Years before an all-screen iPhone, Apple imagined an edge-to-edge iPod nano

Introduced in 2005, the iPod nano saw different iterations throughout its life cycle. Now, one of the executives responsible for creating this iPod is showing some of the various mockups created to explore the possibilities of this product since he’s launching a new book called Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making.

Former Apple senior vice president of the iPod division Tony Fadell posted an image on his Twitter of six different iPod nano mock-ups. As he explained, they were just 3D printed dummies, “something to hold in your hand, but they’re what made the project real.”

The first mock-up for example was almost the design of the fourth-generation iPod nano released in 2008, while some of the others look similar to what the first-gen product looked like.

” What if your screen were this large? What if the wheel was that big? What if there was no wheel?”

One of the mock-ups, for example, is an all-screen iPod nano. It’s possible to say this is the iPhone without a notch, but it is interesting to see Apple trying out this design even though it was a mock-up.

The story behind the creation of the iPod nano is in a chapter of Fadell’s new book. The chapter entitled “Make the Intangible Tangible” is written by Fadell, an ex-Apple executive. He stated that the key to product development was making the intangible tangible, even though you aren’t building hardware .”

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