And you thought that Gates was a monopolistic bastard who stole his best ideas for Windows from Apple. Well, turns out that everyones blue eyed boy, Jobs did no better when he had a chance. Oh sure, it was all legal and they were well within his right, but theres a thing called as conscience folks and thats what keeps this world going.

the iPod was actually invented by a Briton named Kane Kramer who is so hard up for cash right now that he had to sell his house and move into rented accomodation. He invented the iPod when he was just 15 years old.

His invention, called the IXI, stored only 3.5 minutes of music on to a chip ?but Mr Kramer rightly believed its capacity would improve. His sketches at the time showed a credit-card-sized player with a rectangular screen and a central menu button to scroll through a selection of music tracks ?very similar to the iPod.

He took out a worldwide patent and set up a company to develop the idea. But in 1988, after a boardroom split, he was unable to raise the ?0,000 needed to renew patents across 120 countries and the technology became public property.

Apple has only now agreed that they used his designs to create the iPod. If you believe that it was a change of heart on Apples part, then have no such doubts. Its because they were being sued by another firm with regards to the iPods designs. At this point, they decided their best bet was to acknowledge Kramer and hire him as a consultant. They paid him a pittance for that of course and so far have not agreed to any compensation.

Legally speaking, they are not bound to either. Just to keep things in perspective ; a staggering 163 million iPods have been sold since the device was launched by Apple in 2001. Every minute, another 100 are snapped up worldwide, earning Apple an estimated ?.5billion last Christmas alone.

Mr. Kramer says that he cannot afford to buy an iPod today.

He is however working on a new device. One that shall record telephone calls and wirelessly email them over to you within 30 seconds. They would be extremely useful in business deals and act as a low cost third party witness.

Source