The First iPod — 1,000 Songs in Your Pocket

The first iPod was announced on 23 October 2001 and went on sale in the US on Saturday 10 November 2001, priced at $399. In Japan, Apple's local subsidiary announced on 24 October that the iPod would launch there on the same day, 10 November, at a list price of ¥47,800. On 7 November it postponed the Japanese launch by a week, and the iPod went on sale in Japan on 17 November. Japan was meant to be in the first wave; in the event it came a week behind the US.

The first iPod was a Mac-only product. Music was managed in iTunes 2 on the Mac, and the iPod pulled in songs and playlists automatically over FireWire. An iPod that worked with Windows came only with the second generation, the following year.

From announcement to release

In Japan it was to be sold through the online Apple Store and the shops that displayed and sold the iMac and iBook. The box held an iTunes 2 CD, earbud-style headphones, a FireWire cable and a FireWire-based power adapter.

What was inside

Apple's press release said FireWire could move a whole CD onto the iPod in under ten seconds and 1,000 songs in under ten minutes, thirty times faster than USB-based players. It also said the iPod was only 20 percent of the volume of hard-drive players then on the market. Both are Apple's own comparisons.

The iPod was not the first portable music player with a hard drive; Apple's release benchmarked it against existing hard-drive players. What set it apart was that its size, its transfer speed and its automatic sync with iTunes on the Mac were designed as one thing.

Steve Jobs was quoted in the release: "With iPod, 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."

From Mac-only to Windows

To use the first iPod you needed a Mac. That changed on 17 July 2002, when Apple announced 5 GB, 10 GB and 20 GB models at $299, $399 and $499 in the US, together with a version for Windows. The Mac models were to ship in early August and the Windows models in late August. The Windows iPod worked with MUSICMATCH Jukebox rather than iTunes.

The next change was in how people bought music:

Between them, these two steps turned the iPod from an accessory for Mac owners into something anyone with a Windows PC could use.

100 million, and the end

On 9 April 2007 Apple announced that it had sold 100 million iPods, five and a half years after the first one was sold in November 2001, and called it the fastest-selling music player in history. The count is Apple's, without a regional breakdown.

The same year brought the original iPhone, and on 5 September the Multi-Touch iPod touch joined the line. The 30-pin Dock connector, which had arrived with the third-generation iPod in 2003, carried over to the iPhone and lasted until Lightning on the iPhone 5.

On 10 May 2022 Apple said the iPod touch would be available only while supplies lasted. The same announcement looked back on the original iPod as 1,000 songs and a ten-hour battery in a 6.5-ounce package. The iPod name ended a little over twenty years after it began.

More than a music player

The first iPod doubled as a 5 GB portable FireWire hard drive, and its menus came in English, French, German and Japanese. It could display song information in any of those languages, so Japanese and English titles could sit side by side in one library.

For the company, see Apple; for its co-founder, Steve Jobs. The wider story of portable devices is on the mobile timeline and the hardware timeline.