 minutes to download an entire album. It also took the iPod about 10 minutes to download 1000 songs, which is absurd. One of the most important things that happened because of the iPod was the fall of digital piracy. There was a huge problem of digital piracy in the music world, as record businesses scurried to find a way to stop it. Out came Apples’, FairPlay. FairPlay was created by Apple in order to diminish digital piracy. How it worked was any song downloaded from a Mac could only be played and sent to an iPod. The music file came with an encrypted key, that was unlocked by a one-time password once downloaded onto the iPod. The music file is unable to be sent, played, or even streamed to a different person or device. This slowly but surely helped put a stop to digital piracy, and record businesses have no one to thank for that but Apple and the iPod.

Sources:

https://web.archive.org/web/20011103172549/http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/oct/23/20-years-of-the-ipod-how-music-and-tech-new-era-steve-jobs

https://slate.com/technology/2005/11/how-apple-cashes-in-on-piracy-prevention.html

https://www.lifewire.com/history-ipod-classic-original-2000732

https://www.ilounge.com/articles/ipod-invention-impacts-on-music-tech-industry