With the introduction of the iPod mini, Apple managed to do something no other company could: improve upon the original iPod. Not only is it smaller and easier to use than the iPod, but the mini offers a colorful change from antiseptic white. More importantly, Apple made an already-great design even better. Never has it been so easy to skim through a substantial music collection with the touch of a thumb.

Apple firmly established that what had once been the dominion of gearheads and geeks—portable digital music players—had become a status symbol for people from all walks of life. In New York City, for example, the little white earbuds have become a borderline fashion accessory.

The entire iPod line commands a 50 percent market share in digital music players. Sales rose almost 300 percent in the last quarter, and shipments for the current quarter are expected to top 1.2 million—more than tripling last year's sales. Although Apple won't publicly break down its iPod sales figures by size, analysts credit the recent meteoric rise in sales of Apple's line of portable music players to the popularity of the mini.

When it launched the mini worldwide this past summer, Apple reported that it had pre-orders for more than 100,000 models before the official debut. Of course, such popularity has bred scarcity, which makes the mini even more desirable. Customers looking for a particular color report having to wait several weeks for delivery. And demand doesn't seem to be slowing.

Will iPod mania continue? Well, when Duke University announced it was giving its 1,650 incoming freshmen iPods, it made national news. No word on how many students decided to transfer to Duke as a result.

Fashion Meets Function
When Apple embarked on designing a new music player, the company understood it was facing a monumental challenge. "We realized the iPod had become iconic for people," said Apple's iPod product manager, Danika Cleary. "It had become something that infiltrated the general pop culture."

So, if the design team was going to introduce a successful follow-up, they knew it was going to have to be smaller, lighter, more durable, and even more of a fashion statement than the original. But Cleary claims they weren't intimidated by the challenge; they were excited.

While Apple is cagey about naming who contributed to the final design, saying only that somewhere between 20 and 100 engineers were involved in the mini project, it took the company about 9 months to come up with finished product. Size was the first priority.

"We wanted it to be about the size of a business card," said Cleary. "And most men's watches weigh about 3.6 ounces, but you don't think about the weight. So we were striving for the same feeling." Although that sounds simple enough, making a smaller player with all the same functionality and ease-of-use presented several challenges. "From a development and engineering standpoint, we didn't have a shrink ray. So we had to start from the ground up," said Cleary.

Storage capacity was something that the team considered from the beginning. "We had been watching the 1-inch hard drive market for a while, and it finally got to a capacity point (4GB) that we thought made sense," said Cleary. "From the beginning, we felt 1,000 songs was what it had to hold."

With the basic technology in place, Apple considered feedback from iPod owners. They wanted colors and a player that was more durable for workouts and sports. The team settled on a scratch- and stain-resistant anodized aluminum body available in five different colors.

The biggest challenge for the design team, according to Cleary, was creating controls that could fit on the smaller player. "We didn't have the room to have buttons around the wheel, so the engineers had come up with a design that was as simple to use with just one thumb, but that would fit on this small product." For reasons of style and reliability, the team rejected the idea of using a tiny joystick control, and then finally hit on the idea of a clickable version of the original iPod wheel. "This way you get the click and mechanical feel that users wanted, and you get the reliability as well," explained Cleary. Indeed, the iPod mini team was so successful in creating the new interface controls that the recently revised iPod incorporates the mini's click wheel.

The iPod mini gets the nod this year because while nearly every single computer and consumer electronics company has been struggling to come up with an iPod killer, Apple managed to design one of its own.

Read about the 24 other Mobile Innovations Awards in the October issue of LAPTOP magazine.
Available on newstands and bookstores now.