Panic's Cabel Sasser revealed an amazing artifact in their possession: a prototype iPod.
It has always been my deepest dream to smoothly unzip a backpack on a flight, theatrically pull out this incredible beast, plug in some headphones, and use it as my actual "portable" music player. Imagine the looks. … If you ask me, it's always interesting to see where things came from before they got there. And it's also quite rare, in Apple's case. So, happy birthday, iPod. Thanks for everything.
It must be seen to be believed, an item of obvious testbed utility yet such brutal ugliness it paints a striking picture of how clearly Apple separates design concerns at the development stage. There's much debate online about the extent to which this is a functional matter, to keep teams focused on their part, or one tied to Apple's legendarily tight security, to stop teams knowing about others' parts.
