Getting the interface right meant blending the right software with the right hardware. Some of the software work was already done, of course: the iTunes application on the Mac was the perfect tool to create the database of music tracks and information to be loaded onto the iPod. But the portable device itself needed its own miniature operating system to provide the software underpinnings of the user interface that would be presented on the screen, much like the Mac OS established the graphical user interface that Mac users operated with a mouse and a keyboard. To accomplish this, the software team mashed up repurposed operating system code from the old Newton with the rudimentary file management system that Apple had quietly licensed from a tiny startup company called PortalPlayer and some elements from Mac OS X.

Getting the hardware right was harder. This is where Jony Ive and his team of designers really showed their mettle. They created something known as a “thumb-wheel,” which functioned in some ways like the “scroll-wheel” on many computer mice. The iPod’s thumb-wheel was basically a flat disk that you could rotate clockwise or counterclockwise with your thumb to rapidly navigate up and down the long lists displayed on the screen. But Ive and his team customized it for the iPod with a series of little touches that made it truly intuitive. The faster you spun the wheel, the quicker the list would move up or down the list. In the middle of the wheel was a button you clicked to make a choice, just as you clicked the button of a Mac’s mouse. Situated around the perimeter of the thumb-wheel like a rim were other buttons that let you jump forward to the next track, restart a track from the beginning, or jump back to the previous track without having to locate it on the screen.

The breakthrough on the iPod user interface is what ultimately made the product seem so magical and unique. There were plenty of other important software innovations, like the software that enables easy synchronization of the device with a user’s iTunes music collection. But if the team had not cracked the usability problem for navigating a pocket library of hundreds or thousands of tracks, the iPod would never have gotten off the ground. It was a solution that came with ancillary benefits as well. The iPod interface was so well designed that it was able to grow and become even more useful as other technologies in the device improved and became cheaper. And since the thumb-wheel technology was half hardware and half software, it was much easier for Apple to lock in this design advantage with patents and copyrights so tough that no competitor dared try to copy it. Were it primarily a software feature, it would’ve been far more vulnerable to being aped. Once again, Apple had found a beautifully intuitive way to control a complex, intelligent device hidden underneath a gleaming, minimalist exterior. This is where Ive first showed that he could design far more than the shapes of things. He could help design the user experience, too. There was nothing that mattered more to Steve.

BEFITTING THE MEASURED ambitions for the new product, the iPod was introduced at an event held in the tiny Town Hall auditorium at Apple headquarters on October 23, 2001. Reaction from the assembled journalists was anything but measured, however. Following the technology where it led had allowed Steve to create a product with a blend of features that made so much intuitive sense that it would change consumer behavior. The iPod was spectacular and totally unexpected.

To use one was to fall in love with it. Apple gave an iPod to every journalist who attended the October introduction, something it had never done before. These technology writers and reviewers and other cognoscenti wound up raving in print about features Apple hadn’t even touted. The showstopper for many was the iPod’s random-play capability, something Steve initially considered to be of marginal interest. This so-called “shuffle mode” turned the device into the equivalent of a personal radio station that would play only your own music, in a totally unpredictable sequence. If you had a large library, your iPod operating in shuffle mode was a wonderful way to stumble upon music you had forgotten that you even owned. In that way, the iPod helped people rediscover the pleasures of the music itself.

The iPod gave Apple a new jolt of cool and expanded the appeal of its products to a much broader universe of consumers, especially younger buyers. In time, it would prove to be the Walkman, and then some, of the early twenty-first century. It was also the first new hardware link in a chain of successive innovative and self-reinforcing software and hardware and network products that started pouring forth once Apple got serious about making the Macintosh a genuine digital hub. Slowly, the iPod proved to be the product that would begin to turn Apple back into a growth company. “We followed where our own desires led us,” Steve explained, recalling how much his team had hated the existing music players on the market, “and we ended up ahead.”

Even the iPod tested Steve’s faith in consumers, however. It took them a while to fully warm to the device. It presented an unfamiliar method of interacting with music, and its $399 price was a significant impediment, especially when you could buy a Sony Discman CD player for under $100. Sales started out on the slow side: Apple sold just 150,000 iPods during the first quarter they were available. One year later, Steve cut the price of that first iPod by $100 and introduced a second version with twice as much capacity and a new “touch-wheel” that was a wheel in shape only—it was actually a circular touch-pad that moved users through their music even more smoothly than the mechanical thumb-wheel, and wasn’t nearly as prone to break. That second introduction was the first clear outward signal that iPod had transformed more than just the experience of listening to music—it had revitalized Apple’s capabilities as a manufacturer as well. The iPod had accelerated Apple’s creative metabolism, instilling a new organizational discipline that would make the promise of frequent, market-churning, incremental improvements—the kind that Bill Gates had lectured Steve about in that joint interview in Palo Alto a decade before—into a breathtaking new kind of rapid-fire technological innovation.

The iPod had led Apple to a newfound ability to keep outdoing itself almost like clockwork. Some of this required execution at a very high level. The iPod’s low price (at least compared to Apple’s computers), forced Apple to learn how to ensure high-quality manufacturing at higher unit volumes than Apple had ever delivered before. These new demands on manufacturing were exacerbated by the competitive dynamics of the consumer electronics market, which expected Apple to refresh the iPod product line far more frequently than its computers. To churn out iPods this way, Apple had to develop disciplines that would fundamentally transform the company into a much more capable enterprise. Tim Cook had to build up an extensive international supply chain, and he and Ruby had to develop relationships with a set of Asian factories capable of delivering lots of high-quality machines in record times. The iPod had quickened the company’s metabolism in a way that would pay off for years to come.

But outdoing itself also required Apple’s top execs—and Steve himself—to think about the future in a new way, with a willingness to follow the technology wherever it might lead. “Learning about new technologies and markets is what makes this fun for me and for everyone at Apple,” Steve once told me, a few years after the iPod’s debut. “By definition, it’s just what we do, and there are lots of ways to do it. Five or six years ago we didn’t know anything about video editing, so we bought a company to learn how to do that. Then we didn’t know anything about MP3 players, but our people are smart. They went out and figured it out by looking at what was already out there with a very critical eye, and then they combined that with what we already knew about design, user interface, materials, and digital electronics. The truth is, we’d get bored otherwise.” In another interview, Steve said, “Who cares where the good ideas come from? If you’re paying attention you’ll notice them.” When his focus had been directed entirely on fixing Apple’s own problems, Steve had almost missed the digital music revolution. Now that Apple was on more solid footing, he was focused outward again, and paying attention very carefully. “When I came back, Apple was like a person who was ill and couldn’t go out and do or learn anything,” Steve explained. “But we made it healthy again, and have increased its strength. Now, figuring out new things to do is what keeps us going.”