IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 45

Along the way, more than 100 engi‑
neers within Apple worked on the proj‑
ect, hundreds more at the companies
that would supply subsystems. And
of course, iTunes and the online music
store developed in parallel with the iPod
share credit for the device's success.

t

he iPod project got under way
officially in March 2001, with
Jobs demanding a product out for
Christmas. That meant it would have
to be in mass production by October-
seven months away. So the tiny team
acted more like hunter‑gatherers than
like farmers. They didn't start from
scratch; they had to rely on existing proj‑
ects within the company, adapting them
to their goals. Apple's display group
helped them choose screen technologies
and build the display drivers and related
components. The power supply group
took the specs from the iPod team and
designed the "wall wart," Rubinstein
says, as well as the power‑management
circuitry that would go inside the device.
And the mass storage team worked closely
with Toshiba to finish the tiny hard drive,
which had simply been a prototype when
Rubinstein saw it. They debugged the

design, tested it, and helped Toshiba
shake out the production process.
Rubinstein told his Toshiba colleagues
he'd buy every 1.8‑inch drive the com‑
pany could make. "They were a little sur‑
prised," Rubinstein recalls. And that was
all he told them until Jobs officially intro‑
duced the iPod. "I told them not to worry;
it was for a hot new product," he recalls. If
at some point they figured it out on their
own, they never let on to Rubinstein.
Convincing people throughout the
company to take a little time for this top‑
secret skunk‑works effort wasn't hard,
Rubinstein notes, even though most peo‑
ple at the company weren't aware that the
project existed. People were pulled over
to iPod development as needed; "the hard
part was focusing them back onto their
normal jobs," he says.
Meanwhile, the Silicon Valley econ‑
omy was slipping into free fall as the
dot‑com boom went bust. Apple stock fell
from $55 a share in mid‑2000 to around
$12 a share in mid‑2001. "We just kept our
heads down," Rubinstein recalls. "We
were busy. We thought when the economy
turned around we'd be well positioned."
Then, just as iPod production began in
China, with kinks in the manufacturing

Jon Rubinstein
IEEE SEnIor MEMbEr
TITlE: Executive Chairman, Palm Inc.
DaTE of bIrTh: 13 October 1956
EDucaTIon: BSEE 1978, M.Eng. 1979,
Cornell University; MSCS 1985, Colorado
State University
faMIly: Married to Karen Richardson
coMpuTEr: Black MacBook
car: None; relies on public transportation
or rents a Zipcar
MoST rEcEnT book rEaD:
The Path Between the Seas: The Creation
of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 by David
McCullough
favorITE rESTauranTS: Masa's,
Aqua, and Yank Sing, all in San Francisco
lEISurE acTIvITIES: Distance
running, biking, scuba diving, skiing

process still being worked out, the 9/11 ter‑
rorist attacks rocked the world. The ensu‑
ing security measures trapped some of the
key engineers on the project in China and
left others stuck in the United States try‑
ing to get overseas to the factories.
Nevertheless, by October, just as Jobs
had decreed, iPods Continued on page 54

th ssnc of lctronics
componnts.systms.automotiv.mbddd.wirlss.micronano-systms.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2008
