Happy 25th, iPod

Jason Snell: In researching the Designed in California series, I was struck by just how quickly the iPod’s importance was overshadowed by the iPhone. There are barely more than five years between the launch of the iPod and the launch of the iPhone. While both products took time to grow into their markets, I think it’s still the case that the true “iPod era” was only a handful of years long, and it’s been entirely overshadowed by the product that came after it. That’s a shame, in a way, because I think people who didn’t live through this era don’t understand just what a hit the iPod was. It completely changed Apple’s fortunes, rehabbed its brand identity, gave people reasons to go into Apple’s relatively new retail stores for the first time, and taught Apple lessons that it needed to learn before it could build a smartphone. (The iPhone’s hardware was largely built by the iPod team, even if the software came from the Mac.)