The ultimate hub, Chieco figured, would be a spaceship. You could leave the spaceship in a smaller vessel, a pod, but you'd have to return to the mother ship to refuel and get food. Then Chieco was shown a prototype iPod, with its stark white plastic front.

The ultimate hub, Chieco figured, would be a spaceship. You could leave the spaceship in a smaller vessel, a pod, but you'd have to return to the mother ship to refuel and get food. Then Chieco was shown a prototype iPod, with its stark white plastic front.

...about once a week some character spots the fact that HAL is one letter ahead of IBM, and promptly assumes that Stanley and I were taking a crack at the estimable institution ... As it happened, IBM had given us a good deal of help, so we were quite embarrassed by this, and would have changed the name had we spotted the coincidence.