Apple · 2001
iPod
1st generation · Model M8541 · 10 GB · Mechanical scroll wheel
Model
M8541
Storage
10 GB · ~2,000 songs
Interface
Mechanical scroll wheel
Connector
FireWire (IEEE 1394)
Battery
Up to 10 hours
Year
October 2001
1st generation · Model M8541 · 10 GB · Mechanical scroll wheel
On October 23, 2001 — just six weeks after the September 11 attacks — Steve Jobs took the stage to introduce a product that seemed, at first glance, almost frivolous: a music player. The world was in a strange, sombre mood. And Apple was about to release a $399 device for listening to songs.
But Jobs understood something that the critics who mocked the price did not: this was not a music player. It was the beginning of a new category of computing — personal, portable, always with you. The iPod was the device that would pull Apple out of its niche and set it on the path to becoming the most valuable company in the world. Everything that came after — the iPhone, the iPad, the App Store — has a direct line back to this white rectangle with a mechanical wheel.
The iPod was not the first digital music player. The Rio PMP300 had arrived in 1998. But the Rio held 32 MB — about 30 minutes of music. The iPod held 1,000 songs, synced over FireWire in minutes, and had a battery that lasted all day. The gap between it and everything else was not incremental — it was categorical.
The mechanical scroll wheel — which rotated physically, unlike the touch-sensitive wheel that replaced it in later models — was an interface of genius. Your thumb rested naturally on it; the faster you spun, the faster it scrolled. It made navigating a thousand songs feel effortless. It was the kind of solution that makes you wonder why no one had thought of it before.
The M8541 10 GB model was the second iPod configuration released — joining the original 5 GB — and gave users the space to carry their entire music library for the first time. Not a selection. Everything.
Hidden inside the first iPod was a game: Breakout — the paddle-and-ball arcade game that Jobs and Wozniak had built together for Atari back in 1975, before Apple existed. It was Woz who had done most of the engineering work; Jobs had handled the business side. Including it in the first iPod was Jobs' private tribute to that collaboration — and to the garage-era Apple that the two of them had built from nothing. To find it: navigate to the About screen and hold the center button for five seconds. A secret for those who explored.
I was not one of the lucky few who had this iPod from day one — but I remember clearly how much I wanted one. It seemed magical, perfect for the morning bus ride to work. And when I finally got my first iPod, a couple of years later, all those feelings became real. It was always a faithful companion on the daily commute and on holidays.
A device that… you had to try it to be captivated by it.