He’s 20 years old iTunesperhaps the most popular software of Apple who changed the way we listen to songs and saved the music world. It was launched by Steve Jobs during MacWorld, the event that the Cupertino-based company organized every year to present new programs and devices, on January 9, 2001. An iconic date because six years later, on January 9, 2007, Jobs also presented theiPhones calling it “a phone five years ahead of any other”. Two products that have changed over time but that have marked a revolution in our lifestyles, made even more evident by the pandemic we are experiencing. To make iTunes, Apple hired the developers who had created SoundJam MP, a Mac computer program that allowed you to organize music. Initially it was a simple software for listening to songs available only for computers running Mac OS 9.
Over the years, the devices supported by iTunes increased: iPods, iPhones, iPads, macOS X operating system and also Windows (a real revolution in Apple’s market strategies, until then reluctant to share its programs with the Redmond company). Then came the iTunes Store in 2003, again thanks to an intuition of Steve Jobs who wanted to make the purchase of music cannibalized by piracy and Napster accessible to users.
And it gave a big boost in terms of income to the music world. iTunes digital songs and the ability to build a music library spelled the end of CDs, in turn iTunes started to become obsolete with the arrival of streaming listening services like Spotify. So much so that Apple decided to shut down the platform in 2019, splitting it into three apps that offer three different stages for digital music, movies and podcasts (Apple Music, Apple TV and Apple Podcasts). It is precisely on the world of online content and services – fundamental in these months of Covid – that the iPhone, launched 14 years ago, has moved more and more. It enclosed for the first time three functions in a single device (telephone, music player, Internet browsing), made the keyboard disappear in favor of the ‘touch’ now familiar even to children, and paved the way for the world of apps, which had become more profitable and more perspective than the iPhone itself which faces the competition of many phones in a saturated market. Only in 2019 the ecosystem ofApp Store it moved $519 billion in payments and sales worldwide. with mobile commerce apps in the lead. And the iOS app economy has created nearly 300,000 new jobs in the US alone since April 2019, opening up opportunities as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to create challenges and uncertainty around the world.