Question: Since what time has the iPod manufacturer remained profitable?

full_context: Document 1: Macintosh: From 2001 to 2008, Mac sales increased continuously on an annual basis. Apple reported worldwide sales of 3.36 million Macs during the 2009 holiday season. As of Mid-2011, the Macintosh continues to enjoy rapid market share increase in the US, growing from 7.3% of all computer shipments in 2010 to 9.3% in 2011. According to IDC's quarterly PC tracker, globally, in 3rd quarter of 2014, Apple's PC market share increased 5.7 percent year over year, with record sales of 5.5 million units. Apple now sits in the number five spot, with a global market share of about 6% during 2014, behind Lenovo, HP, Dell and Acer.
Document 2: Macintosh: Statistics from late 2003 indicate that Apple had 2.06 percent of the desktop share in the United States that had increased to 2.88 percent by Q4 2004. As of October 2006, research firms IDC and Gartner reported that Apple's market share in the U.S. had increased to about 6 percent. Figures from December 2006, showing a market share around 6 percent (IDC) and 6.1 percent (Gartner) are based on a more than 30 percent increase in unit sale from 2005 to 2006. The installed base of Mac computers is hard to determine, with numbers ranging from 5% (estimated in 2009) to 16% (estimated in 2005).
Document 3: Macintosh: Apple has generally dominated the premium PC market, having a 91 percent market share for PCs priced at more than $1,000 in 2009, according to NPD. The Macintosh took 45 percent of operating profits in the PC industry during Q4 2012, compared to 13 percent for Dell, seven percent for Hewlett Packard, six percent for Lenovo and Asus, and one percent for Acer. While sales of the Macintosh have largely held steady, in comparison to Apple's sales of the iPhone and iPad which increased significantly during the 2010s, Macintosh computers still enjoy high margins on a per unit basis, with the majority being their MacBooks that are focused on the ultraportable niche that is the most profitable and only growing segment of PCs. It also helped that the Macintosh lineup is simple, updated on a yearly schedule, and consistent across both Apple retail stores, and authorized resellers where they have a special "store within a store" section to distinguish them from Windows PCs. In contrast, Windows PC manufacturers generally have a wide range of offerings, selling only a portion through retail with a full selection on the web, and often with limited-time or region-specific models. The Macintosh ranked third on the "list of intended brands for desktop purchases" for the 2011 holiday season, then moved up to second in 2012 by displacing Hewlett Packard, and in 2013 took the top spot ahead of Dell.
Document 4: IPod: Though the iPod was released in 2001, its price and Mac-only compatibility caused sales to be relatively slow until 2004. The iPod line came from Apple's "digital hub" category, when the company began creating software for the growing market of personal digital devices. Digital cameras, camcorders and organizers had well-established mainstream markets, but the company found existing digital music players "big and clunky or small and useless" with user interfaces that were "unbelievably awful," so Apple decided to develop its own. As ordered by CEO Steve Jobs, Apple's hardware engineering chief Jon Rubinstein assembled a team of engineers to design the iPod line, including hardware engineers Tony Fadell and Michael Dhuey, and design engineer Sir Jonathan Ive. Rubinstein had already discovered the Toshiba disk drive when meeting with an Apple supplier in Japan, and purchased the rights to it for Apple, and had also already worked out how the screen, battery, and other key elements would work. The aesthetic was inspired by the 1958 Braun T3 transistor radio designed by Dieter Rams, while the wheel based user interface was prompted by Bang & Olufsen's BeoCom 6000 telephone. The product ("the Walkman of the twenty-first century" ) was developed in less than one year and unveiled on October 23, 2001. Jobs announced it as a Mac-compatible product with a 5 GB hard drive that put "1,000 songs in your pocket."
Document 5: IPod: The iPod is a line of portable media players and multi-purpose pocket computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first line was released on October 23, 2001, about 8½ months after iTunes (Macintosh version) was released. The most recent iPod redesigns were announced on July 15, 2015. There are three current versions of the iPod: the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle, the compact iPod Nano and the touchscreen iPod Touch.
Document 6: IPod Shuffle: The iPod Shuffle (stylized and marketed as iPod shuffle) is a digital audio player designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It was the smallest model in Apple's iPod family, and was the first iPod to use flash memory. The first model was announced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 11, 2005; the fourth - and final - generation models were introduced on September 1, 2010. The iPod Shuffle was discontinued by Apple on July 27, 2017.
Document 7: IPod: The iPod is a line of portable media players and multi-purpose pocket computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about ​ 8 ⁄ months after the Macintosh version of iTunes was released. As of July 27, 2017, only the iPod Touch remains in production.
Document 8: Macintosh: The sales breakdown of the Macintosh have seen sales of desktop Macs stayed mostly constant while being surpassed by that of Mac notebooks whose sales rate has grown considerably; seven out of ten Macs sold were laptops in 2009, a ratio projected to rise to three out of four by 2010. The change in sales of form factors is due to the desktop iMac moving from affordable (iMac G3) to upscale (iMac G4) and subsequent releases are considered premium all-in-ones. By contrast the MSRP of the MacBook laptop lines have dropped through successive generations such that the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro constitute the lowest price of entry to a Mac, with the exception of the even more inexpensive Mac Mini (the only sub-$1000 offering from Apple, albeit without a monitor and keyboard), not surprisingly the MacBooks are the top-selling form factors of the Macintosh platform today. The use of Intel microprocessors has helped Macs more directly compete with their Windows counterparts on price and performance, and by the 2010s Apple was receiving Intel's latest CPUs first before other PC manufacturers.
Document 9: IPod: In mid-2015, a new model of the iPod Touch was announced by Apple, and was officially released on the Apple store on July 15, 2015. The sixth generation iPod Touch includes a wide variety of spec improvements such as the upgraded A8 processor and higher-quality screen. The core is over 5 times faster than previous models and is built to be roughly on par with the iPhone 5S. It is available in 5 different colors: Space grey, pink, gold, silver and Product (red).
Document 10: Macintosh: Historically, Mac OS X enjoyed a near-absence of the types of malware and spyware that affect Microsoft Windows users. Mac OS X has a smaller usage share compared to Microsoft Windows (roughly 5% and 92%, respectively), but it also has traditionally more secure UNIX roots. Worms, as well as potential vulnerabilities, were noted in February 2006, which led some industry analysts and anti-virus companies to issue warnings that Apple's Mac OS X is not immune to malware. Increasing market share coincided with additional reports of a variety of attacks. Apple releases security updates for its software. In early 2011, Mac OS X experienced a large increase in malware attacks, and malware such as Mac Defender, MacProtector, and MacGuard were seen as an increasing problem for Mac users. At first, the malware installer required the user to enter the administrative password, but later versions were able to install without user input. Initially, Apple support staff were instructed not to assist in the removal of the malware or admit the existence of the malware issue, but as the malware spread, a support document was issued. Apple announced an OS X update to fix the problem. An estimated 100,000 users were affected.
Document 11: Macintosh: By March 2011, the market share of OS X in North America had increased to slightly over 14%. Whether the size of the Mac's market share and installed base is relevant, and to whom, is a hotly debated issue. Industry pundits have often called attention to the Mac's relatively small market share to predict Apple's impending doom, particularly in the early and mid-1990s when the company's future seemed bleakest. Others argue that market share is the wrong way to judge the Mac's success. Apple has positioned the Mac as a higher-end personal computer, and so it may be misleading to compare it to a budget PC. Because the overall market for personal computers has grown rapidly, the Mac's increasing sales numbers are effectively swamped by the industry's expanding sales volume as a whole. Apple's small market share, then, gives the impression that fewer people are using Macs than did ten years ago, when exactly the opposite is true. Soaring sales of the iPhone and iPad mean that the portion of Apple's profits represented by the Macintosh has declined in 2010, dropping to 24% from 46% two years earlier. Others try to de-emphasize market share, citing that it is rarely brought up in other industries. Regardless of the Mac's market share, Apple has remained profitable since Steve Jobs' return and the company's subsequent reorganization. Notably, a report published in the first quarter of 2008 found that Apple had a 14% market share in the personal computer market in the US, including 66% of all computers over $1,000. Market research indicates that Apple draws its customer base from a higher-income demographic than the mainstream personal computer market.
Document 12: Macintosh: The Macintosh, however, was expensive, which hindered its ability to be competitive in a market already dominated by the Commodore 64 for consumers, as well as the IBM Personal Computer and its accompanying clone market for businesses. Macintosh systems still found success in education and desktop publishing and kept Apple as the second-largest PC manufacturer for the next decade. In the 1990s, improvements in the rival Wintel platform, notably with the introduction of Windows 3.0, then Windows 95, gradually took market share from the more expensive Macintosh systems. The performance advantage of 68000-based Macintosh systems was eroded by Intel's Pentium, and in 1994 Apple was relegated to third place as Compaq became the top PC manufacturer. Even after a transition to the superior PowerPC-based Power Macintosh (later renamed the PowerMac, in line with the PowerBook series) line in 1994, the falling prices of commodity PC components and the release of Windows 95 saw the Macintosh user base decline.
Document 13: Macintosh: In recent years, Apple has seen a significant boost in sales of Macs. This has been attributed, in part, to the success of the iPod and the iPhone, a halo effect whereby satisfied iPod or iPhone owners purchase more Apple products, and Apple has since capitalized on that with the iCloud cloud service that allows users to seamlessly sync data between these devices and Macs. Nonetheless, like other personal computer manufacturers, the Macintosh lines have been hurt by consumer trend towards smartphones and tablet computers (particularly Apple's own iPhone and iPad, respectively) as the computing devices of choice among consumers.
Document 14: IPod: Before the release of iOS 5, the iPod branding was used for the media player included with the iPhone and iPad, a combination of the Music and Videos apps on the iPod Touch. As of iOS 5, separate apps named "Music" and "Videos" are standardized across all iOS-powered products. While the iPhone and iPad have essentially the same media player capabilities as the iPod line, they are generally treated as separate products. During the middle of 2010, iPhone sales overtook those of the iPod.
Document 15: IPod Touch (6th generation): The sixth - generation iPod Touch (stylized and marketed as the iPod touch, and colloquially known as the iPod touch 6G, iPod touch 6, or iPod touch (2015)) is a multipurpose pocket computer designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen - based user interface. It is the successor to the iPod Touch (5th generation), becoming the first major update to the iPod lineup in more than two and a half years. It was released on the online Apple Store on July 15, 2015, along with a new iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle, which received minor upgrades.
ground_truth: Steve Jobs' return
sub_queries: What company manufactures the iPod? Answer: Apple
Apple has remained profitable since what time? Answer: Steve Jobs' return