iPod Turns Five... So What's Next?

Five years, five major "generations"... it's time to pay our respects to what is, if not the most innovative, the most influential piece of consumer electronics in recent memory: The Apple iPod.

Contrary to common misconception, the iPod was not the first MP3 player—not by a longshot. The original MP3 player dates back to the Eiger Labs MP3Man, released in 1998, a full three years before the iPod came around. While you've probably never heard of Eiger Labs, you may remember the Diamond Rio, the first MP3 player to really catch on. (It was so popular it also has the distinction of being the first electronics company sued by the RIAA over the legality of digital music, a suit which the RIAA eventually lost.)

But Eiger and Diamond came and went, paving the way for the Apple iPod, introduced with a 5GB hard drive on October 23, 2001, with the promise of putting "1,000 songs in your pocket."

1,000 songs almost seems quaint now. Today's iPods bear only a passing resemblance to the original, both in the controls and under the hood: The state of the art 5G iPod holds 80GB of data, or about 16,000 songs. The click-wheel has been honed and refined year after year to the point where it's hard to believe the 1G, 2G, and 3G (pictured) iPods actually had buttons. Today's iPods play video in full color and are smaller and slimmer than ever.

So what's the next act for iPod? Apple famously plays its cards close to the vest, which causes rampant speculation from far too many gossip and rumor sites. But two major innovations are widely expected as "just a matter of time" for the company. TrustedReviews has them both mocked up: A touchscreen iPod with a screen that spans the entire width of the device and has no physical controls at all, and the long-fabled iPhone mashup of cell phone handset and MP3 player. While I agree that the iPhone is probably very likely in the near future (though not likely to look much like the mockup on TrustedReviews), I'm skeptical that a touchscreen iPod would work very well, if for no other reason than you'd get fingerprints all over your gorgeous screen any time you wanted to play your videos. Touchscreen certainly looks elegant on the surface, but I for one would prefer actual, physical buttons (on the sides?) and keep my screen pristine.

What do you want your next iPod to do? Happy birthday, little guy.