Music is at the core of everything in our society. Over time, the advancement of the way we capture music has become more and more advanced. Today we can throw on Spotify or Apple Music or even obscure sources of music like Tidal all with the click of a button on our phones and laptops. So much so that as I think about how to write this piece, there is music playing through my headphones. The goal of the IPod was to improve in the areas that the classic MP3 player was heavily lacking in. A guy named Tony Fadell was the charge of the creation of the IPod. He brought the project idea to Apple and they hired him as an independent contractor under the Apple Computers sector in 2001 and this caused directly led to the development of the new MP3.
Fast forward a few months and Fadell jumps into a partnership with the company PortalPlayer which was founded in 1998 and is no longer in existence after a sale to Nvidia for close to 400 Million dollars in 2006. Within a few months of Fadell being hired, the initial prototype was released and the rest is history as it went on to sell at an incredible consistency across its run for the following years. Lets keep in mind that at this point in the world, the way we collected and subsequently listened to music was at a key shifting point. Society was beginning to shift away from the realm of CDs and the IPod was the way to curate the music into specific playlist making it easier, more enjoyable and quicker than that of the walkman. The IPod and the ensuing creation of iTunes, made the music industry survive in a time where the direction was heading towards the route of illegal music file sharing and piracy.
The IPod creation entirely changed and inspired the way a lot things are today and some of those ways are things we don't even think about in our regular lives. The things we use everyday like bluetooth and podcast wouldn't be a thing with Fadell and Apple. The very name podcast is said to be influenced by the name. The bluetooth speaker was also a byproduct in specific the Bose SoundDock 10. Additionally, the IPod did something that no other device has ever done and that is put the consumer/user first in a way that they can both prioritize the usability and enjoyment of a product in the simplest way.
Overall, over the run of the sales, there wasn’t a negative impact upon society. The negative impact came when Apple started putting iTunes on the phones and then that effectively phased out the creation of more IPods.
For everyone involved in the time, including myself, the IPod changed the world. I never had to walk around with a walkman or a MP3 player but I can remember early on seeing the IPod and being thunderstruck by the design and everything that I could do before ever thinking about getting a phone. It was the one of the highlights of its time and to this day it is remembered as one of the most pivotal moments in our lifetime and history as a whole.
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