I Came, I Saw, iPod: What I Was Listening To on My First Apple iPod

pcmag.com:

"One thousand songs in your pocket." That's what Steve Jobs said as he pulled the first iPod out of his jeans pocket on October 23, 2001. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, but it soon became the most ubiquitous one, a fact that was easy to spot from the white earbuds that became their symbol of sorts, appearing on nearly everyone on the street and silhouetted in Apple's own ads.

For over a decade after, Apple released more iPods than you probably even realized and maybe even some you forgot you had. And soon after that first iPod, they held not just a thousand but thousands and thousands of songs. As Apple finally discontinues the iPod, the PCMag staff thought we would reflect on our first iPods and try to remember what we played on them.

I'll start. My first iPod was a silver iPod Mini, probably the second-generation one. I had been through so many MP3 players by then and the Mini finally had the functionality and look I wanted. I was obsessed with having my music with me at all times, and being able to click click click through my collection to the tune of that satisfying noise the click wheel made was a dream come true. When I got that first iPod (to be followed by a third-gen Nano, a second-gen iPod Touch, and two fourth-generation iPod Shuffles), I was just leaving my Counting Crows phase and had not yet found The National to fill that empty space, so I populated my playlist with plenty of moody indie music and a few things in between to keep me awake.

I covered the original Apple iPod back when it was released in 2001 for the now-defunct Computer Shopper, and that's when I got hooked. I'd used other MP3 players (Diamond Rio, Slacker Player, anyone?), but none were as effortless (or as absolutely spacious) as