The iPod was conceived, designed, and released inside a year
- jan
- 13
What you need to know
- Tony Fadell is thought of as the father of iPod.
- He told Stripe CEO Patrick Collison of the speedy release.
- It went from nothing to the hands of customers in a year.
iPod stories are the best stories.
Apple is so secretive that it isn't until years later that we start to find out how things really went down. That's been the case with iPod for a while and now we're hearing more about how the music player came about. According to Tony Fadell, it went from nothing to being in stores in less than a year.
Tony Fadell is often called the father of iPod, and he was certainly the key driving force behind making it happen. But it turns out that when he was brought on-board Apple didn't have any plans at all. It just knew that it wanted to make something that played music from Toshiba's 1.8-inch hard disk.
Fadell told Stripe CEO Patrick Collison (via 9to5Mac) that there was no iPod to speak of when he joined. And the timeline after that is scary.
I asked Tony Fadell about the iPod timeline for my fast project page. Summary: ?. pic.twitter.com/mf0CfbAEtB
— Patrick Collison (@patrickc) January 12, 2020
The fact that there was no team in place until May makes things all the more amazing, but just a few months later Steve Jobs was on a stage announcing iPod. And Apple hasn't been the same since.