Apple killed the iPod this week and that made me a little reflective. I thought it might be a good way to tell my story of how I got into Apple.

Before that though, the iPod turned into such a gateway drug for me. It started my obsession with electronics.

iPod what?

I remember the first time I ever even heard of the iPod. At the time, I gave tennis lessons to make money. My first real tennis teaching job landed me in the huge town of Jacksonville, Texas around 2002. At the time, Jacksonville’s largest and most popular restaurant had to be Chili’s, which sat right out front of the Walmart parking lot.

At the far end of the town, a country club had been built and had four tennis courts where I would give lessons. I had worked at the club for a little over a year and had a weekly lesson with a family of four. On this day, I worked with the oldest son, who informed me it was his birthday.

“Happy birthday!” I screamed and he kind of shied away. He was a timid kid that never really displayed much emotion. “Did you get any cool gifts yet?”

“I got an iPod,” he shouted. “It’s loading up songs back home.”

While I didn’t know what that was, I deduced that it was a new type of music player since he had left it home to sync music. I hadn’t moved into the digital music players yet and the only thing I knew about Apple was that I hated trying to fix my grandmother’s iMacs. At the time, my brother had got me into Mini-Disc players. We both had one and we filled up discs with music and books on tape. But to load them up, you had to have special software that would actually play the file to embed it on the disc. Getting new music on there could be time consuming.

Little did we know that the music industry was about be taken over.

In the last few minutes of our discussion about his birthday presents, I pretended to know what it was, but it didn’t pique my interest. He told me how expensive it was, so much more expensive than any other device at the time. I didn’t really think about Apple’s iPod again for a few years.

Free iPod and Advertising

Somewhere between building a couple of PCs and amassing a fairly robust collection of MP3s, I found myself needing something better for organizing my MP3 collection. Winamp was fine for playing music, but it didn’t really help to organize it at the time. So I did what anyone would do in the early 2000s, I searched the internet for what was better. Turns out, Apple finally moved iTunes to Windows and brought the iPod over with it.

I downloaded iTunes and never opened Winamp again.

iTunes offered everything I wanted in a digital music player. And it organized my music for me! But it didn’t help me get my music on my Mini-Disc player. After using iTunes to blast music on my crappy speakers in my room, and spending way too much time trying to get music between iTunes and whatever app I used to get music on my Mini-disc player, I decided I needed to move towards something easier to use.

I wanted an iPod.

It didn’t help that around this time, sites started offering free iPods if you signed up for so many services and got your friends and family to sign up too. This is how I ended up getting movies sent to me from Blockbuster in the mail! Which eventually died and made me move to Netflix and streaming.

Of course, I never got my free iPod.

But my desire to get an iPod didn’t wan. One day, while bored at home, I needed to do something so I started to just go to stores to get out of the house. I ended up a Circuit City and saw the iPod with my own eyes for the first time.

I would soon learn a lesson about credit cards and get myself into a slight bit of trouble with interest rates, but I had my first iPod!

I had purchased an open box (I think) 20 GB iPod 4th generation on credit. This was the iPod with the giant box that had bright colors and the white iPod silhouette that it was starting to be known for. I’m so glad they don’t come in these giant boxes anymore!

It was also the first version that came to Windows. Soon, I had all my music loaded up and felt so hip!

iPod 4th Generation

This iPod was honestly great for what it was. It could carry a ton of music files, it was easy to use, and was cool. The screen was only in black and white, it had a clicky wheel which was actually a touch surface, so nothing moved when you spun the wheel. This would be the style that stuck around until the iPod touch came.

But its ease of use really got me. You plug the thing in, and all of your music transfers over. You didn’t have to play and record sound like on the Mini-Disc. You didn’t have to select files to move. It was just there.

Using the spin wheel felt intuitive. You just move your thumb or finger around to select a menu and press the middle button to select it. It beat having to bring Mini-discs or CDs around with you everywhere.

This device made me start looking at Apple in a different way.

Life-Changing iPod

I rocked that iPod. I’m not lying when I say that the iPod would eventually change my life.

In the fall of 2005, I had a chance to leave home, school, and my current job to travel across the country to work for the (now defunct) TreeHouse Workshop. I packed all my stuff (iPod included), and moved across the country to Seattle, Washington.

Between here and there though, we had to build a treehouse in Los Angeles. So my brother and I packed up and headed west.

For the first time in my life, I moved to a new town. I had no idea what I was in for. But at the same time, I also had a job that paid more, and I had money. The first thing I bought was the new Video iPod. I didn’t care about watching videos on my iPod. I just wanted the new one.

I didn’t think about the future though and what I had coming up.

My brother and I had a heart to heart as he helped me realize what was ahead of me. Things got heated for me. I broke down and contemplated if I had made the right choice with anything. Should I have dropped out of college to do this? Shouldn’t I be able to get what I wanted?

Ultimately, I took the video iPod back. I had to pay for moving expenses soon, and I needed to find my way to do it. I shouldn’t depend on someone else to save me. That became a defining moment in my life, all over an iPod. It was a lesson I might not have learned soon enough if it wasn’t for the iPod and my brother.

My brother lived in one-bedroom home in Seattle. So, he and I would spend the next few months turning a rundown basement into a little apartment that I could live in. After working all day, I would come home and work on my apartment.

One night, as I worked, I knocked my iPod off of my stereo. As if in slow motion, the iPod fell to the ground. It hit the concrete floor- HARD. So hard that it broke the needle on the hard drive inside the iPod. I was iPod less for months.

Reality Distortion On

But I loved my time with my iPod and as I paid for my move and got settled in, I needed a new computer. The desktop I left back home would be too hard to transport, so I looked into buying my first laptop.

When it came to looking for my first laptop, I never really thought of anything but an iBook. The Barnes and Noble I worked at part-time was right next to an Apple store, so I would go in and try them out all the time. I knew that I wanted to move to the Apple ecosystem after using my iPod. So I focused I an iBook and bought my first laptop.

It was funny because before the iPod I hated Apple. I just didn’t know how to use one at all. Moving over to Mac OS did take some time and an adjustment, but I did make a move and never look back.

Sound in Color

After living in Seattle for a year, I learned that it wasn’t for me. I needed to get back to school and finish. As a parting gift, my family all chipped in to give me an iPod 5th generation in black as a parting gift. I spent the better part of the next few years with that one. By then I had become an Apple convert.

I would use this iPod until well after the iPhone came out. only letting go of it when I upgraded to an iPhone 4.

The Other Ones and the Future

I received a few iPod Touches through the years for use in my classroom, but to me, the iPod touch is more of an iPhone than iPod.

The iPod lasted a long time. It managed to morph and stay around for twenty years. It bring Apple from the brink of destruction and helped me grow up.

Of course now, my iPhone 13 Pro has more storage than I could ever use, plus all the songs ever made on Apple Music. AirPods make listening to music freeing and I love the way the HomePod fills my house with music. So the iPod DNA is still in most of it’s products.

Without the iPod, I might have been a millionaire. I would have saved so much money not buying Apple devices, but I wouldn’t be who I am now. I’m thankful for the little music device that helped to change my life in more ways than one.

Did you have an iPod that changed your life? Which model was your favorite? Let me know in the comments