Natasha Vargas-Cooper did a great job pulling together a Reddit-unearthed MacRumors thread from the day the iPod was released, a video of Steve Jobs pitching the iPod at a music event back in 2001, and the very first iPod commercial.

This is incredibly entertaining. The comments on the MacRumors thread are just awash with prescient comments like:

All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field™ is starting to warp Steve’s mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off.

Delicious!

The iPod commercial is embedded below. Remarkable how much Apple’s advertising changed. This ad is effective, but it feels almost amateurish when compared to the commercials that would appear once the iPod gained some traction.