The Cult of Mac Blog: Father of the IPod

The Cult of Mac Blog: Father of the IPod: "Sunday's New York Times feature on Apple, Steve Jobs and the iPod touches on one of the weirdest open secrets in Silicon Valley: The unacknowledged father of the iPod is engineer Tony Fadell.
According to the Times, '(The iPod) was put together starting in 2001 by hardware designers led by Tony Fadell, a young engineer who had worked at the Apple spinoff General Magic, at Philips Electronics and briefly at RealNetworks, led by Rob Glaser, who has developed the Rhapsody music service.
'In the late 1990's, Mr. Fadell tried to start his own Silicon Valley company, Fuse, designing consumer electronics products, including some related to digital music. When Fuse failed to get financing, he went to Apple, first as a contractor in February 2001, and then in April that year as the senior director of the iPod and other special projects.
'He would eventually build a 35-member team of engineers from Apple and other companies. Using a version of a microprocessor that powers most cellphones, the group brought the iPod together rapidly by relying on software licensed from a small start-up, Pixo, a cellphone software company founded by Paul Mercer, another former Apple engineer.
'Since Mr. Jobs returned to Apple, he has increasingly insisted that the company speak with just the voices of top executives, so Mr. Fadell was not permitted to comment for this article. "

Well, that's innovative...