Life wouldn’t be the same without music on demand. Now you can go about my work while listening to the soothing sounds of Eminem or Mozart without bothering anybody else. It’s like they’re not even there! Here’s how the magic happened...2001: Steve Jobs and Apple computers reveal the future of cool – the iPod. This little moneymaker goes on to take over the world, with ever-increasing memory, add-ons and so on, and awesome names like Touch and Nano.
1997: Less cool mp3 players see the light of day
1979: Kane Kramer and his buddy James Campbell invent the IXI system (they didn’t have Apple’s marketing team), a portable music player the size of a cigarette box. It stores music digitally in a chip, has a display screen, navigation buttons and earphones. Unfortunately it only has enough memory for three and a half minutes of music. Also, there’s no Napster or iTunes for downloads (what with the net as we know it not really existing yet).
The duo suggest putting terminals in stores, connected via phone with a central music server for download…at 1979 speeds. But since customers aren’t keen on waiting at the store for a day or two to get their music, the idea is shelved until Moore’s Law has a chance to catch up.
