The context of this story

Year: 2003
Products: iPod, iTunes, Mac OS X

Hell froze over

It quickly became clear just how insignificant this attempt was. While internal estimates predicted that one million songs would be sold in the first six months, in reality, one million songs were sold in just six days. The iPod had obvious financial potential, and Jobs decided to make the most of it, aided by full support for Windows users.

There was nothing left to discuss, Apple began programming iTunes for Windows and extended its agreement with publishers to this platform as well. Jobs introduced the new iTunes in October 2003 as iTunes 4.1. With that, he also ended support for Musicmatch, requiring Windows users to use iTunes from then on. This would become a subject of occasional criticism in the future, as Apple did not bother to adapt its program to the Windows platform and left it completely in the Mac OS X interface graphics, including the brushed metal look. And it was with the words “Hell froze over” that Jobs announced iPod support for Windows at the presentation. Indeed, it did freeze over. During the first three days, over a million copies of the new iTunes 4.1 were downloaded and a million songs were ordered by Windows users - on average, everyone who downloaded the new version also ordered one song.

Table of contents