Eleven years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced iTunes and Apple’s digital hub strategy to the faithful at Macworld San Francisco. The app itself wasn’t created in Cupertino, but was purchased essentially whole as SoundJam from Casaday and Greene and the developers behind it came to work at Apple.

SoundJam MP, developed by Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid, was renamed iTunes when Apple purchased it in 2000. Robbin, Kincaid, and Dave Heller moved to Apple as part of the acquisition, where they continue to work today as the software’s original developers. They simplified SoundJam’s user interface, added the ability to burn CDs, and removed its recording feature and skin support. On January 9, 2001, iTunes 1.0 was released at Macworld San Francisco. Macintosh users immediately began poking through iTunes’s resource fork, where they discovered numerous strings and other resources that indicated iTunes was a re-engineered SoundJam MP — Wikipedia

Initially, iTunes ran only on the Mac and specifically in Classic, not OS X. Eventually, however, iTunes became so much more, embodying a music, movie, book, audiobook, education and app store fronts, as well as the management hub for generations of revolutionary devices starting with the iPod.

As bloated and overburdened as it has become, iTunes is still brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

So, happy birthday, iTunes, and thanks, Steve…