Look for Apple Inc. to come to the rescue of markets that need to be rescued. In 2001, when the digital music player business wasn’t going anywhere, with gadgets that underperformed and were hard to use, Apple arrived with the iPod.

In fact, we didn’t believe we needed an iPod. Maybe it was just an expensive indulgence. After all, why spend $399 for a music player anyway? What’s the sense in that? Oh, 5,000 songs in my pocket, and fast transfers via FireWire from my Mac? And the thing’s easy to use? Wait a minute!

The iPod began a miracle, confounding the experts to quickly turn around the digital music player business, and, in fact, the entire music industry stung by the rise of pirated songs hosted on sites around the world. Apple offered a convenient method for the industry to embrace the digital revolution in a way that made it easy and inexpensive for consumers to buy the songs they wanted online without running afoul of the law.

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This article was posted on Monday, January 9th, 2012 at 12:00 AM and is filed under News and tagged with: Apple Inc., Ipod, Itunes, Macintosh, Portable media players, Steve Jobs.