The iPod - A History.
The iPod was not the invention, the invention was the music sale service to complement it, and build a company around it
This idea was from the mind of Tony Fadell, an independent contractor and hardware expert who'd helped develop handheld devices at General Magic and Philips.
"10 years from now Apple will be a music business, not a computer business."
Much of the iPod's development is clouded by secrecy but Ben Knauss, a former senior manager at PortalPlayer who acted as the primary liaison between Apple and PortalPlayer (until quitting in 2001), lets us in on a few details
Tony Fadell was hired by Apple in early 2001 and they assigned him a team of about 30 people , including designers, programmers and hardware engineers. He is currently senior director of iPod & Special Projects Group at Apple
According to Tony Fadell, when Apple first set up a meeting with Portal Player Ben Knauss said, , "This is the project that's going to remold Apple and 10 years from now, it's going to be a music business, not a computer business."
Fadell left Philips and set himself up as an independent contractor. Fadell approached several companies and was turned away by all of them, except for Apple.
Tony Fadell had an idea for a business process and Apple was transforming itself on his whim.
Fadell was familiar with PortalPlayer's reference designs for a couple of MP3 players, including one about the size
of a cigarette packet. And though the design was unfinished, several prototypes had been built, "It was fairly ugly!" said Knauss but Fadell recognized the PortalPlayer's potential, it had an operating system and this was a real selling point for Apple. Apple was on a tight schedule and yet the software and the hardware was already done.
If ever Portal Player too a gamble it was when Apple got involved, thankfully it paid off.
At the time PortalPlayer had 10 customers designing MP3 players based on the PortalPlayer's reference design, most were Asian hardware manufacturers but also included IBM, who planned a small black MP3 player, based on the company's own mini hard drives, which featured a unique circular screen and wireless Bluetooth headphones. This MP3 device was said to be a lot sexier than the iPod.
However, when Apple came to the table, PortalPlayer dropped all our other customers and went exclusively with Apple. For the next eight months, the company's 200 employees in the United States and 80 engineers in India worked exclusively on the iPod.
Not satisfied with the prototype, Apple add more features to the iPod
Apple had a list of features it wanted added to the reference design including Apple's preferred music format, AAC, as well as Audible's audio book format and a five-band equalizer. Apple also wanted a new interface, which it designed in-house in about three months. Apple CEO Steve Jobs molded the device's shape, feel and design and not many projects get that. In fact he was heavily involved in every single aspect of the project
Steve Jobs puts on the pressure.
During meetings Steve would get frustrated if he couldn't get to the song he wanted in less than three pushes of a button.
Comments from Steve rattled the design team. "Steve doesn't think it's loud enough", "the sharps aren't sharp enough", or "the menu's not coming up fast enough". Every day there were comments from Steve saying how he wanted the iPod to be.
In fact, the iPod is louder than most MP3 players because Steve Jobs is partly deaf! The technical team made it louder so he could hear it.
Fairplay and DRM (Digital Rights Management)
There were no demands to add FairPlay, Apple's copy-protection technology, which was appended to the second-generation iPod to coincide with the introduction of the iTunes music store.
Their belief was DRM would hurt sales when they rolled out the music store. They specifically wanted no DRM in the original iPod.
Secret iPod Prototypes
The iPod prototypes were sealed tight inside a reinforced plastic box about the size of a shoebox.
They put the buttons and the screen in creative locations all over the box so people couldn't tell what product was inside it and how small it was. They always put the controls in different places, for instance the scroll wheel on the side or the screen on the top, to make sure it wasn't predictable what the end result was going to be. The only thing accessible was the jacks.
The iPods flawed battery
The iPod project was at risk just as it drew to completion. The iPod battery was proving to be the achilles heal.
Tests showed the iPod drained its batteries even when powered down. The production lines had already been set up, and for eight weeks they thought they had a three-hour MP3 player. The problem was eventually fixed and shortly after, Apple bought a majority stake in the company.
Knauss quit shortly before the iPod was released because he had no confidence it would be a success. "It was probably a mistake, but then you have to go with what you think at the time," he said. Knauss is now aged 34 and is currently contracting for Microsoft.
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