Before there was the iPhone there was the iPod.
At the turn of the 21st century, portable digital music players (and in fact the whole digital music industry) were at that stage where Apple really excels: already here, but very unevenly distributed; complex and not well implemented.
At that time, Apple was Apple Computer. A music playing device seemed a bit far afield. When Apple offered the $399 iPod for the 2001 holiday season, it seemed like a pretty high price for an unproven product line (shades of the Vision Pro?). But especially with a developer discount, it seemed like a Future that Alan might want to look into.
Over the next decade, Alan (and many others) would go on to acquire a wide range of iPods. Included in that range was the iPod photo, onto which images from Open Door Networks’ Envision app could be downloaded and played back. And eventually the iPod touch, which was essentially an iPhone without the phone part.
The iPod would go on to be another in Apple’s line of Future-evenly-distributing devices, adding terms like podcast to the English language in the process.
It would also go on to be one of the three devices that Steve Jobs would merge into that one revolutionary product he introduced at Macworld in January of 2007: the iPhone.