No Dude, I Invented the Friggin iPod. Heard of It?
Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPod. Jon Rubinstein, the former head of Apple’s hardware division, didn’t either. And engineer Tony Fadell, who’s sometimes referred to as “the father of the iPod,” is at best just a doting uncle.
No, Kane Kramer, the guy who “invented” the iPod, never even worked for Apple (AAPL). At least according to Apple legal, which used the British engineer’s now expired 1979 patents on an early MP3 player capable of an ASTONISHING 3.5 SECONDS OF AUDIO PLAYBACK to settle a patent-infringment suit brought against it by Burst. Apparently, Steve Jobs was willing to deny paternity–at least long enough to wring a settlement out of Burst. Kramer’s crude schematics (above) probably didn’t live up to his standards, anyway.
“I was up a ladder painting when I got the call from a lady with an American accent from Apple saying she was the head of legal affairs and that they wanted to acknowledge the work that I had done,” Kramer told the Daily Mail. “She said Apple would like me to come to California to talk to them. Then I had to make a deposition in front of a court stenographer and videographer at a lawyer’s office. The questioning by the Burst legal counsel there was tough, 10 hours of it. But I was happy to do it.”
