In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the iPod introduction, posted below is my first quick review of the original iPod I wrote back in November 2001. Click the image above to check out a Flickr set I created showing the unboxing of my first iPod.
Introducing iPod – November 11, 2001
Just bought an iPod today at my local Authorized Apple Reseller. They received their shipment in last night, but they couldn’t sell them until today. Very odd since alot of people who ordered their iPods directly from Apple started to receive them earlier this week.
The iPod is packaged in a VERY cool 6″ square cube box. Lifting off the outer shell revealed two rectangular boxes attached to each other that open like a book. The attention to detail in the packaging is amazing. The iPod is in the right hand side with the ear buds underneath and the documentation, AC adapter and Firewire cable are in the left.
The iPod is much smaller than I had originally imagined. I did notice the “Don’t Steal Music” on the clear wrapping of the iPod. A very nice feature is the 6 foot Firewire cable. My PowerMac G4 is on the floor under my desk so I’m pleased Apple didn’t skimp on cable length.
I plugged in the Firewire cable to the iPod then into the G4 and sure enough, iTunes 2 launched, asked me what I would like to call my iPod and then commenced to download all my music to the iPod. I only had 90 songs so far in iTunes and it didn’t take more then 2 minutes to download all of them. I unplugged the iPod and started to play with the controls.
The controls are so smooth and easy to use. The jog dial is absolute genius. The ear buds sound surprisingly well! They even have a great bass sound which I thought was impossible with ear buds. Unfortunately, I can’t stand ear buds for more then 5 minutes so I will go out and look for some nice high quality portable head phones.
FINALLY Apple has a product that many Windows users are lusting after, but can’t use. Us Mac users have suffered when cool and new software or hardware comes out and its Windows only or Windows now and Mac later. Now I doubt very much that a cool MP3 player like this will drive people to actually buy a Mac, but it doesn’t hurt. Like Steve Jobs said in his introduction of the iPod, this is the first of a new line of digital devices that Apple is creating. If Apple continues to come out with simple, elegant, easy to use devices like the iPod (I pray for an Apple PDA) I’m quite sure that will start to bring more and more people over to the Mac platform. Only time will tell.
One of the big stinks that many reviewers brought up about the iPod is its price. Well, Mac news sites are reporting that many Apple Stores, Apple resellers and Comp USA’s sold out of thier iPods yesterday. Each Apple Store alone received 200 iPods per store. People know quality when they see it. Like my Dad always says, you get what you pay for. You could pay $100 for a cheap ass MP3 player that only holds 30 songs at a time and has a very slow USB connection or you could pay $400 for an iPod which holds 1,500 songs, comes with a superfast Firewire connection and also doubles as an external hard drive.
Well thats about it. My iPod is now charging with the cool AC adapter with a Firewire port on it and I will be spending the rest of the day ripping the rest of my CD’s.