25 Years Ago, Apple Charged $399 for a 5GB Music Player

On October 23, 2001, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs introduced a device that redefined personal music ownership. He described it as a breakthrough digital device that was not a Mac. The product launched at a price of $399 and promised to hold a user's entire music collection in a pocket-sized unit.

The launch occurred while Apple was recovering from the dot-com bubble burst. At the time, the company was selling iMacs and iBooks, and Jobs positioned the Mac as the hub for a user's digital lifestyle. He identified portable music as the first target because the market lacked a clear leader despite the presence of competitors like Sony, Creative, and Sonic Blue.

Jobs stated that none of the existing portable players had found the right recipe for digital music. The market then offered CD players, MP3 CD players, flash players, and hard-disk jukebox players. Apple chose the hard-disk format as its entry point into the industry.

The first iPod was an MP3 player with CD-quality sound. It supported MP3, WAV, and AIFF file formats. The device contained 5GB of storage, which allowed it to hold approximately 1,000 typical pop songs encoded at 160Kbps. Jobs noted that for most people, this capacity represented their entire music library.

The hardware was built around a new 1.8-inch hard drive from Toshiba that was 0.2 inches thick. The player measured 2.4 by 4 by 0.78 inches and weighed 6.5 ounces. Jobs described it as lighter than most cell phones of the era. It featured 20 minutes of skip protection and used a single FireWire 400 cable for both charging and file transfer.

Apple claimed FireWire speed allowed a full CD to transfer in five to 10 seconds, compared to roughly five minutes over standard USB connections. The system could load 1,000 songs in about 10 minutes instead of five hours. A rechargeable lithium-polymer battery provided 10 hours of continuous playback and could reach 80% charge in one hour.

The design featured a minimal back and sides with one-handed controls. An accelerated scroll wheel with a piezoelectric clicker provided tactile feedback for navigating playlists and artists. During the stage demonstration, the first track played was Sarah McLachlan's Building a Mystery. iTunes 2 launched simultaneously, adding MP3 CD burning and automatic syncing features that matched the Mac library to the iPod.

The iPhone did not arrive until early 2007, more than five years after the iPod debut. The two products coexisted in Apple's lineup for over a decade before the iPod's popularity declined. Apple released the seventh-generation iPod Touch in May 2019 and officially discontinued the entire line in May 2022.