Apple Event · 2001
Introducing iPod, which puts 1,000 songs in your pocket, alongside iTunes 2 with MP3 CD burning and iPod syncing.
The original iPod puts up to 1,000 songs in your pocket with a 5GB hard drive, a compact design, and up to 10 hours of battery life. Featuring a mechanical scroll wheel, a high-resolution display, and fast FireWire syncing, it revolutionizes portable music.
iTunes 2 introduces MP3 CD burning, a 10-band equalizer, and crossfade playback, alongside seamless Auto-Sync with the original iPod. It makes organizing, enjoying, and transferring digital music easier than ever.
2 min read · Written by Invite Archive
In October 2001, Apple was a computer company with a small share of the market and a CEO who had been back for only four years. So when an invitation arrived for a press event on October 23 with the line Hint: It's not a Mac, it was a genuine puzzle. Every big launch of Steve Jobs's second run at Apple had been a Mac. The line was a joke at the expense of reporters who expected another Power Mac, and a promise that this was something new.
The setting was modest. Rather than a large hall, Apple used the Town Hall auditorium on its own Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino. It came only six weeks after September 11, at a time when many companies were cancelling events, and the room held a small group of journalists.
Jobs started by explaining why Apple wanted to make a music player at all. Digital music was everywhere, he argued, but every portable player was either too big and clumsy or too small to hold a real collection. Then he took a white device out of his jeans pocket.
The first iPod was built around a tiny 1.8-inch hard drive with 5 GB of storage, enough for about 1,000 songs. The pitch fit in one line, 1,000 songs in your pocket, and the details backed it up:
The price was $399, and it only worked with a Mac.
Not everyone was impressed. A famous comment on the tech site Slashdot summed up the skeptics: no wireless, less space than a competitor, "lame." Many people thought $399 was far too much for a music player tied to a computer platform with a small user base.
The skeptics missed what mattered: the combination of hardware, software and a simple sync. In 2002 the iPod came to Windows, in 2003 Apple opened the iTunes Music Store, and that October the iTunes for Windows event brought the whole system to most of the world's computers. The iPod became Apple's most important product of the decade, paving the way for iPod nano and eventually iPhone.
Read today, Hint: It's not a Mac is one of the most important lines Apple ever printed. It was the first sign that Apple would no longer be defined by the computers it sold. In January 2007, the company dropped "Computer" from its name. Browse the full iPod timeline.