Apple iPod turns 15, still makes people groove

On October 23, 2001, Apple Co-Founder and former Chief Executive Steve Jobs unveiled iPod, a portable music player, that changed the way people buy and listen to music even 15 years from its launch. The first generation of iPod featured a 5GB hard drive, FireWire port for syncing, a physically-rotating scroll wheel that could save 1,000 songs, tech website Venture Beat reported on Monday.

The second generation came with touch control and added Windows support. Today, there are three versions of iPod-- the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano and the touchscreen iPod Touch. In June 2003, Apple sold its millionth iPod, and by the end of 2004, Apple had sold 10 million units. The year end of 2015 marked sales of 42 million and by September 1, 2010, the sales grew to 275 million.

In January 2015, Apple said that it would stop reporting iPod sales as it was pushed back by iPhone, whose design was partly influenced by the iPod. Apple's iTunes music software is still going strong, and has become a big focus of the company's current strategy as instead of downloading songs to a portable device, people are simply streaming them. The man behind the iPod, Tony Fadell, left Apple in 2010 and co-founded Nest Labs, which was acquired by Google.