1976 was a big year in music. Joy Division was formed after seeing the Sex Pistols play at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall; Phil Collins took over the singing duties of Genesis after the departure of Peter Gabriel; and let the Eagle go Hotel California.
But it was Apple’s build in the north of the country that may have had the biggest impact of the lot.
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The company focused on PC alternatives such as the Macintosh, Mac and Powerbook, but in October 2001 Apple unveiled a product that would change everything: the iPod.
Slim white jukebox
The introduction of the iPod didn’t just make Apple a household name, it started a process that would eventually affect almost every part of the way we listen to music.
Portable music was nothing new – the Sony Walkman had been around for over 20 years at this point – and the iPod wasn’t even the first digital music player.
But Apple rarely innovates that way, preferring to let others test the waters and then come in with a more polished version of a product that appeals to the masses rather than simply adopting it first.
And mass appeal is exactly what the iPod did, selling nearly 70 million units worldwide in the first five years of its launch.
Unlike its early rival, Creative’s DAP Jukebox, the iPod actually fit in the pocket, and the wheel-based navigation made scrolling through the 1000-odd songs that its 5GB hard drive could hold an absolute joy.
I What is Hi-Fi? a review in the February 2002 issue called it: “A beautiful, simple machine that looks and sounds the business.”
Technology companies like Griffin and Logitech quickly saw a gap in the market and began producing small speaker systems that allowed iPod owners to ‘dock’ their white jukeboxes, but were always cheap and plastic with sonic performance to match.
Apple introduced their own version in 2006, but the iPod Hi-Fi was hi-fi only in name.
I What is Hi-Fi? the three-star review couldn’t fault how loud it was, but its uninspiring design and lack of detail, speed and refinement meant that Steve Jobs’ announcement that he was replacing his stereo with one seemed completely absurd, especially given that he was an audiophile.
Fortunately, true audiophiles didn’t have to wait long before something worth marking came along. Bowers & Wilkins launched the Zeppelin in 2007, when premium-priced iPod docks were unheard of, and although not perfect it proved that Apple’s portable music player had a place in the home hi-fi setup.
On iTunes and on time
It wasn’t just the iPod’s hardware that could be affected. A few years before it took off, Napster had arrived on the scene and sent the music industry into a tailspin by allowing people to share songs online for free.
Record labels struggled to cope with the sudden decline in CD sales, but Apple was already working on a solution. It launched the iTunes Store in January 2001 and suddenly gave music lovers a way to download songs without breaking the law.
As well as guaranteeing digital downloads, the iTunes Store has helped change the way people listen to music. People couldn’t buy individual songs even if they hadn’t been released as singles and slowly the value of the album began to diminish.
As people fill their hard drives with collections of digital files they start looking for ways to play them that don’t involve the small speakers that come with their computers.
In 2003 Roku’s SoundBridge radios were released, which could be used to play digital music from the iTunes library through a connected hi-fi system, and in 2004 Apple introduced AirTunes – a precursor to AirPlay that allowed streaming over a Wi-Fi network.
It didn’t take long for the ‘proper’ hi-fi brands to get involved too. Linn and Naim were quick to jump on the bandwagon, with the earlier Klimax DS arriving in 2007 and the later Uniti, which combined streaming capabilities with a high-end CD player and amp, winning our Product System of the Year award in 2009.
With the arrival of the iPhone in 2007, and the launch of Spotify the following year, the era of music streaming had well and truly begun.
Today, it’s rare to find an audio product that can’t be streamed, hence the popularity of products like WiiM Ultra, Cambridge Audio MXN10 and Naim Uniti Atom, and it explains why NAD has launched a version of the NAD C 3050 amplifier with an optional MDC2 BluOS-D module.
Despite the enduring appeal of CD and vinyl for some of us, it’s clear that streaming music has won over the masses and for many people downloads, let alone discs, are a distant memory. And again, it’s easy to trace this change back to Apple.
RIP headphone port
Those 19 years since the introduction of the iPhone have been revolutionary from a technology perspective, but design-wise things have changed – and to some extent that’s Apple’s fault.
The influence of the company can be seen almost everywhere. Its no-nonsense approach has been adopted by countless other genres; The Mac-like mixed metal finish has been de rigueur years; and intuitive touchscreen navigation is often preferred over physical controls (though with smartphone apps now often the primary form of interaction, those days are probably numbered).
It’s all part of a shift to products that people want to have on display rather than out of sight, which can be traced back to the original iMac flash in 1998 – an all-in-one computer that was more of a whim than a fully functional one.
At the time most headphones you could buy were black, but during the development of the iPod Apple decided to make the buds that came in the box white to match. It was a marketing ploy (albeit a highly automated one) that created a new status symbol almost overnight and made the type of headphones you wear a fashion statement.
Some brands suddenly started adding white headphones to their range so that even those who didn’t have Apple products could feel part of the crowd. In fact, there’s a strong case to be made that the headphone industry wouldn’t be as big as it is today without that simple color change decision.
Not all of Apple’s decisions regarding headphones have been very well received, but while its removal of the 3.5mm port from the iPhone 7 upset many people at the time, it seems smart 10 years later.
Wired headphones are now mostly reserved for listening at home (and influencers), and the wireless earbuds of Apple AirPods, which launched at the same time as the iPhone 7, are everywhere.
Of course, for sonic purists many of these improvements are not seen as improvements because they often come at the cost of sound quality, or are seen in some way to diminish the basics of the hi-fi hobby.
Apple’s next move is unlikely to change that, especially if it turns out to be a new version of the HomePod display screen, but it cannot be denied that its influence has made hi-fi and audio products more accessible, easier to use, and more fashionable. Not bad for a computer company.
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