Apple Introduces the iPod, October 23, 2001: Specs, Price, Legacy

Apple introduced the iPod on October 23, 2001, describing it as a pocket-size player that could hold about 1,000 CD-quality songs. It cost $399, weighed 6.5 ounces and went on sale on Saturday, November 10, 2001. The first model worked only with Macs, but within six years the iPod had become the fastest-selling music player in history and a major share of Apple’s business.

What Apple Announced in October 2001

The iPod’s selling point was capacity in a small package. Apple put a 5GB hard drive into a case it said was about 20 percent of the volume of comparable hard-drive players, and it marketed the result as a player that fit in a pocket.

The October 23 press release listed the specifications that defined the product:

Feature	Original iPod (2001)
Storage	5GB hard drive
Capacity	About 1,000 CD-quality songs
Weight	6.5 ounces
Battery	Up to 10 hours of continuous music
Screen	160 by 128 pixels, with a white backlight
Connection	FireWire, which also charged the battery
Audio formats	MP3, MP3 VBR, AIFF and WAV
Price	$399

The box held earbud headphones, a FireWire cable, a FireWire power adapter and a CD with iTunes 2, the software version the player required. Steve Jobs’s line in the release was confident: “With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again.”

The Scroll Wheel and Auto-Sync

Two design choices separated the iPod from rival players. The first was the mechanical scroll wheel. Users turned it with a thumb to move through playlists, artists or songs, and the list sped up the longer they kept turning, a practical answer to the problem of browsing a thousand tracks on a small screen.

The second was the connection to a computer. FireWire moved music quickly: Apple said a full CD transferred in under 10 seconds and 1,000 songs in under 10 minutes, roughly 30 times faster than USB-based players. When the iPod was plugged into a Mac, a feature called Auto-Sync copied the user’s iTunes library and playlists automatically and kept them updated each time it reconnected. The player could also be used as a portable FireWire hard drive for ordinary files.

How Apple Built It in Under a Year

The iPod grew out of Apple’s “digital hub” plan. In January 2001, the company released iTunes, a free jukebox program that let Mac users rip CDs into MP3 files, organize playlists and burn their own discs. A portable player that synced with iTunes was the next step.

Hardware chief Jon Rubinstein found a key part on a supplier visit to Japan: a new 1.8-inch Toshiba hard drive small enough for a pocket device. He recruited Tony Fadell, who had worked on handheld devices elsewhere, to lead the project under the code name P-68. Fadell’s team worked with the chip company PortalPlayer on the player’s software and had a prototype within about eight months.

The name came from freelance copywriter Vinnie Chieco, who was reminded of the line “Open the pod bay doors, Hal” from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film’s title year happened to be the iPod’s own.

From Mac Accessory to Best-Selling Player

The iPod went on sale on November 10, about two and a half weeks after the announcement. The timing put it in stores for the 2001 holiday shopping season, two months after the September 11 attacks. You can check the weekday of any launch date with the day-of-the-week tool.

Its early market was limited to Mac owners. That changed in 2002, when Apple released a second-generation model that also worked with Windows. The larger shift came on April 28, 2003, when Apple opened the iTunes Music Store, which sold songs for 99 cents each and gave iPod owners a legal way to buy music by the track.

New models followed quickly, including the iPod mini on February 20, 2004, and the first iPod touch on September 5, 2007. On April 9, 2007, Apple announced that it had sold its 100 millionth iPod, calling it the fastest-selling music player in history. By then the iTunes Store had sold more than 2.5 billion songs, and more than 4,000 accessories had been made for the device.

The iPod’s Legacy

The iPod changed the shape of Apple’s business. In the quarter Apple reported in January 2007, iPods made up 48 percent of the company’s revenue, and the pairing of a device with the iTunes software and store became the model for what came next. When Jobs introduced the iPhone on January 9, 2007, Apple described it in part as a “widescreen iPod with touch controls.”

That success eventually overtook the product itself. As phones took over everyday music listening, Apple discontinued the iPod classic on September 9, 2014. On May 10, 2022, Apple said the iPod touch would be sold only while supplies lasted, closing a line that had begun more than 20 years earlier. Cumulative iPod sales are estimated at about 450 million units.

For the wider setting of the original launch, see the full 2001 calendar, and for the moment the iPod’s influence peaked, the 2007 calendar.