Ten months That time Tony Fadell said it took Apple to come up with an iPod and introduce the community. Patrick Collison, Stripe's manager, shared on Twitter a calendar with milestones for the development of the original iPod back in 2001 after speaking with Fadell. A remarkably short time for the first generation of a product that has been called to sell millions of units in the coming years. However, there was some previous work that allowed us to further the project.
A thousand songs in your pocket in just 10 months
I asked Tony Fadell for the iPod timeline for my quick project page. Collection ::. pic.twitter.com/mf0CfbAEtB
– Patrick Collison (@patrickc) January 12, 2020
The iPod was sold in late 2001 under the slogan "1,000 songs in your pocket". According to the holdings associated with tweet Collison, the historic calendar in which Fadell participated is as follows:
- January, week 1: Apple's first call.
- January, week 3: the first meeting with Apple.
- January, week 4: becomes the external advisor leading the iPod investigation. It had no official name yet, P68 was the code name. There was no equipment, prototype, design, nothing.
- March, week 3: the way to Steve Jobs, the project gets the green light at the end of the meeting.
- April, week 2: becomes a full-time employee.
- April, week 3: available contract builder somewhere in Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea.
- May, week 2: first team work hire.
- October, week 4: iPod is introduced to the world.
- November, week 1: The first iPods are brought to the public.
You saw it this way, it's tempting to think that a tech company could be started a popular product and the iPod in such a short space of time. However, there are many additional features that allow this speed.
1.8-inch disk and active system search
Three months before this series of events beginsJon Rubinstein was commissioned by Steve Jobs for the development of a portable music player. Responsible for developing the hardware at the time, he began investigating how to produce such a machine. At the same time that Rubinstein collected his research, Jony Ive invented the kind of development behind the iPod's open concept.
In February 2001, he traveled to Japan to visit a number of electronics manufacturers. At the end of your last visit, Engineers of the company Toshiba They showed a small 1.8 inch hard drive with 5GB capacity. Smaller compared to the standard 2.5 inches and the use of rest is also small. The Japanese did not know what to do with it.
I realized right away (that this is what they were looking for). I was visiting manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries. I didn't know right away what battery to use. He had visited screen manufacturers, capabilities, size and costs that would make it even more feasible.
But the main th ing was the hard disk, because at that time there were two alternatives: insert a large disk or you have a 12-track device. Toshiba's disk it was a piece of hardware that was lacking
As for the software, Apple hired a Pixo company to run its Pixo OS on the iPod. In mid-2001, 2001, Pixo reached an agreement on how to provide an effective iPod system. In just two weeks they had been demo Educating managers. Work was completed in time for the launch of the iPod in November 2001. This is also possible because Pixo had been working on developing areas for users of Samsung and Nokia smartphones.
It is a worthy tradition for the company to create the iPod
Seeing this story and how the various elements were acquired or leased out, one would think it was enough to put them in a cocktail with Jony Ive's design, shake it hard and throw it in the glass to get the iPod out. There is nothing beyond reality. Although we have seen that the company has been behind the same product for a while, the fact is that there is an important ingredient in the whole process: Apple's corporate culture.
In larger companies, it is common for projects to be affected by the local bureaucracy and interest groups. Rules, meetings, dealing groups, hierarchies and the pile of participants for those who are content. When Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997, he removed most of those issues, illuminating internal processes.
An example of the great importance of the organization's culture and internal processes in the introduction of new products is that Sony had all the features to open the iPod-Walkman before Apple
This internal organization was again active rather than divisive, something that had changed since its emergence in the company in the '80s. This kind of culture and way of organizing the company also contributed to Tony Fadell and Jon Rubinstein (both with the organization Strange Opposition to the Other) he can develop an iPod project in such a short space of time. Without endless internal processes or groups from different disciplines facing each other to lead it.
And this is one of the benefits of Apple that is less pronounced in professional circles. Its business culture by being institutionalized is something that no other competitor has been able to emulate. Because the hard part is copying the creative process, the easiest thing to copy is the final product.
More details | Quickly, Patrick Collison's website.
