I already had an MP3 player that I used while jogging when the iPod came out, a Samsung Yepp. It could store and clumsily navigate between about 12 songs, all of which had to be transferred over the course of an hour via USB 1.1. By comparison the iPod could hold about 1000 songs, which were easily navigated on a screen via an intuitive wheel, and could be transferred in seconds over FireWire. I really think I was one of the first few people who wanted that original iPod. Being a poor college student at the time, the odds of me getting one were slim-to-none.

Then one summer day, I got home to find my not-so-precious Yepp had been mysteriously shattered. While there has yet to be a confession, I am pretty sure my mother was involved because she offered me cash to replace the broken MP3 player on the spot and without hesitation. It wasn’t enough to buy an iPod, but it was enough for me to easily cover the difference using money from my summer job at the time.

Flash forward to a few years later, when my mother decided to get my father an iPod for Christmas. Still relatively poor, my role in the gift would be to put my father’s music on the device. This was no small task. My father is an avid music listener and had amassed close to 200 CDs at the time. I persevered, knowing that being able to hold his entire library would be a magical moment for my father. It was¹. To this day he still prefers his iPod Classic over pretty much any other device, including his iPhone.