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The first iPod was developed in less than one year and unveiled on October 23, 2001. Steve Jobs announced it a 5GB hard drive that put “1,000 songs in your pocket”.
The aesthetic was inspired by the 1958 Braun T3 transistor radio designed by Dieter Rams, while the wheel-based user interface was prompted by Bang & Olufsen’s BeoCom 6000 telephone.
The name iPod was proposed by Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter working for Apple. After Chieco saw a prototype, he thought of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the phrase “Open the pod bay door, Hal!”, which refers to the white EVA Pods of the Discovery One spaceship. Chieco saw an analogy to the relationship between the spaceship and the smaller independent pods in the relationship between a personal computer and the music player.
