Happy 10 years of iPod-ing

The little shuffle in your pocket or the Touch that you play your Angry Birds on. It all started on a Sunday ten years ago. It's the tenth birthday of the planet's favourite MP3 player/PMP. Steve Jobs launched the iPod at a small conference in Cupertino with the following sentence, "The coolest thing about the iPod is that your whole music library fits in your pocket." When it launched, it was of course revolutionary because you could hold 5GB of music in your pocket, it had 20 minutes of skip protection so you could exercise with it, and came with FireWire for transfering music to the device which of course it later dropped. The first iPod only worked on Mac, and obviously Apple realized the potential of opening it up to the Windows platform and then did it. Apple also managed to get all the record labels on board to sell music in this new fashion.

How far we've come

Over time, the iPod changed capacities to 10 GB and 40 GB (to now 160 GB), the wheel and buttons were overhauled, and it's been getting smaller and smaller. The screen got colour, the devices got colour, flash memory was brought in, video playback made a debut, and now, it's mostly all touchscreen. The iPod certainly has changed the way an entire generation listens to music. With updates every year, it will be interesting to see what Apple will do with the iPod under new leadership. But in the meanwhile, Happy Birthday iPod!