Who invented the iPod

Who invented the iPod

The iPod is probably one of the most revolutionary consumer products ever developed, it’s right up there with velcro, computers, cars, even the paper clip. Designed and manufactured by Apple Inc, some say the iPod was invented by Steve Jobs, and since its launch in 2001 has become the world’s biggest selling mp3 player with over 180 million units shipped by the end of 2008.

In 2000, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs setup a team of people to design and invent a new portable music player that he believed could dominate the mp3 market because all of the existing players were clunky and weren’t really selling in great numbers. Many of the players then on the market were simple devices with poor quality LCD screens and unreadable fonts.


Steve Jobs

The team comprising Jonathan Ive, Jon Rubinstein, Michael Dhuey, and Tony Fadell with Steve Jobs started looking for partners with existing components that could be adapted into the perfect mp3 player. Jonathan Ive worked closely with Steve Jobs in several previous projects and invented the eMate, as well as designing Apple’s minimalist design philosophy and has been described as the inventor of the iPod, while Michael Dhuey was one of the two designers of the Macintosh II.

Despite Apple’s reputation for designing everything in house, the first generation iPod actually adopted technology developed by other companies and brought everything together into a single device. The operating system used in the iPod was borrowed from PortalPlayer, and the user interface invented by Pixo.

By August 2001 the iPod was ready for the marketing team to start creating a brand around Apple’s new portable music player, and a group of technology journalists were invited to Cupertino, California to test drive the new device and help Apple develop a name for the product. Vinnie Chieco, a freelancer with a sense of humor immediately saw a resemblance between the shiny white player and the white EVA pods seen in 2001: A Space Oddyssey.

Apple’s marketing and legal team discovered that the name I-Pod had already been trademarked by a company that manufactured internet kiosks, but fortunately for Apple these hadn’t sold well and it was possible for Apple to buy the name, which they then changed to iPod rather than the more cumbersome I-Pod. Vinnie Chieco’s fame lives on as the inventor of the iPod name, though he actually had little to do with it’s development.

In 2008, following the beginnings of a lawsuit with Burst.com who claimed to own the patent for a device similar to the iPod, Apple publicly acknowledged the work of a British man, Kane Kramer, who invented the iPod in 1979. Kramer and his business partner James Campbell designed a system that incorporated a music player with a four way navigation button and an interface that would allow songs to be downloaded from a catalog of music, similar to the iTunes store.

Who invented the iPod

Who Invented The Ipod? Whole Story

Who Invented The Ipod

The Ipod is a collection of trendy portable music players which was introduced by Apple. It was launched on October 2001. The Ipod is an amazing discovery. It has changed the way people think about music players. Music players are no more old big boxes which look really ugly. The Ipod looks better than any other music player in the market. Apple has had great success with the Ipod. The way the Ipod looks, the way it works, and the way it feels is just amazing. But who's the mastermind behind all this? Who invented the ipod? It surely must have taken a lot of brains to create such a masterpiece.

Who invented the Ipod? Why did Apple think only about a music player? Why not a revolutionary washing machine?

The answer is that all other electronic appliances had very well established markets. But nobody had tried on music players at that time. So Apple thought why not capture this market, and they have so successfully done it.

So, who actually invented the Ipod?

Jon Rubinstein with his team at Apple was given a one year's period to create the Apple Ipod. Tony Fadell and Michael Dhuey were also a part of the team. They successfully completed the project and the did it. This is the team who invented the Ipod.

Who Invented The Ipod

Do you know who invented the iPod?

Who invented the iPod

Now we can hardly find a person who doesn’t know Apple’s great product – iPod. It has become a kind of symbol like the Mercedes or the Rolex. Launched on October 2001, it has made a revolution in the field of music players and changed the way people think about music players. They are no more old big boxes which look really ugly. The IPod has a better look than any other music player in the market. Modern and sleek, compact and roomy, the item has entered Western culture and has made a great impact in every sphere from culture to economics.

Still not everyone is aware of the history of ipod and that’s why we can face a great number of questions like: who invented the iPod, who was the first with the idea of iPod, who is the real creator of the iPod? As the question is very popular, I’ll try to answer it. So my article today is related to the topic of “who invented the iPod”.
In reality, we can’t name just one person that can be pointed as the actual “inventor” of the iPod. And the iPod wasn’t “invented” in our traditional understanding of the word. Its concept and design came into being in 2001. There already existed MP3 players which were created by German research center. But Apple had a desire to make MP3 players somehow smaller and more stylish.

For this reason ordered by CEO Steve Jobs, Apple’s hardware engineering team with Jon Rubinstein in charge started developing of the item. The product was to be developed in less than one year. Jon Rubenstein can be credited to putting the initial pieces together. He did a great deal of research work to see if such a device was even possible and they found out that it was.

The outward look came about when Jonathan Ive was hired to create what was to be the iPod. He designed the whole thing to be pleasing to the eye, to “feel” like it deserved expensive, and to be hip. In his usual style, designer Jonathan Ive designed the iPod to be smart and compact. And thus, the mp3 became something much more — it became the iPod.

Who invented the iPod

Who Invented the iPod - Part 2

Who Invented the iPod

When a product becomes as popular and widespread worldwide as the iPod, people begin to ask the question “who invented the iPod?”

And though anyone who guessed “a bunch of folks at Apple” is basically right, the answer to the question is a little more complex and interesting.

Who Invented the iPod at Apple

The iPod was far from the first portable MP3 player. The devices had been on the market for years before the iPod debuted in October 2001, so Apple didn’t invent the concept. But none of the devices prior to the iPod had been big hits and the iPod was the first product to really make the music loading and listening process elegant and enjoyable.

The iPod team at Apple took about a year to design and launch the first iPod in 2001. That team consisted of:

• Jon Rubinstein, then the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering; now at Palm
  
• Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of design at Apple
  
• Tony Fadell, an engineer and former senior vice president of the iPod division
  
• Michael Dhuey, an engineer; now at Cisco Systems
  
• Steve Jobs, the company’s CEO, who oversaw the project

The Name

Did you know that the person who gave the iPod its name wasn’t even an Apple employee? Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter, suggested the name iPod because he was inspired by the line in the movie 2001 "Open the pod bay door, HAL."

Who Invented the iPod at Other Companies

Apple has a reputation for building its hardware and software entirely in-house and not partnering with outside companies. That didn’t hold true for the development of the iPod.

The iPod was based on a reference design by a company called PortalPlayer (no part of NVIDIA), who had created a prototype device using an embedded operating system.

Also in an uncharacteristic move for a company widely known and respected for its user interfaces, Apple didn’t design the first iPod interface, contracting with a company called Pixo (now part of Sun Microsystems) for that work.

But Who Really Invented the iPod?

As I noted above, Apple was far from the first company to bring a portable digital music player to the market. But would you believe that iPod was essentially invented in England in 1979? It’s true.

Kane Kramer, a British inventor, developed and patent the idea of a portable, plastic digital music player in 1979. He was unable to afford to renew the worldwide patent on his idea, though, and because the patent expired, he was unable to make any money from his original idea.

Apple has even acknowledged Kramer’s role in inventing the iPod as part of its defense against a patent lawsuit in 2008.

Who Invented the iPod

Who Invented the Ipod?

Who Invented the Ipod

The world changed in 2001 when Apple Computerintroduced the iPod, the world's first portable MP3 music player. It was the most significant change in music since the compact disc killed the vinyl record. It changed how people listen to music, how they buy music and how they incorporate it into their lives.

History

The first recorded sounds were those of inventors such as Thomas Edison---who sang "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into his machine on tin foil in 1877---and from those early tentative steps, music has been a major part of sound recording. Records began to appear with single songs at 78 revolutions per minute. Collections of these, known as "albums," might contain an entire symphony. By 1930, RCA Victor produced the first long-playing record. In 1949, the same company released the first 45 rpm record "single," which launched the rock and roll era for the 1950s. The 78s died off, but the LPs and singles continued for many years. By 1982, the first laser-read CD was reduced to consumers. In the next 19 years, the CD became the dominant music product on the market.

Time Frame

When Apple Computer original wanted to be called Apple, CEO Steve Jobs had to sign a deal with the Beatles to use the name. The Beatles had founded Apple Corp. in 1968 as their own record label. The executors of the Beatles' company agreed to let Jobs and his partner, Steve Wozniak, use the Apple name as long as they never did anything with music. This was fine with Jobs and Wozniak because no one yet had created the MP3 compression of digitized music. That changed in 1987, when Fraunhofer-Gesellshaft introduced the technology. Apple Computer made a new deal with Apple Corp. to settle the old agreement two decades later.

Considerations
When MP3s started to be used by a variety of people world wide and it really began to catch on, Jobs and his crew at Apple saw real possibilities in a market that was just coming of age. Plans were made, and a team at the computer company was given the task of creating a new version of what used to be called a Sony Walkman, but without moving parts or the need for or limitations of the cassette tape.

Effects

First came iTunes, the software Apple introduced in January 2001 that was like a digital jukebox or music library. This was from a software program purchased by Apple and changed to meet its needs. It could handle standard, non-compressed AIFF music files but also could import and compress files to the MP3 format. This was essential for the creation of a portable music player because an MP3 file, on average, is about a tenth the size of an uncompressed music file. The work already was progressing on the iPod. Jon Rubinstein, Michael Dhuey and Tony Fadell headed the team at Apple that would, after a year of work, introduce the iPod in October 2001. Vinnie Chieco, who was brought into Apple to help introduce the iPod, came up with the name.

Features

Then the world changed. Nobody else really was in the market of compact, portable MP3 players, so Apple had the genre to itself. Besides, Apple always made stylish, impressive, innovative products anyway, and the iPod was no different. It was tiny, sleek and white. It could be tucked into a pocket. It could be taken anywhere. And it synced up to iTunes, which was available for both the Apple Macintosh and Windows-based computers. Despite MP3 compression, the sound is clear, sharp and good. Few people can hear the difference between a compressed music file at top quality and an uncompressed file.

Who Invented the Ipod