I Came, I Saw, iPod: What I Was Listening To on My First Apple iPod

"One thousand songs in your pocket." That's what Steve Jobs said as he pulled the first iPod out of his jeans pocket on October 23, 2001. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, but it soon became the most ubiquitous one, a fact that was easy to spot from the white earbuds that became their symbol of sorts, appearing on nearly everyone on the street and silhouetted in Apple's own ads.

For over a decade after, Apple released more iPods than you probably even realized and maybe even some you forgot you had. And soon after that first iPod, they held not just a thousand but thousands and thousands of songs. As Apple finally discontinues the iPod, the PCMag staff thought we would reflect on our first iPods and try to remember what we played on them.

Chandra Steele

Senior Writer, Features

I'll start. My first iPod was a silver iPod Mini, probably the second-generation one. I had been through so many MP3 players by then and the Mini finally had the functionality and look I wanted. I was obsessed with having my music with me at all times, and being able to click click click through my collection to the tune of that satisfying noise the click wheel made was a dream come true. When I got that first iPod (to be followed by a third-gen Nano, a second-gen iPod Touch, and two fourth-generation iPod Shuffles), I was just leaving my Counting Crows phase and had not yet found The National to fill that empty space, so I populated my playlist with plenty of moody indie music and a few things in between to keep me awake.

Wendy Sheehan Donnell

Editor

I covered the original Apple iPod back when it was released in 2001 for the now-defunct Computer Shopper, and that's when I got hooked. I'd used other MP3 players (Diamond Rio, Slacker Player, anyone?), but none were as effortless (or as absolutely spacious) as Apple's 5GB hard-drive-driven iPod. Even if iTunes was an absolute bear, the easy ability to carry my entire music library in my pocket and navigate it with a clicky wheel was worth the slog.

Kim Key

Analyst, Security

I got the video iPod as a birthday/Christmas present in 2005. There were only like 4 podcasts at the time, and one was The Ricky Gervais Show, so I listened to that pretty often. As far as music goes I reckon my top 10 were as follows (I was really into the Garden State soundtrack because it's good, and I hadn't realized how badly that movie would age).

Jordan Minor

Analyst, Software

My first iPod was a lime green iPod Mini in middle school. I listened to AN EMBARRASSING AMOUNT of Black Eyed Peas: Elephunk and Monkey Business. I had a few CDs but carrying around a CD player always seemed cumbersome to me. I chose an iPod because it was so small and convenient and could go with me on the school bus. I also like how it felt like a Game Boy but for listening to music, something teenagers do as opposed to playing video games like kids do.

Eric Griffith

Features Editor

My first iPod was (I believe) the second-gen 20GB version with the FireWire connection. I was very much in love with using it when I mowed the lawn. I had a big set of ear protectors with a built-in radio that drowned out the noise of the riding mower, and was lucky they had a 3.5mm jack on them so I could connect them to the iPod.

Mostly, I listened to audiobooks. I used to do them on cassettes in the car, but now could take the books anywhere thanks to Audible (before Amazon owned it), especially on the mower. I remember listening to The DaVinci Code on the mower, so I could figure out what all the hubbub was about. I also got The Time Traveler's Wife, which came in two large files, and I accidentally listened to the entire eight-hour second part first, but didn't really know it was out of order, because time travel.

What actual music did I listen to on those mower-days almost 20 years ago? The only song I can really remember cranking up high was..."Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence.

Emily Zoda

Producer

My first iPod was actually the OG Shuffle. It came with a lanyard that my sister and I wore as a necklace all the time!

My parents gave me my first iPod as a Christmas gift. When they took me on errands with them I would lug around a Walkman and play music so I wouldn’t be bored. But that meant I also had to bring CDs with me, and that was too much for a 10-year-old to carry, so we transitioned to being an iTunes family. We spent many nights on the one computer in the house figuring out the software, “purchasing” music (read: downloading from the internet), and then figuring out why my dad’s classic rock always synced to everyone’s devices and not his own. My iPod went everywhere with me. It was my prized possession as a child because of the sheer wonder of not having to switch a CD anymore to listen to a song.

Tom Brant

Deputy Managing Editor, Hardware

I had a gold iPod Mini first-gen. I got it as a birthday present and listened pretty much every day on summer vacation that year. It came out of storage in 2010 when I got my first car (a VW) that had a special integration where each preset button on the dashboard mapped to an iPod playlist.

Carol Mangis

Managing Editor, Digital Edition

My first iPod was a blue iPod mini. I loved those beautiful metallic colors! And being able to carry my music without any bulky media (hello, CDs and cassette tapes) was very freeing. I had it with me at all times.

Jim Fisher

Lead Analyst, Cameras

I had a fourth-gen iPod with, I think, 30GB, purchased in 2005-ish. My first iPod was a post-college splurge, and something I really wished I’d had a few years prior, when burning mix CDs for road trips by way of a cassette-deck adapter was a regular part of life. The iPod put all my weird songs in one place, the click wheel rocked, and I would not object to its return on a modern device. And it just worked with my G4 tower.

Jamie Lendino

Executive Editor, Features

I first had an iPod mini, in silver, which I promptly lost in a movie theater on a first date later that year. I was also busy reviewing lots of other MP3 players at the time for a variety of publications (remember Iriver and Rio?). But my own first MP3 player was an iPod, and I stayed with Apple ever since, happy to leave portable CD players and my car's ever-skipping CD changer behind.

Sascha Segan

Lead Analyst, Mobile

My first iPod was a 10GB third-gen bought in 2004. But when I think about it, I think about it mostly having been installed in a portable speaker dock and used as the soundtrack for putting an insomniac baby, then toddler, then preschooler to sleep.

For years, that iPod primarily played two things: Elizabeth Mitchell's 2006 album "You Are My Little Bird," followed by a single 57-minute track of rain sounds called "Forest Raindrops" by Geoff Stewart. Every day. We couldn't live, or easily go to sleep, without it.

Max Eddy

Senior Analyst, Security

My first iPod was a third-gen, which was unique in that it had no moving parts on its exterior, just a circular touch pad and touch-sensitive buttons that were flush with the exterior. The buttons were also internally illuminated, glowing in a somewhat ominous red light. It felt very cutting-edge when I got it around 2004 and it was such an improvement over the CD players I’d had before. It was also the first iPod that a lot of my friends and family had ever seen, and I vividly remember how several people just didn’t understand what possible value it had.

Along with the iPod, I also got an FM transmitter that would play music over frequencies that could be picked up on my truck’s stereo. The transmitter was a white cylinder that connected via the 3.5mm headphone jack (remember those?) and the short-lived data port next door, which was separate from the 30-pin iPod connector Apple used for syncing and charging. You changed frequencies by winding through a playlist of available channels and selecting one. This worked well enough but was prone to all kinds of interference. Worse, you had to find a more or less unoccupied channel to get a clear signal. That was fine in my neighborhood, but on long car trips, I had to constantly search for open channels which came and went very quickly. In the end, I gave up on the transmitter and opted for an equally weird piece of technology: the cassette adapter.

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My favorite accessory for this iPod, however, were iPod Socks. People were already making fabric cases for their iPods and Apple just took the idea and ran with it. These were brightly colored fabric bags covered top to bottom in the ribbed, stretchy fabric you’d find at the top of a tube sock.

While podcasts were a thing back then, I didn’t listen to any. But I really enjoyed NPR’s This American Life and it drove me nuts that I couldn’t listen to it on my iPod. So I wrote a simple AppleScript that opened TAL’s weekly stream in a web browser and activated a recording app called WireTap. I tied the whole thing to a recurring iCal event, and thus pirated much of Ira Glass’ best work.

Weston Almond

Video Producer

My first iPod was the third generation with the row of four buttons above the click wheel. I was insanely excited to have a huge chunk of my music with me at all times, so I invested in a leather case that clipped on my belt and unsnapped upside-down, so I could access the iPod while it was still clipped on my belt. I remember taking it to Puerto Rico and listening to James Bond themes and Elvis Costello on the beach.

Daniela LaFave

SEO Manager

I had a video iPod, black, with my name and a Romanian pop song lyric engraved on the back. My dream job as a teen was part music video director, part bass guitarist. My bass guitar wouldn't fit in my backpack, so the next best thing was carrying all the songs I wanted to learn. I stuck with my CD player until an MP3 player could also play music videos. My video iPod helped me invite my friends into a part of my life previously reserved for secret late-night MTV viewing in my room. I'd meet other kids at school, we'd listen to each other's iPods, then bam, friendship!

Rocky Rhodes

Senior SEO Manager

I'm pretty sure I still have my first-gen Nano somewhere, and I'm pretty sure it still works. The only song I remember for sure is on it is "I'm Bossy" by Kelis, so pretty embarrassing!

Josh Butts

CTO

My first iPod (though not first MP3 player) was the iPod with a click wheel. I got it for Christmas in 2004 which seemed like when everyone got an iPod. i didn't have any other Apple products and at that time wouldn't have even considered owning one. Shortly thereafter I bought my first PowerBook G4. Fifteen years later and my most coveted devices all have an Apple logo. Not sure what my top10 songs were, but I can tell you as the owner of an iTunes library that dates to 2004, most of what I imported was from Napster (the original) or Limewire or Kazaa. I've had iTunes Match since it came out but there are still one or two songs in my library that have skips or pops in them because they were crap copies that I pirated.

If you want more iPod nostalgia, then take a look at What's the Best iPod Ever? Every Model, Bracketed and Ranked and A Look Back at PCMag's First iPod Review.

Also watch: The iPod's 20th Anniversary: A Look Back

The iPod's 20th Anniversary: A Look Back