October 23, 2007
Along with my birthday this past week Apple is celebrating a birthday of one if its most famous offspring. The very first iPod was introduced on this day October 23 2001, just six years ago.
The stainless-steel unit costs $399, had a 5GB hard drive, connected to a Mac using FireWire only, included a 10-hour lithium polymer battery and offered 20 minutes of anti-skip protection. The iPod measured 2.43 inches by 4.02 inches by 0.78 inches and weighs 6.5 ounces. Apple didn't know how many they would be producing, but there are about 7 million Macs with a FireWire port. The device did not use a digital-rights management scheme at the time. "Piracy is not a technological issue. It's a behavior issue," Jobs said, adding that all the encryption schemes that have been developed can also be broken.
Today there have been thirty-two different models from the shuffle, to the nano, to the mini, to the new iPod touch. There have been over 100 million iPods sold so far and I'm sure the next model will be a big hit again.
By the way, as a birthday present this year, I did by a new Nano iPod and it is better than I thought. You never disappoint Apple.