Ipod History - the Quickest Evolution Ever!

The first iPod was released only 5,5 years ago but thethe 4th Generation iPods was launched. The iPod mini
difference between that one and the one releasedtook the iPod in a whole new direction - small is
earlier in 2006 is really quite astounding as you will nowbeautiful. It was only half the size of the original iPod
see.and because of its compact size the face changed
1st Generation iPodquite dramatically in that the function buttons were
The 1st Generation iPod was launched at the end ofrendered obsolete and everything was controlled by
October 2001 with dimensions to rival the establishedthe scroll wheel. It also had to have a smaller screen.
competition. It stood 4inches high and less than 3inchesThe next step was to make the screen colour and
wide with a weight of around 6ounces. This initial iPodthis emerged with the iPod photo. This model had a
had a 5GB memory which could hold up to 1000larger hard drive and a longer battery life in addition to
songs. It also had a high resolution screen and athe ability to display colour photos and album covers.
revolutionary type of control system - the scroll or clickBy now Apple had pretty much conquered the digital
wheel. However at $400 it was considered a majoraudio device market but their next release proved to
purchase and at this point the software needed to usebe a step towards taking over the flash drive market
the iPod was only available on the Mac.as well. This happened in January 2005 and was
2nd Generation iPodnamed the iPod shuffle. The shuffle was the smallest
The 2nd Generation iPod had the advantage of beingmodel yet and didn't include an LCD screen on the
compatible with PCs through a FireWire cable. Thereface. However it's 512MB memory was at least twice
was also now software for use with Windows whichthe size of its nearest competitor and the fact that it
opened the iPod up to a lot more users. The actualactually shuffled the songs so that the user never
iPod itself changed very little. The scroll wheel becameknew what was coming next and its very low price of
a solid fixture as apposed to a spinning wheel and$99 meant that the little iPod sold just as well as every
there was an extra port for the attachment of aother model before it.
FireWire cable.The last of the 4th Generation iPods entered the
3rd Generation iPodmarket in July 2005 and was the tiniest to date. The
The spring of 2003 saw iPod sales really take off asiPod nano made use of a high capacity flash memory
the 3rd Generation was launched. One of the biggestchip which enabled it to have the considerable
changes to this new model was the ability to link it to amemory of 4GB but still be…well, nano! The
PC with a USB cable; the USB port was a lot morenano had new features as well such as calendars,
common on PCs than the FireWire port and so manyaddress books, world times and games.
more people could successfully use an iPod with their5th Generation iPod
home computer. In addition the 3rd generation iPod hadThe newest iPod is the 5th Generation iPod video. This
a bigger memory (20GB) and solid function buttonshas the capability of playing music videos, TV
below the screen.programmes and films downloaded from the iTunes
At the same time Apple launched the iTunes MusicMusic Store. It has all of the features of the nano but
Store around the world which provided a legal sourceas its full colour screen is bigger the overall dimensions
for 1000s of songs. iPod sales went through the roofare also slightly bigger (not too much though).
and the brand became a household name.As you can see Apple has kept the changes coming
4th Generation iPodand people have carried on buying and there doesn't
However Apple continued to release newer and moreseem to be any evidence to say their latest release is
advanced models and at the end of 2003 the first oftheir last.