The <https://9to5mac.com/guides/ipod/> iPod success story was far from
assured, even after it was launched, says
<https://9to5mac.com/guides/tony-fadell/> Tony Fadell, the man dubbed
"father of the iPod."
Early sales were nothing to write home about, and Fadell felt it would take
three generations before the product line would take off, so he asked Apple
cofounder <https://9to5mac.com/guides/steve-jobs/> Steve Jobs to make a
promise.
The
<https://www.cnet.com/features/whoa-whoa-ipods-inventor-looks-back-on-apples
-really-big-risks/#ftag=CAD590a51e> CNET interview starts with some familiar
ground. Fadell was trying to get his own mp3 player off the ground in his
startup, Fuse Systems. It wasn't going well, and when Apple asked him to
consult for them, his primary motivation was earning enough money to keep
his company going.
Seven weeks later, when he was called in to present his proposals to Steve
Jobs, the Apple cofounder wasn't greatly interested in the papers - he
wanted to see the models. Fadell followed the advice he'd been given by
Apple marketing guru Stan Ng.
When presenting the models, Fadell did as Ng coached, showing off the worst
model first, then the second and, finally, his favorite as the last option.
Jobs seized on it immediately.
"Steve picked it up and he's like, 'We're building this and you're now going
to join us to build it,' and I was like, 'Whoa whoa,'" Fadell said.
The reason for his hesitation was that Apple was a loss-making company whose
Mac sales were declining. There was no reason then to think that Apple would
fare any better than Fuse had. But Steve persuaded him by making a promise -
one that turned out to be critical to the success of the iPod.
Fadell asked Apple's visionary leader if he was willing to go the distance
with the iPod, not just investing in this first unit, but to commit to a
family of products. Fadell had been through enough scenarios in which a
company cancels the first product nine months in because it didn't want to
invest in the next one. In Fadell's mind, it took three generations to get
the ball rolling.
"A lot of people stop midway through the journey, and I wanted to make sure
we weren't going to do that," he said.
Jobs told Fadell he was going to throw marketing dollars at the iPod,
pulling resources from its core Mac business. And even though sales of the
original iPod and the follow-up version didn't light any fires, Jobs
followed through.
"He held up his side of the business, and the rest is history," he said.
Fadell said that he keeps his old iPod as a kind of time capsule, still with
the music loaded onto it at the time.
"It's a window of time of my music library, and so you leave it that way,"
he said. "You kind of jack in and you're like, 'I'm just right back to early
2000s music.' It's kind of like a really great mixtape."
He separately told
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-22/ipod-creator-sees-apple-
tackling-another-new-hardware-category> Bloomberg that he does think Apple
will move into a new product category - though he wouldn't predict what that
might be - but that this isn't the only way to innovate. There's plenty of
scope for improving existing products, and creating new accessories for
them.
"You'll see a lot more accessories like Air Pods and things of that nature,"
he said. There's also plenty of room to enhance Apple's existing product
lines, Fadell added. "Just because you want to see a new hardware platform
or a new thing - that's not the only place you innovate," he said. "You
innovate in all kinds of software and services."
If you want to know more about the iPod development process,
<https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/06/tony-fadell-ipod-questions/> Fadell answered
questions on Twitter a couple of years ago.
9to5mac
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