Some have reported that this year's Macworld keynote was a "letdown" because Apple did not announce anything new or exciting (except the MacBook Air, which is a niche product). iTunes movie rentals was something we expected, along with improvements to AppleTV. Ho-hum, no big deal, right? Yet when we look back in the future, we shall see January 2008 as a major point in technology history.

No, it's not that exciting right now, but neither was the introduction of the original iPod. Back then even Mac users were baffled by Apple's strategy and $400 seemed an outrageous amount to pay for a handheld music player. Today that iPod ecosystem is the envy of the industry.

But you must remember that the original iPod was very different from today's iPods. I don't just mean in features and hardware, but that all the pieces that make up the ecosystem did not exist back then. The original iPod only used a Firewire connection (rare in the PC world back then, though standard on Macs), only worked with Macs, did not support copy protected music (which didn't really exist back then) and only played MP3 files, and included bare bones iTunes software. There was no iTunes Music Store, no Windows version of iTunes, no accessories, or even multiple models of iPod to choose from. There were no such thing as podcasts or other free audio content.

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