Tony Fadell, former senior vice president of Apple’s iPod division, and widely credited as the “father of the iPod,” says Apple’s own mythology of the iPod being built as a knowing precursor to the iPhone is “revisionist history.” In an interview with The Telegraph, Fadell claims Apple was mainly focused on the Macintosh at the time, as what came to be the iPod team spent “the day job” building the Macintosh.
He says Apple is a “visionary company” that enabled the success of the iPod, but “there was no vision of taking everything to a world of iPhones and iPads.”
“We built the iPod in weeks,” Fadell says.
“It had to be what I thought it was going to be because there wasn’t time for endless refinements.” Fadell is now founder and CEO of Nest.