Wondrously white and smooth and with a navigational Click Wheel so touch sensitive, it granted music lovers a sense of magical powers untold.
Because of the sheer numbers of the devices being sold, and Apple's reputation as a forward-thinking company.
In the last part of 2004, Apple sold 4.5 million portable music players.
Last week, legislation was introduced in the House that would charge consumers a fee on the purchase of computers and TVs to fund a nationwide recycling program.
Environmentalists say the real push may come from Europe: New European Union laws ban hazardous materials in all consumer electronics and require companies to take full responsibility for recycling them.
At the same time, US universities, government agencies, and other large purchasers of consumer electronics have started applying pressure to manufacturers to produce more environmentally friendly wares.
So the expectation is that companies will come up with product designs and models to satisfy new requirements.
"This is a very exciting period," says Joanna Underwood, president of Inform, which researches corporate environmental practices.
"It is a time of intense creativity by corporations.
The design is still under research, but a cellphone that begets a sunflower puts the notion of electronic wizardry in new perspective.
If successful, it would represent the paradigm shift that environmentalists hope for.
Ideally, they say, companies would think about not just how to dispose of an MP3 player, or how to build lead-free monitors, but about a product's entire life cycle.
"The European market is driving everything, there's no doubt about it," says Jack Geibig, acting director of the Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies at the University of Tennessee.