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That poor bloke there invented the concept of iPod back in 1979. He's British, although his alarmingly American-sounding name - Kane Kramer - suggests otherwise. Kane lives in Hitchin.
Mr Kramer came up with the idea of a portable music player, called the IXI, when he was 23. However, technology wasn't ready for this in 1979. Kramer's player could only store 3.5 minutes of music on its memory chip and no one wanted to back it. After years of trying to get it made, Kramer eventually gave up and the patents expired in 1988. Allowing anyone to nick the idea and not pay poor Kramer a penny.
Which is precisely what Apple did.
Things went wrong for Apple, though, when tech firm Burst sued it over alleged copyright infringements contained in the iPod and iTunes systems. To help defend itself, Apple rather brazenly called up Kane out of the blue and flew him out to California to tell the judges that the portable player was his invention, and that Apple hadn't copied Burst - it had in fact copied Kramer.
Kramer was paid a consultancy fee for saving Apple millions upon millions, but that's all the money he's seen from his invention.
"Apple did give me one but it broke down after eight months," is his only opinion of the Apple device. It is a very sad story, especially as Kane's not exactly well off these days, after having to close his furniture business last year.
Poor sod!!!That poor bloke there invented the concept of iPod back in 1979. He's British, although his alarmingly American-sounding name - Kane Kramer - suggests otherwise. Kane lives in Hitchin.
Mr Kramer came up with the idea of a portable music player, called the IXI, when he was 23. However, technology wasn't ready for this in 1979. Kramer's player could only store 3.5 minutes of music on its memory chip and no one wanted to back it. After years of trying to get it made, Kramer eventually gave up and the patents expired in 1988. Allowing anyone to nick the idea and not pay poor Kramer a penny.
Which is precisely what Apple did.
Things went wrong for Apple, though, when tech firm Burst sued it over alleged copyright infringements contained in the iPod and iTunes systems. To help defend itself, Apple rather brazenly called up Kane out of the blue and flew him out to California to tell the judges that the portable player was his invention, and that Apple hadn't copied Burst - it had in fact copied Kramer.
Kramer was paid a consultancy fee for saving Apple millions upon millions, but that's all the money he's seen from his invention.
"Apple did give me one but it broke down after eight months," is his only opinion of the Apple device. It is a very sad story, especially as Kane's not exactly well off these days, after having to close his furniture business last year.
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