In 2004, Apple introduced a very curious accessory for its music player: iPod Socks.
Category: Apple History
Coverage of the Original iPod
The iPod turns 15 years old today. I thought it would be fun to revisit early coverage of the music player to see how people responded to it at the time.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
Jonathan Seff at Macworld didn’t seem to think the Nomad comparison was a big deal, and praised the speed FireWire 400 brought to transfers:
The iPod has a smaller hard drive than the 20GB, USB-based Nomad Jukebox, but its FireWire interface makes the USB connections on other MP3 players seem slower than molasses. It takes hours to transfer 5GB of music files to a music player that connects via USB; the iPod can transfer that amount in as little as 12 minutes.
Fifteen Years Ago, Steve Jobs Announced the iPod
Fifteen years ago today, Steve Jobs announced the original iPod.
His pitch was simple: 1,000 songs in your pocket.
The iPod was designed to easily sync all of your digital music. You could take it with you, wherever you went.
In a world where portable music meant often carring a battery-powered CD player and a huge wallet of discs, this was a revolution.
‘hello again’
Apple today announced an event that will take place on October 27. Here’s what the invite looks like:
Wait, damn it. That’s not right. Hang on.
Crap. This is confusing. Let me see what Jason posted.
There we go:
I guess we’re getting Macs. I highly doubt that new MacBook Pros will have the same historical impact as the Macintosh and iMac, but it’s fun that Apple revisited the tagline.
Video: The Original iPod⇢
Announced in October 2001, the original iPod may have been simple, but it launched what would become a revolution.
On the Mac’s Stale System Sounds⇢
Jason Snell, arguing that the Mac’s system sounds deserve some attention:
The Mac comes with 14 built-in alert sounds, all available from the Sound Effects tab of the Sound preference pane. One of them, Sosumi, dates from System 7. Three more—Glass, Purr, and Submarine—date from Mac OS 9. Six others (Basso, Frog, Funk, Ping, Pop, Tink) are from the earliest days of OS X. The newest ones seem to be Blow, Bottle, Hero, and Morse—and they’ve been around since at least Snow Leopard in 2009.
Xserves Still in Use⇢
Apple put the final nail in the Xserve’s coffin in January 2011 when it officially stopped selling rack-mounted servers. Instead, the company started pushing server customers toward Mac Pros and Minis. On Sept. 20 of this year, Apple lowered that coffin into the ground when macOS Sierra dropped software support for the systems. And while Xserves running El Capitan will keep getting security updates for a couple of years and the current build of the macOS Server software still runs on El Capitan, the hardware will soon be completely buried.
Ken Segall Visits Prague Apple Museum⇢
So, yes, I did visit the Apple Museum on my first day in the Czech Republic last week. (Do I get any points if I walked across the Charles Bridge to get there?) I even sat down with the museum’s manager days later to learn a bit more.
Now that I’m back in New York, here are some photos and observations from my little adventure.
Drang Drafts Macs⇢
Dr. Drang has some excellent follow-up for the Mac draft I held earlier this week.
Back in Black(book)⇢
This month at iMore, I wrote about everyone’s favorite notebook:
Like its predecessor, the MacBook’s case was plastic: The two lower-end models used an outer shell that was glossy like the iBook; the screen bezel, trackpad and keyboard were in a nice, matte white.
But the most expensive MacBook model, which cost $200 more at launch, came in black.
Harry Potter iPod Follow-Up
Back in January, I wrote about the Harry Potter Collector’s iPod:
The iPod was engraved with the Hogwarts crest on the back, and was revved to a 30 GB, 5th-generation iPod shortly after release.
It could only be purchased with the audiobooks, for a combined cost of $548, and there were some special terms and conditions that applied to the offer. It’s important to note that the iPod didn’t come pre-loaded with the audiobooks; this was a digital purchase alongside an iPod. Customers had to download the files and sync them over themselves.
1999’s Artwork and Guidelines for the Mac Logo
512 reader Marc Robinson mailed me me a bunch of Apple marketing materials from the late 90s and early 00s. There was a ton of good stuff in his package, but there was one that I thought I should share first: a CD containing artwork and guidelines on how to use the then-new Mac logo.
A lot of companies publish style guides on how their logos should and shouldn’t be used.1
In the late 90s, Apple made a push for developers to standardize how they showed the Mac logo.