Programming Windows: iPhone (Premium)

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the late 1990s, he initially focused on saving the failing company by fixing Apple’s core platform, the Mac. This involved two primary strategies: releasing exciting new Macintosh computers to placate the fans and replacing the dated classic Mac OS over time with a more sophisticated platform called Mac OS X that was based on NeXTStep/OpenStep technologies from Jobs' previous company, NeXT.

By 2001, Jobs had succeeded in making Apple profitable again. On the Mac front, the company had released successful iMac and iBook computers for consumers in 1998 and 1999, respectively, and it revitalized its prosumer offerings with new Power Mac G3 and PowerBook G3 in 1999 and 2001. And as discussed previously in Programming Windows: Meanwhile, in Cupertino, the firm successfully launched Mac OS X in early 2001, giving Microsoft’s NT-based Windows family of products a technically credible competitor.

With those successes behind him, Jobs investigated what might be next for his company. And among the ideas he championed was the notion of the digital hub, where the Mac would orchestrate content from a variety of devices, including portable media players, cameras, and personal video recorders as users would connect these devices to their Macs and sync content between them. For example, one might use a Mac to store and manage their entire digital music collection and sync part of it to a portable music player. Or they might record home videos on a camcorder and then copy them to their Mac where the videos could be edited and perhaps burned to a recordable CD or DVD and shared with others.

Of course, this new strategy would require software. And after failing to convince Adobe to make a new version of its Premiere video editing software for Mac OS X-based Macs---a decision that would have major repercussions later for both Apple and Microsoft, go figure---Jobs decided to go it alone: Apple would create the necessary software itself, acquiring technology or even entire applications as needed. This included video editing solutions for both consumers (iMovie) and professionals (Final Cut Pro), DVD creation (iDVD), photo management (iPhoto), and music (iTunes), among others.

To make that latter application happen, Apple acquired a music management app for the Mac called SoundJam MP in 2000, simplified its user interface, added audio CD burning capabilities, cut a few superfluous features, and released it as iTunes in 2001. Marketed as “the world’s best and easiest to use jukebox software,” iTunes offered users an end-to-end solution for getting music into a Mac from CDs and then syncing that music to portable music players.

But Jobs wasn’t a fan of the portable music players of the day. So he created a small team tasked with creating an Apple-branded player. Originally codenamed P-68, this product came to market as the iPod in late 2001, offering customers “1000 songs in your pocket.”

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