2001 iPod does 2022
Pretty cool now, but this wasn’t cool at the time
“What’s that? It looks like a hearing aid”
was the reaction of friends when I turned up to the pub with this thing. It’s a sturdy brick of metal that you can hear the hard drive whirring into action when you play a song. It also sports the mechanical scrollwheel that Apple quickly ditched. This particular one is still using the original hard drive and battery, and you can sync music to it using rhythmbox on Linux.
It was pretty groundbreaking and even though it did appear to borrow heavily from Dieter Rams’ radio from the 1950s, the integration with iTunes (before iTunes jumped the shark) was what really set it apart from the competition.
Video
A mechanical scroll wheel and the User Interface that changed everything. iPod 1st Generation. Watch with the sound up so that you can hear it spin:
