For younger generations, the IPod was the only thing we knew when it came to listening to our favorite music. However, it wasn’t the first of its kind. It got its start in 1979 when a British inventor named Kane Kramer created the first digital audio player. It was called the IXI which was able to play only one song. His prototype was unsuccessful and didn’t make it to the market but it was a good try. Then, in the mid 1990s, MP3 players were introduced and became very popular. However, it had a lot of problems. One, being that they were bulky and hard to carry. Secondly, it had very limited storage. Another major issue was digital piracy which is an act of downloading, selling or sharing of copyrighted media in electronic form. Record labels were being file shared and it decreased revenue due to the fact it could easily be copyrighted. Until Steve Jobs was asked to produce an alternative that would soon be the first IPod. The name iPod was proposed by Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter. He got the name after the movie Space Odyssey from the line “Open the pod bay door, Hal!” This would become easier to use and revolutionary to the music industry. In 2001, Apple released the first IPod that was able to hold 1,000 songs in your pocket (which was a lot back then). The design was light, easy to use and had a screen where you could see what songs were playing. To solve the issue of digital piracy, in 2008, Apple created iTunes store that was able to protect copyrighted content.
The invention of the IPod changed the world because it expanded listening to music beyond the constraints of the home stereo system, allowing the user to plug into not only their headphones, but also their car radio, their computer at work, or their hi-fi system at home. It also was the end of an era in which people listened to albums in their running order. The iPod normalized having random collections of individual tracks due to the creation of the “IPod shuffle.”
On the downside, there are also some negative effects of the use of the iPod. By plugging in headphones at a moderate volume and for a moderate amount of time could cause hearing loss which is creating generations of hearing-impaired individuals. You could also argue that the iPod has negatively affected social interaction in which the headphones have made us block our surroundings. This changed communication because of the app store, we are able to call, text, take pictures, listen to music which has divided our attention down at our screens.
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