Videos · October 23, 2026 · 39 seconds

iPod at 25: The Music Player That Rebuilt Apple Before the iPhone

Name: iPod at 25: The Music Player That Rebuilt Apple Before the iPhone
Uploaded: 2026-10-23T16:00:00.000Z
Duration: 39 s
Description: Twenty-five years ago, a money-losing Apple bet on a $399 music player built around a Toshiba hard drive nobody else wanted. The iPod taught the company how to lock up suppliers, sell what plays on its devices, and advertise with a pair of white earbuds, and Apple used every lesson to build the iPhone that retired it.

Twenty-five years ago, a money-losing Apple bet on a $399 music player built around a Toshiba hard drive nobody else wanted. The iPod taught the company how to lock up suppliers, sell what plays on its devices, and advertise with a pair of white earbuds, and Apple used every lesson to build the iPhone that retired it.

Read the full articleby Adam Cannizzaro

Transcript

IPOD AT 25: THE MUSIC PLAYER THAT REBUILT APPLE BEFORE THE IPHONE

[THE BET] A tiny drive made it possible.

Apple's first iPod went on sale in November 2001 for $399, about $757 in today's money, and held 1,000 songs.
Apple's hardware chief had found its tiny hard drive at Toshiba, which wasn't sure what to do with it, and Apple bought every one Toshiba could make.

[THE PLAYBOOK] Apple never dropped that habit.

In 2005, Apple agreed to pay five chipmakers $1.25 billion in advance to lock up memory chips for its next iPods.
Those habits built the iPhone, which Apple introduced in 2007 as partly "a widescreen iPod with touch controls."

Read the full article at noozify.com. Images: Images: a first-generation iPod by Blake Patterson (CC BY 2.0); a first-generation iPod taken apart by purecanesugar (CC BY-SA 2.0); Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone in 2007 by Blake Patterson (CC BY 2.0); all via Wikimedia Commons. Music: an original score for Noozify.