In what has become one of the most defining moments in Apple's history, today marks the 20th anniversary of Steve Jobs introducing the original iPod at a small press event at the Town Hall auditorium at Apple's former Infinite Loop headquarters.
Above is a snapshot of what Apple's website looked like on October 23, 2001, the day the iPod was announced, courtesy of the Wayback Machine.
Our news story covering the original iPod's announcement is still live on our website, and the comment section on the story is well known for containing several negative comments about the device. One commenter described the iPod as "far from revolutionary" and another commenter wrote "all this hype for something so ridiculous!"
Of course, the iPod turned out to be one of the most important products in Apple's history and, along with the original iMac, helped the company become successful again after it flirted with bankruptcy in the late 1990s.
Jobs famously pitched the iPod as offering "1,000 songs in your pocket," and he unveiled the device by pulling it out of his own pocket.
"With iPod, Apple has invented a whole new category of digital music player that lets you put your entire music collection in your pocket and listen to it wherever you go," said Jobs in a press release. "With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again."
The iPod has since become a niche product for Apple, with the iPod touch being the only remaining model available for purchase today after the iPod classic was discontinued in 2014 and the iPod nano and iPod shuffle were discontinued in 2017. In fact, as of this week, the iPod touch's product page is only advertised in the footer of Apple's website.
Apple's former senior vice president of the iPod team Tony Fadell reflected on creating the iPod in an interview published yesterday.
Top Rated Comments
20 years later nothing has changed, ‘ooh the notch, I must return my laptop!’ ???
Also 2001? Some of my Latin artists where not even born yet ?? #old
They never completely invented a new user interfaces or features from scratch.
The mouse came from Xerox.
Multi-touch came from a company that Apple purchased in the 2000s, it wasn’t Apple‘s technology.
That’s not their specialty, their specialty has never been creating revolutionary technology from scratch.
Their specialty, and Steve Jobs really had a knack for this, was finding extremely niche technology and envisioning ways to put it into a regular persons every day life.
Mouse, clickwheel, multi-touch.
Apple didn’t invent any of these, they just found better ways to use them