The iPod is dead. Disappeared on the day he was born the Apple Apple Watch: not a word of farewell, not a thank you, not even a quick mention. On stage at the Flint Center For Performing Arts in Cupertino is not space for the world’s most popular music player, and there’s no longer even on the website of Apple, from which the iPod is gone for good, after having survived for years in always darkest corners.
So, after thirteen years of life, the iPod Classic comes in the story. With three hundred million copies sold, it stopped being a gadget and has become the first cultural icon of the Third Millennium. What’s more, the symbol of a revolution in music and computer science that still has not ended.
Originally, the iPod was supposed to be a sort of kiosk to connect to the internet (hence the initial), whose design resembled a pod (pod), and computer to protect you from inclement weather. But October 23, 2001, when Steve Jobs presents to the public, the iPod name indicates an object the size of a pack of cigarettes, that has nothing to do with the internet.
There are already portable music players, but what Apple is different: it can store in its hard disk up to a thousand songs to choose from browsing in a simple and intuitive menu. As the Walkman allows you to carry around your favorite music, but without cassette; The computer converts the compact disc in MP3 files and transfers them through a fast Firewire connection. The MP3 format has become famous by Napster, but when the iPod was born, the most popular software of Peer To Peer has disappeared, forced the closure of the record companies, and then there is the tragedy of the Twin Towers still smoldering to throw ‘ shadow of the gadgets on the market. But despite the $ 399 price list, Apple ended 2001 with 125,000 iPods sold.
“I was very fortunate to grow up in a time in history when the music was really important,” -raccontò Steve Jobs. “For a time, however, it was not more so, and the iPod has helped us to bring it back to the center of the lives of tens of millions of people. This makes me happy, because I think that music is good for the soul. ” Of course it was for the coffers of the Cupertino company, which in the mid-nineties crossed the deepest crisis in its history: he came first in the curves colored iMac, then the iPod, which paved the way for the revolution Touch the iPhone and iPad. With the iPod, Apple invents without even knowing the post-PC world of gadgets, which are computer but the computer does not have anything, the iPod has a processor, a hard disk, a display (and with a habit that only the True fans can appreciate, the first models to retrieve the interface font historian of the first Mac). But what is missing to make it an absolute novelty: there is no longer the desk, ends the usual metaphor of folders and documents, to find the favorite song using a finger. Before the iPhone, which revolutionized the world of telephony, is the iPod to revolutionize computing (starting just from Apple, which lost the word “computer” in the name).
Complex also the social implications: Steve Levy, in his Simply Perfect signals such as the sphere of music when you close the bearers of white caps is a way to isolate themselves and at the same time to communicate, signaling membership in a community. That is still growing, but is still vaguely elitist, unlike what happened in the seventies and eighties with the Walkman: the iPod is trendy, hyper, simple to use and allows you to bring a lifetime of songs. But you can store pictures, videos, contacts, appointments, notes; much more than the music, which already would be enough to draw a psychological portrait and character of the owner; not for nothing that at some point Apple introduces a secret combination to prohibit access to outsiders (and now on the iPhone serves a fingerprint)
The invention of Jobs is also a cultural revolution, which disrupts business models properties for decades, disrupts the habits of music fans, redraws the sales charts and strategies of the record. Its success is due to the integration of hardware, software and services in a closed system, where the songs can be purchased online at iTunes Music Store, you listen through the iTunes program, you copy on the iPod. The record companies, initially skeptical, accepted the bet, and now iTunes Store is the largest music store in the world, although the incidence of the stream begins to be felt. Over the years, Apple has loosened the control of DRM on purchased songs, but has revived the idea of a closed system first with the App Store for iPhone, and then with the one for Mac, accurately copied from Android and Windows.
The decline of the small jewelry black and silver (in the meantime also become black and red, in a special version for U2) begins with the introduction of the iPhone: Steve Jobs, in 2007, presents him as the best iPod ever. But the iPod Touch has nothing of the old iPod, which now boasts the adjective “classic”. The click wheel disappears, both in the base model, the Shuffle, and in the top: survives in the Nano, which is the true heir to the iPod. And he remained until 2010, when even the little reader Apple converts to touch and adopts an interface similar to iOS. To see him now, with the square screen and the icons round the wrist strap to use it, it is easy to imagine that from there it started the process that led to the Apple Watch. And the “digital crown”, the crown of the digital smartwatch by Jonathan Ive, basically works like the click wheel of the iPod Classic
Over time, the iPod has lost its relevance in the revenues of Apple, the various models have been renewed more and more often, the Classic has remained the same since 2007 icon of the iPod with the Click Wheel has been for a while ‘in a corner of the iPhone, to launch the music player with Apple’s supertelefonino . In its place there is now a nondescript musical note. Choice consistent, but sad because that little box of emotions digital summarized in a synthesis of the extreme mission of Steve Jobs: to live in harmony technology and art.
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