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Since the development of the portable MP3 player, predominantly pushed along by Apples first generation iPods, people have wanted to take their music everywhere. The ability to have literally thousands of different bands, albums, singles and podcasts on a handheld device blew the minds of music lovers and those within the music industry. Portable music devices are not exactly new on the block; those of an older generation might remember the Sony Walkman cassette player or the Portable CD player. While these were revolutionary during their time in the spotlight they were always destined for the waste bin due to poor sound quality and the ability to only store one CD or tape at a time. If you were going on a long car journey you often found yourself packing more cassette tapes and CD’s than you did clothes. And then came along the mini disk, more compact and reliable than its CD and cassette player rivals it was anti scratch, anti-skip and held more data than its rivals. It was however, always doomed to failure. Those foolish enough to purchase one (guilty) found their mini disk player outdated within a year or so as MP3 players came into the fold, even the Wikipedia page calls it an obsolete piece of technology. The iPod really has been a revolutionary piece of technology; it’s changed the way we listen to music forever. Now with a whole range of different accessories, headphones and mp3 amp speakers available to us, the market is busier than ever. One thing prevails though, the iPod, in all its different formats and generations remains at the top of the portable music listening device list. There has been nothing in the last ten years that has come close to knocking it off its perch. In 2011 it held a humongous 78 per cent of the market, with 300 million of them being sold since its release in 2001. The only thing to really come close was the Microsoft Zune, which fell flat on its face when people came to realise that the iPod was easier to use, had a better quality sound, a longer battery life, had a unique and stylish design and was combined with better software and a simpler user experience. Apple didn’t mess about; the iPod was the culmination of a combined effort from designers, marketers, software designers and management to create the ultimate portable music device. Attention to detail is something that Apple prides themselves in. Recently they’ve dropped the ball a little (see IOS 6.0), but with the iPod they made a name for themselves that still resonates in the market today. They turned Mac from a niche product, lauded over by geeks and I.T fanatics and made it into a household name by putting the user first and giving them exactly what they wanted from their music device. Even today, over decades after its first release, those looking for a portable music device find it hard to look past the iPod.
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