When Apple unveiled the iPod on 23 October 2001 not even Mac fans thought it would prove popular.
Early reaction posted by Apple users to the MacRumours forums greeted the gadget with contempt.
One contributor calling themselves WeezerX80 wrote: "All
this hype for something so ridiculous!". Another predicted it would be
"killed off in a short time" as it was "not really functional".
Five years on and it is fair to say that the iPod has
proved the nay sayers wrong. In that time it has brought about big
changes to the way we consume music. In the UK, 80% of the singles
bought are downloads.
But it is interesting to ask what the next five years
holds for the iPod and every other portable music player - are equally
big changes on the horizon?
Smart stuff
By 2011 portable media players will have changed
immensely, says Ted Vucurevich, chief technology officer at chip design
software firm Cadence.
"Five years in the classic sense of semi-conductors
is about 2.5 processor generations," says Mr Vucurevich. "It's the
ability to put in the same size case, components with 4-6 times as much
functionality as we have today."
In raw specification terms this will mean hundreds of
gigabytes of storage, bigger, brighter screens and a much longer
battery life.
This "natural evolution" of technology as Mr Vucurevich
describes it could see the inclusion of scrollable screens that can be
pulled out flat so video stored on a portable player is shown on a
decent-sized display.
It could also mean that portable players incorporate
sensors that can keep an eye on key health indicators and pass that on
to a doctor at a regular check-up. The iPod has proven the value of
carrying information locally, said Mr Vucurevich.
"Players will be smaller on the outside but bigger on
the inside," said Nate Elliott, senior analyst at JupiterResearch but
added that the changes will not stop there. By 2011 media players will
include an array of wireless communication technologies so we can share
what we have stored on them.
Which technology this will be is not yet clear, said Mr
Elliott, because the choices available to gadget makers at the moment
are far from ideal.
Your iPod may soon keep an eye on your health
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Bluetooth is too slow for large media files, said Mr
Elliott, and wi-fi systems are too thinly spread to make them a viable
alternative.
Also, he added, wireless technologies were a significant drain on battery life.
Although Microsoft's Zune player had wireless swapping
system built-in, Mr Elliott predicted this would be hard to make a
success in the short term.
Research also suggested that the most prevalent type of
content carried around on portable players for the next few years was
music, said Mr Elliott.
"Consumers are twice as interested in audio than video," he said, "and twice as interested in video than they are in games."
Change management
But perhaps the biggest change approaching for Apple and
the iconic iPod over the next few years has nothing to do with
hardware.
Rick Levine, a senior manager at hi-tech consulting firm
Accenture, said that what Apple got right in the early years of the
iPod may prove a burden in the future.
"In the beginning of any technology is an adoption curve
where you have the pioneer phase in which you need to do some
exceptional things to win acceptance and you get exceptional returns,"
he said.
Mr Levine suggested that Apple was currently riding this
phase of the media player market. While MP3 players were launched
before and after the 2001 release of the iPod, so far, none dominate
like it does.
Most people rip their own CDs for their portable players
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Apple protected this advantage with its Fairplay digital
rights management (DRM) system that locks people into its ecosystem, he
said.
But, he warned, history shows that growing popularity
turns niche products into commodities. In the case of portable media
players this will mean that prices drop and media will be increasingly
easy to access.
The social changes that portable players bring about will also drive this move to easier access to multimedia content.
The gadgets and the content will become available to more people than ever before.
Ultimately, said Mr Levine, this will also mean the end
of DRM because once access to music and movies is ubiquitous it becomes
a disadvantage to lock people into one way of getting at this content.
Mr Levine's prediction is that soon, perhaps within the
next five years, Apple would licence the interfaces for iTunes and the
iPod to ensure it reaches as many people as possible in this rapidly
growing pool of users.
However, he warned, there were no guarantees that Apple
would heed the lessons of history and work with this drive towards
commoditisation.
If Apple came to expect very high revenues from iPod
sales and tried to work against these forces, the goodwill it had
generated among users could evaporate.
Research suggests that only 5% of the music on portable
players comes from online stores, suggesting that people like their
gadgets more than the company that made them.
"The things that make you a pioneer dull your senses to noticing that the competition is climbing your heels," he said.
Few people thought the iPod would succeed
It [Flash] has a lot of very easy ways to build in accessibility, providing the developer sets out to do that from the beginning
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