Random Apple Memory
Adam Banks recalls the introduction of the pocket wonder
One more thing. One more tiny thing. The iPod nano. And what to expect in the next Mac|Life…
If a Steve Jobs presentation ever needed one more thing, it was Apple’s 2005 Music Special Event, held on 7 September at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. After some boring stuff about how iTunes was going, including a nod to the new phenomenon of “podcasting,” Steve pulled a surprise: using iChat, the Mac’s videoconferencing system (and a precursor of FaceTime), he called Madonna. The material girl’s lucky star had waned a bit at this point – Confessions on a Dance Floor, released two months later, would be seen as a comeback – but the live chat, streamed from her new home town of London and featuring an eyebrow-raising English accent, was still something of a coup.
It wasn’t what the audience was waiting for, though. Rumors had been growing of an Apple phone, and Jobs produced one: a bog-standard handset manufactured by Motorola under the name ROKR. It was greeted with the apathetic silence it deserved, a rare misfire for tech’s great showman. As the bosses of Motorola and Cingular (later acquired by AT&T) were wheeled on to present their TV adverts, an un-Applelike intrusion, things only felt more awkward. But, just for once, there was a second “one more thing.” Recounting the success of the iPod and its promise of “1,000 songs in your pocket,” Jobs produced “the biggest revolution since the original iPod” from his smallest pocket: the one on the front of his jeans. “Ever wonder what this pocket’s for? Well now we know.” And the iPod nano drew the expected whoops and applause. It really was an iPod made “impossibly small,” and would be popular enough to survive to seven generations over the next decade, outliving the iPod classic format by a year.