Happy 12th birthday iPod!
Sunday, November 10, 2013 at 10:00PM 
By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
It may no longer be Apple's cash cow or comeback product but there's no denying the importance that the Apple iPod holds in the company's history as well as the music industry at large. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, but it was the first one that really made sense. It made digital music consumption portable and cool. It gave birth to iTunes, songs sold as digital singles and it single-handedly challenged piracy by offering a legal way to distribute music digitally (although some would argue that it promoted piracy for people who didn't want to pay for music).
Still, there's no denying the original iPod (1,000 songs in your pocket) took Apple one step closer to the iPhone and the iPad. It made solid state drives a necessity and made technologies like cloud computing, FireWire and the cool clickwheel the landmark features that would set it apart from the competition.
So while the iPod's 12th birthday hasn't really been celebrated and it wasn't even mentioned in the last few Apple Events, we really need to raise a glass to this iconic and game changing device that propelled Apple beyond its computer roots as well as changed the way people enjoyed music all over the world.