The 1st generation iPod can be identified by its scroll wheel, surrounded by four buttons (clockwise from the top: menu, forward, play/pause, backwards), and its center button for selecting items. When it was introduced, the iPod was a Mac-only product. It required Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X 10.1.
Before Apple unleashed the iPod, no company really did a good job of integrating the player, the computer, and the software that connected the two. Companies such as Rio and Creative would ship someone else’s music software in the box with their player, or sometimes they would include their own home-grown software.
