The iPhone Era is already longer than the iPod Era before it

You should read John Gruber’s whole take on the supposedly forthcoming 8-inch iPad mini — it’s good. But the thing that jumped out at me was a tiny detail: The game-changing iPod mini didn’t launch until early 2004, more than two years after the first iPod shipped.

That means there were only three years of iPod mini-to-iPod nano progression before Apple unveiled the iPhone in early 2007. It sure feels like it was a lot longer. Maybe I’m just getting old, but for whatever reason, it still feels like the “pre-iPhone” iPod era lasted a lot longer than it did.

In reality, the iPhone has already been around longer — 2,009 days since Steve Jobs unveiled it on Jan. 9, 2007 — than the 1,904-day period between the iPod announcement on Oct. 23, 2001 and the iPhone Macworld keynote. (If you redo the math to when the devices first went on sale, it’s a little different: the iPhone still has several months left to catch up. Still, close!)

Maybe having an iPhone makes time go faster?

Also: What Should Apple Do With The iPod?