After considerable work, Apple marketing managed to pull together a campaign that emphasized style and fashion over tech specs, which were familiar approaches for personal audio products. It would turn out to be a winning strategy.

After six months of hard work, the iPod began to come together. The concentrated and well-organized efforts of Apple's various iPod teams proved that they could finish the product in time, but one hiccup almost got in the way.

The events of September 11, 2001, took place during the final stretch of the iPod's development. As the attacks unfolded, an Apple team carrying key iPod prototypes from Taiwan landed on U.S. soil--just before the U.S. government shut down air travel nationwide. The iPod prototypes made it in time.

The events of 9/11 galvanized the goals of the iPod project. Apple employees adopted an ethos common to the time: if they stopped performing their regular duties--if they stopped pouring their passions into products they loved to create--they were accepting defeat. Fadell says that the iPod group's persevering spirit proved essential in preventing a delay that would have resulted in Apple missing the 2001 Christmas shopping season.