Apple marks 25 years since the introduction of the original iPod, one of the company’s most significant products and a major factor in its expansion beyond the Mac.
iPod launch and original design
Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPod on October 23, 2001, at a small press event in the Town Hall auditorium at Apple’s Infinite Loop headquarters. Advertised as offering “1,000 songs in your pocket,” the device combined a 5GB hard drive with a monochrome LCD display, a mechanical scroll wheel and up to 10 hours of battery life. The original model cost $399 and required a Mac with iTunes. Its FireWire connection both transferred music and charged the battery, while automatic synchronization copied songs and playlists from the user’s iTunes library. Apple said an entire CD could be transferred in under 10 seconds and a collection of 1,000 songs in less than 10 minutes. The hard drive could also store documents and other files.
Early reaction and sales
Ahead of the announcement, Apple had invited the press to the unveiling of a “breakthrough digital device,” specifying that it was not a Mac; reports had variously suggested a music player, a home stereo accessory or a handheld device with handwriting recognition, and a rumor roundup published two days before the event included the name “iPod.” The announcement received a mixed response: original coverage and reader comments questioned the device’s price, Mac-only compatibility and significance, with one reader calling it “far from revolutionary” and another writing, “all this hype for something so ridiculous!” The iPod went on sale on November 10, 2001, with reports of customers lining up to buy it. Early forum discussions recorded complaints about fingerprints on the polished rear enclosure, charging temperatures and sound quality, alongside many positive impressions from owners.
Evolution of the iPod lineup
Hardware revisions followed rapidly. The second-generation iPod adopted a touch-sensitive scroll wheel, while the third-generation model introduced the 30-pin Dock Connector in 2003. The full-size iPod gained a color display in 2004 and video playback in 2005. The iPod mini, announced in January 2004, used a smaller anodized aluminum enclosure available in silver, gold, pink, blue and green, and introduced the Click Wheel that integrated playback buttons into the touch-sensitive surface; Apple adopted the same control for the fourth-generation full-size iPod later that year. In 2005 Apple introduced both the iPod shuffle, which omitted a display, and the iPod nano, which replaced the mini with a thin flash-based design. Later iPod nano models added video playback, a video camera and a touchscreen, and the square sixth-generation model introduced in 2010 could be worn on the wrist using third-party watch straps.
By April 2007 Apple had sold 100 million iPods, less than six years after the first model reached customers. By the iPod’s 10th anniversary in 2011, sales had exceeded 304 million units.
iPod touch and the end of the lineup
The iPod touch arrived in September 2007, several months after the first iPhone went on sale; it featured a 3.5-inch Multi-Touch display, Wi‑Fi and the Safari browser without requiring a cellular plan. Apple discontinued the iPod classic in September 2014, five years after its final hardware revision; the iPod nano and iPod shuffle were discontinued in July 2017, leaving the iPod touch as the sole model. The seventh-generation iPod touch received an A10 Fusion chip and up to 256GB of storage in May 2019 and remained on sale without further hardware updates until May 10, 2022, when Apple announced its discontinuation and said it would be available while supplies lasted. In that announcement Apple attributed the end of the lineup to the integration of music playback across its other products, and Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said that “the spirit of iPod lives on” through devices including the iPhone, Apple Watch, HomePod mini, Mac, iPad and Apple TV.
