1,000 songs: The 25-year legacy of the 5GB iPod
Two decades and a half after its launch, the original iPod's compact design and FireWire speed defined the portable music era before smartphones arrived.
By Eduardo Salazar ·
In the tech landscape of early 2001, portable audio was a fragmented market with no clear leader, setting the stage for a device that would redefine how consumers carry their entertainment. On this day 25 years ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first-generation iPod, a pocket-sized digital music player that promised to fit an entire music library into a package no larger than a deck of cards.
The device launched with a price tag of $399 and a 5GB hard drive, a specification that allowed it to store approximately 1,000 songs. Jobs explicitly defined this capacity as 1,000 typical pop songs encoded as MP3s at 160Kbps. At the time, this storage volume represented a significant leap for portable devices, offering users the ability to access their full curated collections without carrying physical media.
Apple introduced the iPod during a critical period for the company, shortly after the dot-com bubble burst. Jobs had already steered the firm through a revival with the success of the iMac and iBook. He positioned the Mac as the hub for a user's digital lifestyle, connecting cameras, camcorders, and now a portable music player. Jobs acknowledged existing competitors like Sony and Creative but argued that none had yet found the correct recipe for digital music.
The hardware design relied on a 1.8-inch hard drive from Toshiba, which was only 0.2 inches thick. This component allowed the final device to measure 2.4 by 4 by 0.78 inches and weigh just 6.5 ounces, a figure Jobs noted was lighter than most cell phones of that era. The interface featured a scroll wheel with a piezoelectric clicker for tactile feedback, enabling single-handed operation to navigate playlists and artists quickly. The first song demonstrated on stage was "Building a Mystery" by Sarah McLachlan.
Performance was a key differentiator, driven by the use of FireWire 400 for connectivity. Apple claimed the connection was fast enough to transfer an entire CD of music in five to 10 seconds, a stark contrast to the five minutes required for USB transfers at the time. Filling the device with 1,000 songs was estimated to take only 10 minutes via FireWire, compared to five hours on a standard USB player. The device also included 20-minute skip protection and support for MP3, WAV, and AIFF formats.
Power management was handled by a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery, which provided 10 hours of continuous playback. Apple stated that the battery could be recharged to 80% capacity in one hour. The launch also coincided with the release of iTunes 2, which introduced features like MP3 CD burning and Auto-Sync. This feature ensured that music libraries curated on a Mac were automatically synchronized with the iPod during charging or data transfer, while the device also functioned as an external FireWire hard drive.
The iPod line would persist for over two decades, coexisting with the iPhone, which launched in early 2007. However, the rise of smartphones gradually reduced the necessity for a dedicated music player. The final model, the 7th-generation iPod Touch, released in May 2019, marked the end of active production. Although the product line was left unmaintained for several years, Apple officially discontinued the iPod in May 2022, closing the chapter on a device that had once been the centerpiece of personal audio.
Source: Tom's Hardware
