“Jobs explained to the crowd that had gathered at Apple headquarters for the iPod’s launch: ‘Why music? Well, we love music, and it’s always good to do something you love.’ On this Thursday, October 23, 2001, Apple was announcing what would turn out to be its most successful product. The iPod struggled past the battery problem to offer as much as 10 hours of playing time between charges. Inside was 32 MB of memory – more than most Palm Pilots. And by being built around a 5 GB hard drive instead of the widely used flash memory, the iPod offered enough storage for 1000 songs,” Jeffrey Young and William Simon write int heir book, “iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business,” excerpted for The Sydney Morning Herald.
“‘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,’ Jobs bragged. ‘Isn’t this cool?’ he asked the crowd, demonstrating how painless the designers had made it to transfer songs. ‘With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again.’ Early sales were encouraging but not exactly breakaway. It wasn’t until Christmas 2002, when 200,000 iPods were sold, that sales began to kick in to high gear,” Young and Simon write. “The little pocket music player was vastly outselling Apple’s core product, the Macintosh, and Jobs began predicting that iPod and the iTunes Music Store would be accounting for half the company’s revenue. Steve Jobs had found a goldmine.”
“With the music business, Steve Jobs was finally having his day. He came along when the industry was in a paroxysm of shrinking revenues, downsizing work forces, and the threat of extinction from an apparently unstoppable force called downloading. An outsider, not even a fan of today’s music, Steve had done the almost unthinkable: he had changed the face of a second industry,” Young and Simon write.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This article is required reading for anyone interested in Apple Computer, Inc.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Bio authors: Steve Jobs wants ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – May 23, 2005
Author of ‘The Second Coming of Steve Jobs’ Alan Deutschman reviews Steve Jobs ‘iCon’ bio – May 23, 2005
Banned in Apple Retail Stores, ‘iCon’ unauthorized Steve Jobs bio doubles initial printing run – May 01, 2005
Publisher says Apple removed all its books from Apple stores due to upcoming Steve Jobs bio – April 26, 2005
My 1st Gen 10 GB iPod is now on the mantlepiece. Still love looking at it.
MDN word is “volume” as in the volume of iPods sales will hopefully continue to go up!
Note to Self: Buy Apple stock.
Steve Jobs: “”‘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,'”
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Apple invented the hard-drive based MP3 player. I distinctly remember having a Creative Rio Jukebox before iPod came on the market.
RUMOR: Apple putting finishing touches on two new products, an anti-gravity machine and a perpetual motion machine! Both will run stripped down verion of OS X.
“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Apple invented the hard-drive based MP3 player. I distinctly remember having a Creative Rio Jukebox before iPod came on the market.”
Steve was referring to the ultra-compact form factor that the iPod pioneered.
From the original press release:
“Next Generation Player
iPod represents the next generation of portable music players that store music on an internal hard drive, yet are only 20 percent of the volume of today’s hard drive-based players. iPod stores up to 1,000 CD-quality songs on its super-thin 5 GB hard drive, and features up to 20 minutes of shock protection for nonstop playback when running, biking or other activities.”
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001/oct/23ipod.html
B-Sabre you are wrong.
Now look here at the flashing light
Sincerely yours,
MiB
I’ve been researching Apple’s Major Launch Dates in case anyone else is interested. If I have some incorrect dates – let me know!
iTunesJanuary 9, 2001
iPod (5 GB)October 23rd 2001
iTunes Music Store (200,000 songs) Late April, April 2003
iMacApple Expo (Fall?) 1998
iMac G4 LCDJan. 7, 2002
iMac G5 Late August, 2004
Mac miniJanuary 2005
PowerMac G4 August 31, 1999
Power Mac G5 (64 bit) June 23rd 2003
OS 9Sept 1999
OS XMarch 24th, 2001
OS 10.1 – PumaSeptember, 2001
OS 10.2 – JaguarAugust 24, 2002
OS 10.3 – PantherOctober 2003
OS 10.4 – TigerApril, 2004
I love it when they whip out this little gem:
“The little pocket music player was vastly outselling Apple’s core product, the Macintosh”
Aaaand let me guess.. Sony sold more Walkmans than TV’s…
An iPod costs about $250.
A Mac costs about a thousand.
Stop acting like sales numbers indicate something they don’t.
Almost everything I’ve read contains subtle and not so subtle digs at Apple and Steve. He paints the two with the same brush one would use for Microsoft and Bill.
I can see why you can’t buy this rubbish at an Apple Store.
CDN Guy: My 1st Gen 10 GB iPod is still going strong and just had its third birthday. In fact, I’ve been listening to it for the last hour. The battery doesn’t hold out quite as long as it used to, but I only need to charge it about every five days (I’m not a heavy listener).
What an wonderful piece of technology.
Mike: “Stop acting like sales numbers indicate something they don’t.”
What a stupid statement.
Perpetual motion is easy. Launch a satellite into high orbit.
As for antigravity, all you have to do is move so fast, you can’t fall down – and then move a bit faster.
While he was gunning down perfectly viable products with Billy-the-Kid abandon, he recognised the need for something stunningly new to revitalise Apple and the new digital frontier. Additions to the Macintosh line weren’t enough. He was looking for something that held the explosive promise of becoming “the next big thing”.
Uh-oh…. Was he reaallyyy? Or was he just adding Apple- quality software [and later hardware] to exploit market opportunities and then found himself with a home run? Methinks I’ll skip this book.
LordRobin, I believe that if you were to charge your iPod more regularly, rather than just once every five days, the battery would last longer.
“Steve had done the almost unthinkable: he had changed the face of a second industry,” Young and Simon write.”
Actually shouldn’t that be a THIRD industry?
Steve has been involved in changing:
1) The PC/tech industry with original Apple PC and the Mac and it’s GUI operating system
2) The animated/movie industry through PIXAR
3) The music industry
This is a fairly well known and basic fact – you’d have to question how good/accurate this book is if they can’t even get that right!?
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my 2 cents
Luke
Really good read.
I read the original story in the paper version of The Sydney Morning Herald twelve hours before this piece was published online. This is an edited version. The original piece is far more interesting and in-depth.
anon: “Mike: “Stop acting like sales numbers indicate something they don’t.”
What a stupid statement.”
what a stupid statement. no really….is this all you’re going to say? way to make yourself look like you want so bad to say something but have no idea what to say. at least say something to back up WHY you think it’s stupid…..for crying out loud… *rolling eyes*