Jonathan Ive, Apple Industrial Design Group

The iPod, a now–ubiquitous cultural artifact, is Apple's most celebrated industrial design product. Ive, the head of Apple's design group, has been overhauling the company's hardware design with his team since 1997, using a new palette of materials characterized most prominently by translucent polycarbonate plastic. The iPod, a portable hard drive initially used exclusively as an MP3 player, introduced stainless steel into Apple's material palette. The iPod exponentially expanded the typical capacity of a music device within a physical framework that was significantly smaller, cleaner, and more intuitive than any similar player.

The first-generation iPod is characterized by a mechanical scroll wheel featuring four navigational buttons along its circumference and a black-and-white text screen. The iPod's data and its power supply are administered and transferred through a USB cord to a base computer or other power outlet, thus eliminating the need for any collateral, detachable parts besides the earphones. The first-generation iPod has substantially influenced the quality and elegance not only of portable music devices, but of electronic products in general. The iPod has raised the public's expectations for all consumer products, thus stimulating manufacturers to recognize the importance of good design and to incorporate design considerations at the highest levels of their corporate structures.

At the time the iPod was born, Ive, the head of Apple’s design group, had been overhauling the company’s hardware design with his team since 1997, using a new palette of materials characterized most prominently by translucent polycarbonate plastic. The iPod, a portable hard drive initially used exclusively as an MP3 player, introduced stainless steel into Apple’s material repertoire.

The iPod exponentially expanded the typical capacity of a music device, and it did so within a physical framework that was significantly smaller, cleaner, and more intuitive than any similar player. The first-generation iPod features a mechanical scroll wheel, four navigational buttons along its circumference, and a black-and-white text screen. The iPod’s data and its power supply are transferred through a USB cord to a computer or other power outlet, thus eliminating the need for any additional detachable parts besides the earphones.

The iPod substantially influenced the quality and elegance not only of portable music devices, but of electronic products in general. It raised the public’s expectations for all consumer products, thus stimulating manufacturers to incorporate design considerations at the highest levels of their corporate structures.

A feat of product and interface design, the iPod had a dramatic effect on the way people lived with technology. Coupled with its “mother ship” application, iTunes, the iPod launched a new way to buy, experience, and store music and audio entertainment, educational programs, information, and video.