Since its launch in 2001 the Apple iPod, in a variety of guises, including a video player, has sold around 60 million devices. It accounts for 75 per cent of the market for personal music devices in the US, more than half in France and the UK; only in Germany is it outsold, and only then by all the similar devices put together. Although it has not yet become the generic descriptor for a personal music device (‘MP3 player’ still has currency) it has given rise to the term ‘podcasting’ for the distribution of audio content across the Internet. Accounting for some three-quarters of all legal music downloads, the related iTunes website has been a commercial success for Apple Corporation, a company formerly associated with personal computers and widely perceived as a stylish alternative to the more common arrangement of Intel chip and Windows Computing. As early as 2005 Apple Computers announced that downloads from iTunes, the digital distribution network for music, had hit 300 million, a figure that put commercial digital music networks on the map. The story of the Apple iPod, a digital music player, its integration with the iTunes servers and its impact on the legitimation of a previously clandestine aspect of digital convergence, is deserving of attention by all those interested in multimedia.