Mainstream markets were well established by camcorders,organizers and digital cameras,but the existing media players were "big and cluncky,or small and useless" as Apple would state.That, and the incredible awful screen interface determined Apple to start its own line of media players. Apple CEO Steve Jobs ordered that Apple's chief engineer Jon Rubinstein would assemble a team of engineers,including hardware engineers Tony Fadell and Michael Dhuey,and design engineer Johnatan Ive.The project did not take very long,as the iPod was ready in one year and introduced in October 2001.Apple would say that the iPod carries 1000 songs in your pocket,due to the 5GB memory hard drive.
Apple did not create the iPod's software on its own,as it was helped by Portal Player. Portal Player's reference platform based software that worked with two ARM cores was used in developing a software program for the Apple iPhone. The software was quite rudimentary,as it worked on a commercial micro kernel embedded operating system.As Portal Player was caught in a deal with IBM for a MP3 player with bluetooth headphones,Apple contracted another company,named Pixo,to help with the design and implement the software program.The whole operation was executed under Steve Jobs's direct supervision.As time passed by,Apple continued working on the software's design and feel,as it got better over the years.
The Chicago font was changed to Espy Sans since the release of the iPod mini.Newer versions of the Apple iPhone switched fonts once again as they picked a font names Poium Sans which is similar to Apple's corporate font,the Myriad.The newer versions of the iPod that include a color display,adopted some MAC OSX themes,like the Aqua progress bar,or the brushed metal meant to evoke a combination lock.The iPod's interface was once again changed,when Apple released the 6th generation of iPod classic and the 3rd generation of iPod Nano.Some of these design changes were the font switching(Apple decided to implement the font called Helvetica).This update also included a feature that splits the screen in half,as one half was for showing details on the played song, and the other one for album artworks, photos and videos.
In September 2007,there was a lawsuit involved between Apple and patent holding company Burst.com.In this lawsuit,Apple draw attention at a patent for a similar phone,developed in 1979.Kane Kramer applied for a UK for his design of a ''plastic music box'', in 1981. He was unable to secure funding for the patent and so he lost his idea.