Apple iPod

Introduced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on October 23, 2001, the original 5GB iPod featured a 1-inch hard disk capable of holding 1,000 songs with a 10-hour battery in a 6.5-ounce enclosure. Preceded by early digital audio concepts such as Kane Kramer and James Campbell's 1979 IXI system and the 1998 Rio PMP300, the iPod paired minimalist hardware with Apple's iTunes 2 jukebox software and FireWire high-speed syncing. In 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Store, convincing major record labels to sell individual songs unbundled from albums and creating a closed-loop hardware-plus-storefront ecosystem. Key architectural elements across the lineup included the mechanical/capacitive Scroll Wheel and Click Wheel, 1-inch/1.8-inch micro-hard drives (iPod classic, iPod mini), flash memory (iPod nano, iPod shuffle), and later Multi-Touch iOS displays (iPod touch). Supported audio formats on late-era classic models included AAC (16–320 Kbps), Protected AAC, MP3 (16–320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, Apple Lossless, WAV, and AIFF. Benchmark battery and form-factor progression ranged from 10 hours / 6.5 oz (2001 original) to 24 hours (2006 iPod nano 2nd gen) and 5.4 mm thinness (2012 iPod nano 7th gen).