Week 7: Technology timeline

For week seven, we were told to talk about a technology that somebody else did their technology presentation on. I chose the topic that I felt impacted my life the most and that is the creation of the iPod. Not only did I have an iPod, but I must use at least one apple product every single day. My phone feels like it's a part of me and I hate to admit it, but I don't know what I would do without it. I'd also be willing to bet that a majority of the kids in my class had an iPod at one point when they were younger, as it felt like it 
was a norm to have one at the time. They were just such a cool new thing back in the day. Now music is just a simple little app on our phones.

iPod 1st generation

IPod's didn't even become a thought until the year 2000, when Steve Jobs asked his best hardware employee, Jon Rubenstein, to see if he could make a better version of an MP3 player. Rubenstein tried for a few months before he decided that technology was not advanced enough to make something like it, saying that either the battery would be terrible, it would be too bulky, or have a limited memory. After a yearly trip out to a hardware supplier for apple at the time, Toshiba's headquarters, Rubinstein had a breakthrough when Toshiba executive members showed him a 1.8 inch hard drive that they just prototyped, and 9 months later in October Apple launched its first iPod which was just known as the first generation. From there 15 different generations of iPods were released between the years 2001 and 2015. The newest version is basically an iPhone without the cellular capabilities, so it really is amazing to see what a long way these things have come!

iPod Touch 

iPods are a great example of the crazy transformation technology has taken in the last twenty years and has played a huge part in the direction that technology will continue to go. Although iPods have played a major part in technological history like I just mentioned, I think the day of the iPod has passed and all use will be gone within the next few years. There are just too many devices that use music as a basic feature these days that I can't imagine many people buying a separate device just for their music like they used to.



theverge.com 15 years of iPod  
cultofmac.com impact of the iPod