Apple and the iPod

Apple Computer has been around since the $1970$s$.$ For more than two decades, it was predominantly a manufacturer of personal computers, but it faced rocky sales and low market share through the $1990$s$.$ In $2000,$ Steve Jobs was fixated on developing video editing software for the Mac. But then he realized millions of people were using computers and CD burners to make audio CDs and download digital songs called MP$3$ from illegal online services like Napster. Jobs was worried he was looking in the wrong direction and had missed the MP$3$ bandwagon. Jobs moved fast. He began purchasing SoundStep from Jeff Robin, a former Apple employee. SoundStep was developing software that simplified the importing and compression of MP$3$ songs. Robbins and a couple of other programmers began writing code from scratch and created the first version of iTunes for the Mac in less than $4$ months.

Jobs next challenged the team to make iTunes portable through a modification to the software and the creation of a tiny new system that was basically a miniature computer, along with a user interface that could sort and navigate the music files. The iPod was born nine months later. Jobs notice that one key element was missing, an online store for buying downloadable songs. In the spring of $2003,18$ months after the launch of the iPod, Apples$$ iTunes Music Store opened.

The latest iPod packs music, audiobooks, podcasts, photos, games, video, web access and more. It had the goal of selling $1$ million songs in $6$ months. It hit this goal in $6$ days. By $2014,$ more than $350,000,000$ iPods had been sold and more than $25$ billion songs sold.

$1.$ What might have happened to Apple if its top executives had not supported investment in iPods?