iPod Nation

Fans of the devices use it for more than music. "It's the limousine for the spoken word," says Audible CEO Don Katz, whose struggling digital audiobook company has been revitalized by having its products on Apple's iTunes store. (Podsters downloaded thousands of copies of Bill Clinton's autobiography within minutes of its 3 a.m. release last month.) And computer users have discovered that its vast storage space makes it a useful vault for huge digital files--the makers of the "Lord of the Rings" movies used iPods to shuttle dailies from the set to the studio. Thousands of less-accomplished shutterbugs store digital photos on them.

iPods aren't conspicuous everywhere--their popularity seems centered on big cities and college towns--but sometimes it seems that way. "I notice that when I'm in the gym, as I look down the treadmills, that just about everybody in the row has one," says Scott Piro, a New York City book publicist. And the capper came earlier this year during the Apple vs. Apple case--wherein the Beatles' record company is suing the computer firm on a trademark issue. The judge wondered if he should recuse himself--because he is an avid iPod user. (The litigants had no objection to his staying on.)

In 1997, when Steve Jobs returned to the then struggling company he had cofounded, he says, there were no plans for a music initiative. In fact, he says, there wasn't a plan for anything. "Our goal was to revitalize and get organized, and if there were opportunities we'd see them," he says. "We just had to be ready to catch the ball when it's thrown by life." After some painful pink-slipping and some joyous innovating, the company was solvent.

But in the flurry, Jobs & Co. initially failed to notice the impending revolution in digital music. Once that omission was understood, Apple compensated by developing a slick "jukebox" application known as iTunes. It was then that Apple's brain trust noticed that digital music players weren't selling. Why not? "The products stank," says Apple VP Greg Joswiak.

Life had tossed Jobs a softball, and early in 2001 he ordered his engineers to catch it. That February, Apple's hardware czar, Jon Rubinstein, picked a team leader from outside the company--an engineer named Tony Fadell. "I was on the ski slopes in Vail when I got the call," says Fadell, who was told that the idea was to create a groundbreaking music player--and have it on sale for Christmas season that year. The requirements: A very fast connection to one's computer (via Apple's high-speed Firewire standard) so songs could be quickly uploaded. A close synchronization with the iTunes software to make it easy to organize music. An interface that would be simple to use. And gorgeous.

Fadell was able to draw on all of Apple's talents from Jobs on down. VP Phil Schiller came up with the idea of a scroll wheel that made the menus accelerate as your finger spun on it. Meanwhile, Apple's industrial designer Ive embarked on a search for the obvious. "From early on we wanted a product that would seem so natural and so inevitable and so simple you almost wouldn't think of it as having been designed," he says. This austerity extended to the whiteness of the iPod, a double-crystal polymer Antarctica, a blankness that screams in brilliant colors across a crowded subway. "It's neutral, but it is a bold neutral, just shockingly neutral," says Ive.