"Apple thought that they could bring a better [MP3 player] to market and they asked for me to do some designs," said Fadell in an interview with . "How could one be built, what kind of components, how much would it cost, and to do all the basic research and design for what was to become the iPod."

Apple paired Fadell with Stan Ng, a veteran Apple product marketing manager, to help him mesh with the company's unique culture. During that six week period, Fadell met with almost everyone he knew in the handheld industry while keeping his true goals secret. He studied competitors' products and settled on the need for a small, ultra-portable device with a large capacity and long battery life.

Fadell brewed up three prototype designs for a potential Apple music player, each model crafted from foam core boards with rough interface graphics pasted on. Lead fishing weights gave each mock-up the approximate weight of a final device.

"It was all very, very rough," recalls Fadell. "I only had six weeks and it was only me really doing all the work."

When his contract expired in mid April 2001, Fadell presented his prototypes to Apple executives, including Steve Jobs, in an important meeting. Fadell purposely offered his two least promising mock-ups to Jobs first (one of which would have used flash memory, the other with removable storage) and hid the third under a decorative bamboo bowl Jobs kept on the conference room table. As Fadell predicted, Jobs liked the third mock-up best.