Origin of the iPod, Shall we have a Geekly Argument?

http://www.projectbarbq.com/bbqtopic.htm

(thanks for the photo, Dave Battino)
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2032

You'll see that the topic of "PC versus Appliance," especially as relates to audio, was brought up elegantly in 1997 by Van Webster in a talk he gave at our conference, Project BBQ. Since then, the "church of appliantology" has created quite a stir among some very interesting people.

I will even go out on a limb here--_it can be argued_ that Van's talk in 1997 inspired the creation of iTunes and the iPod. Probably not entirely true, and takes credit from some who deserve it. But just for fun, here's how my warped mind remembers it:

-Van gives talk at BBQ
-Jim Reekes, then at Apple, is very inspired. He responds by "founding church of appliantology"
-Jim tries to talk his bosses into creating an appliance for music based on the internet. He writes some code to support the idea.
-The response is "what, are you crazy? Music on the Internet???" or something like that
-Jim creates Kerbango, a company based on an internet audio appliance
-That company ends, I don't know why.
-iPod/iTunes comes out
-it contains some of Jim's code.

I don't know if it's true, I'm just saying that if we were sitting around the campfire, that's the story I'd tell.

--FAT