Steve Jobs, then-chief executive officer of Apple, launches iTunes Store in the UK in June 2004 (Photo: Ian Waldie/Getty Images) Mac computer sales were still low, the company had lost $247m in operations at the tail end of 2ooo, and all hopes were pinned on the iPod resonating with an increasingly digital-savvy market. Apple was primarily still a computer company at the time, buoyed by Jobs’ recent return to the company after a decade long absence, but desperately in need of a star product. iTunes was the software it had designed to help users rip their CD collection into a digital library for uploading to their iPod. After 18 long years, the company has finally pulled the plug on what was, to all intents and purposes, an essential lifeline for Apple which helped to turn its fortunes around.Īpple actually released iTunes a few months before the original iPod in 2001, the MP3 player late chief executive Steve Jobs promised would “put 1,000 songs in your pocket”. Anyone who has owned an Apple product in the last 20 years is likely to have grappled with iTunes, the revolutionary software which transformed Apple’s fortunes from a computing firm into a hardware behemoth.

Apple itunes download thank you