Happy 15th birthday to the iPod

Hello & welcome to another GK Nugget. This time we’re travelling 15 years into the past where on this very day the portable music player industry changed forever. No prizes for guessing, 23^rd October 2001 was when Steve Jobs unveiled the very 1^st iPod… and the rest, as they say, is history.

Over its 15 year journey, can you guess how many times has the iPod evolved? Available now with a maximum memory size of 128 GB, the 1^st edition had a capacity of only 5 GB & was marketed as being able to offer “1,000 songs in your pocket”.

Nobody expected Apple to release a MP3 player. In fact, the 1^st generation iPod received much criticism ranging from its US$399 price to the scroll wheel and its lack of Windows compatibility. (Windows compatible iPods came out in July 2002).

The name "iPod" was inspired by “2001: A Space Odyssey” – the 1968 epic science fiction movie produced & directed by Stanley Kubrick. The immortal line: “Open the Pod Bay doors, Hal” was the inspiration. Steve Jobs used to talk a lot about the iMac and iLife, so adding the “i” prefix was a natural thing to do. Jobs initially rejected the iPod name, but later came around to it.

Apple's first iPod came with a little secret — in the form of a game that could be accessed if you knew the right combination of buttons to press. Breakout, the hidden game itself, is notable in Apple's history as it was a product that both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked on together at Atari.

The full range of sounds, on average, for an iPod is 120 decibels.

In September 2002, the iPod was briefly taken off the market in France when authorities said it was too loud and could damage listeners’ ears. Under French law, portable devices were limited to 100 decibels. The iPod’s software was quickly updated to reduce the volume.

June 2004 saw BMW debut the first car entertainment system with built-in iPod integration. Within a couple of years, 90% of new cars would also offer this feature.

In January 2005, Apple announces a new entry-level iPod, the iPod Shuffle, using flash memory with 512MB and 1GB capacities. Small enough to fit into the coin pocket of your jeans, the iPod Shuffle could directly connect to your computer through the onboard USB port.

In December 2005, the White House reveals that President George W. Bush also used an iPod. In March 2008, the iPod went to space on the Space Shuttle Endeavor & in April 2009, on a state visit to UK, President Obama gifted an iPod to the Queen of England.

In its 15 years of life so far, over 400 million iPods have been sold. That’s equal to more than 73,000 iPods being sold daily for 15 years.

The iPod changed the world of music by introducing the idea of “shuffle” to listeners. With the iPod, and iTunes, you can listen to music at random. Instead of making choices, you can let fate choose what you listen to.

In the age when online music piracy was rampant, iTunes (which even today is used to sync music, images & videos with Apple devices) created the first legitimate digital music store that competed effectively with piracy.

Answering my question at the beginning of the Nugget - the 15 year journey of the iPod has see 6 generations of the iPod Classic, 2 generations of the iPod Mini, 7 generations of the iPod Nano, 4 generations of the iPod Shuffle & 6 generations of the iPod Touch. Phew!!

But unfortunately the iPod has been a victim of its own success. Sales are slowing down at an alarming pace (Some figures suggest the number of iPhones sold in 3 months beats the number of iPods sold in a year). And since January 2015, Apple does not disclose the number of iPods sold. It combines the figures under the “Other products” section of its balance sheet, thus drawing the spotlight away from its iconic invention.

I am sure at some point in our lives we’ve all bobbed our heads to the tune of a song on an iPod – hope this nugget has rekindled some fond memories of your musical past.

That’s all on this weekend’s GK Nugget.