Considering the poor state of the PMP market, Jobs decided that Apple should attempt to create its own MP3 player, one that played well with iTunes and could potentially attract more customers to the Mac platform.
Rubinstein began preliminary research for ideas on how to proceed. From the beginning, he had two ingredients in mind: a speedy FireWire interface to solve the transfer problem, and a particular 1. Through personal connections, Rubinstein heard about a man with the right qualifications and experience to do the job.
He gave him a call in January On that day in January, Tony Fadell happened to be riding on a ski lift when his phone rang. It was Jon Rubinstein calling. He invited Fadell to visit Apple to discuss a potential project, but he kept quiet about its exact nature. At Philips, Fadell had seen the potential of digital audio players through an encounter with Audible, an Internet audiobook vendor that wanted to bring its digital audio products to the Nino. Fadell explored the idea at Philips but found little interest in the ideas among management.
After a brief stint at RealNetworks, Fadell left to form his own digital music company called Fuse Systems. Fuse developed a digital jukebox that would rip CDs to an internal hard drive, but the company had trouble raising funding in a time when venture capitalists fetishized software over hardware. Fadell had received the call from Rubinstein just as Fuse ran out of money. Soon, Apple offered Fadell a six-week contract as a hardware consultant. During that six week period, Fadell met with almost everyone he knew in the handheld industry while keeping his true goals secret.
Fadell brewed up three prototype designs for a potential Apple music player, each model crafted from foam core boards with rough interface graphics pasted on. Lead fishing weights gave each mock-up the approximate weight of a final device.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Apple Inc. The willingness to keep going was the critical part of a heart-to-heart conversation Fadell had with Jobs that convinced him to join the company.
Fadell asked Apple's visionary leader if he was willing to go the distance with the iPod, not just investing in this first unit, but to commit to a family of products. Fadell had been through enough scenarios in which a company cancels the first product nine months in because it didn't want to invest in the next one.
In Fadell's mind, it took three generations to get the ball rolling. Jobs told Fadell he was going to throw marketing dollars at the iPod, pulling resources from its core Mac business. And even though sales of the original iPod and the follow-up version didn't light any fires, Jobs followed through.
It wasn't until the iPod hit its third generation in , complete with a sleek redesign, that it began to take off as a mass market phenomenon. Fadell said he and Jobs continually pushed each other to take each version further, and he noted that Apple had become the largest consumer of NAND flash memory when the iPod Nano came out. We weren't playing it safe. We never rested on our laurels. The iPod also got another boost in April , when Apple launched the iTunes Music Store , giving people a way to buy music from a catalog of , digital songs rather than having to rip their own CDs.
There had been other digital music players before, but the iPod changed everything. Along the way, Apple showed off its marketing prowess and created iconic ads remember the iPod silhouette commercials? Jobs also paired up with rock band U2 in on a special-edition, black and red version of the iPod with Bono and The Edge on hand for the introduction.
By , a little more than five years after that original launch, Apple sold its millionth iPod. The business peaked in with sales of Fadell was involved with 18 iterations of the iPod. By , Fadell said Apple was already looking at the competitive threat of cellphones, which started packing in music players and cameras. His team played with prototypes that included a full-screen iPod with a virtual click wheel and that essentially combined an iPod Classic and its wheel with a phone.
Updated August 03, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Bellis, Mary. The Short but Interesting History of the iPod. The Most Important Inventions of the 21st Century. The Inventor of Touch Screen Technology. Smartphone Technologies of the Future. The Unusual History of Microsoft Windows. Best Smartphone Apps for Poetry Writing.
Important Innovations and Inventions, Past and Present. Your Privacy Rights.
0コメント