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Thank You Tony Fadell

After seven long years, a world changing device and change of Apple’s fortunes forever, Tony Fadell has bid the Cupertino-based company farewell. While the average iPod owner may never have known of his existence, his tenacious ingenuity had helped change the face of the entire music industry.

In the mid 1990’s, Tony Fadell had formed his own company, Fuse, with aspirations to develop the “Dell of consumer electronics.” While Fuse had failed to gain adequate funding to launch Fadell’s idea of a small hard-disk-based music player, the visionary set out to explore other options. After a brief stint with RealNetworks in 2000, Fadell had been approached by Apple in 2001 to be an inaugural member of the iPod engineering team.

After the immense success of the device, Fadell had been promoted to head of the division in 2006, overtaking Jon Rubenstein, and had been officially accredited as the man behind the iPod. After years of service, he is now stepping down from his throne and iPod kingdom. Despite saturation of the mobile music player market, the iPod remains at the forefront of the industry.

What would life be like without the iPod? It is almost tough to imagine walking the streets of any city and not seeing at least a handful of people quietly (or not so quietly) rocking out to a massive library of music stowed away into a pocket with the iconic earbuds gently nestled in their heads. Or conjure up an image of not-so enthusiastic people at a local gym had they not been privy to heat up a workout with ipods strapped to their arms. Or imagine the restlessness of the A.D.D addled youth on a long flight had they not been able to watch recent movies or play super Monkeyball. The list goes on and on, so I’d like to say on behalf of MacBlogz and my overall sanity, thank you Tony Fadell.