Happy Birthday, iPod

It is hard to believe that it has been five years since Apple launched the iPod. When I first heard that Apple was going into the music player business, I thought maybe Steve Jobs had finally gone off his rocker (hear Jobs launch the product over on Engadget). Although he had guided the struggling computer maker back into the black, ironically, with colorful computers, did he really think Apple had any place in the music player business? I was among the group that was hoping that day's announcement was to be the return of an Apple PDA, but no such “luck.”

Five years later, I cannot think of a more brilliant move by Jobs. Using the iPod as a launching pad while the Mac continued its slow progress toward ditching Mac OS Classic for Mac OS X, suddenly Apple became the cool brand again. And more than just what it did for Apple, consider what this product launch did for the consumer electronics industry? Suddenly, it was desirable to have an “MP3 Player,” something that previously had simply seemed geeky — portable CD players were now so 1990's. Suddenly a new business in making iPod accessories appeared. Suddenly, a word as strange as “iPod” would be part of everyday language. Notice the key phrase “suddenly:” the iPod's growth has been “steady,” but it has been anything other than “slow.”

Few product launches have single handedly altered a market as much as the iPod did. The iPod is to electronic music storage what the Model T or the Beetle were to cars — something that redefined the industry. And just as those two illustrious models are unlikely to be passed up in single model sales ever again, I suspect that if the iPod brand ever falls, it will be unlikely that there will be such a clear dominance in the music player market again.

Really, the iPod is a lot like the Beetle. Like the Beetle, it looks a lot like it did at its launch. Things keep changing to keep it competitive with flashier models, but it never really rejects its essential look and feel that makes the iPod an iPod. And what could be better than a New Beetle + iPod?

I wonder what we will be using to listen to music fifty years from now?