The iPod in 2001: Year in Review

iTunes comes first

Apple's music story in 2001 began with software. On 9 January, at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Apple introduced iTunes as a free download for the Mac. It imported CDs as MP3 files, sorted a library by artist, album or genre, played internet radio and burned audio CDs. At first it worked with portable players from other makers, including Rio and Creative models.

The iPod is announced

On 23 October 2001 Apple announced the iPod, a player with a 5 GB hard drive holding up to 1,000 songs, presented as "1,000 songs in your pocket". It weighed 6.5 ounces (185 g) and measured 4.02 by 2.43 by 0.78 inches. Controls centred on a mechanical scroll wheel below a 2-inch monochrome screen of 160 by 128 pixels with a white LED backlight. Apple rated the battery at up to 10 hours of continuous music and quoted up to 20 minutes of skip protection.

The iPod connected to a Mac over FireWire, which Apple said could copy a whole CD in under 10 seconds and 1,000 songs in under 10 minutes. Auto-Sync updated its songs and playlists from iTunes each time it was plugged in. It played MP3, MP3 VBR, AIFF and WAV files, with menus in English, French, German and Japanese.

iTunes 2 and the launch

iTunes 2 was announced the same day, adding MP3 CD burning, an equalizer, crossfading and syncing with the iPod, and was offered as a free download from early November. The iPod went on sale on 10 November at a suggested price of US$399. It required a Mac with FireWire running Mac OS 9.2 or Mac OS X 10.1, plus iTunes 2; the box contained an iTunes 2 CD, earbuds, a FireWire cable and a FireWire power adapter. There was no Windows support.

The first advertisement

The first iPod television advertisement appeared in October 2001. It showed a man moving music from his computer to an iPod, then dancing around his room to "Take California" by Propellerheads.