A Brief History Of iPod

iPod is a digital mp3 / mp4 player developed andFast Forward; and Skip Backwards/ Fast Reverse. An
marketed by Apple Inc., an American consumeradditional Hold button is provided for accidental button
electronics multinational corporation. During theirpressing prevention, and it can reset the iPod if it has
research, Apple found that in comparison to availablefrozen or crashed. Functions such as volume control,
camcorders, digital cameras, and organizers; digitalscrolling are handled by the usage of the rotational click
music players recorded poor sales, primarily due towheel. Later models have some minor changes in the
their awful user interfaces. Apple wanted to dofunctions of the buttons but overall the number of
something about it and so Jon Rubinstein, Apple'sbuttons has remained at five.
hardware engineering chief brought together a teamTo market this path-breaking mp3 / mp4 player, they
comprising of Tony Fadell (who dreamed of a hardneeded a suitable futuristic name and so they hired a
disk based music player), Michael Dhuey (hardwarefreelance copywriter, Vinnie Chieco, and other writers
engineer), Jonathan Ive (design engineer), and Stan Ngto give a name. Inspired by the movie 2001: A Space
(marketing manager). In less than a year, they designedOdyssey and the dialogue "Open the pod bay door,
a hard disk based music player, that had a 5 GB hardHal!" with reference to the context of the Discovery
drive and capable of storing 1000 songs.One spaceship and its white EVA Pods, Vinnie Chieco
Apple's iTunes software is utilized to operate the iPodproposed the name of the product as iPod. The
(m3 / mp4 player). The software is compatible with allmanagement of Apple accepted the proposed name
Mac systems. The operating system is stored on itsand on 23 October 2001, the iPod was officially
hard disk. A boot loader program is contained in alaunched. The rest they say is history.
NOR flash ROM chip (either 1 MB or 512 KB) whichTo enable customers to access songs of their choice,
instructs the device to load the operating system fromApple opened up an online media store The iTunes
the hard disk. The iPod has a 32 MB of RAM, aStore on 29 April 2003, where individual songs could
portion of which is used to hold the operating systembe downloaded at prices less than a U.S. dollar per
from firmware, and the rest is used to cache songssong. The purchased songs can be played only on
from the hard disk. Apple also invented a technologyiPods. Subsequent versions of this iPod (mp3 / mp4
whereby the hard disk of iPod could spin up once andplayer) also featured video capabilities, and thus iTunes
about 30 MB of upcoming songs could be cached intoStore started selling short videos from 12 October
the RAM. This did not require the hard disk to spin up2005. From 12 September 2006, full-length movies
for every song and thereby saved battery power.were also available at the iTunes Store.iPods have
Apple also introduced a Windows version of iPod, at acome a long way from their inception, and now the
later stage.latest fifth generation iPods possess multimedia
The audio files that iPod (mp3 / mp4 player) supportscapabilities and are available in both Mac OS and
are MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, WAV,Windows OS versions. Usually, if a new iPod is
Audible audiobook, and Apple Lossless audio fileplugged into a Mac OS computer, then the hard disk of
formats. MIDI and WMA files can be played only afterthis mp3 / mp4 player is formatted as per the HFS+
a convertor accomplishes conversion, for non-Digitalfile format, and if it plugged into a Windows OS
Rights Management (DRM). Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, andcomputer, it is formatted as per the FAT32 file format.
other open-source audio formats are not supported atFrom being a digital music player, the iPod has now
all.transformed into a digital media player.
Apple wanted an extremely user friendly interface andRoberto Sedycias IT Consultant
thus adopted the minimalist interface, which featuresThis article is under GNU FDL license and can be
only five essential buttons, namely, Menu (to accessdistributed without any previous authorization from the
functions and to toggle the backlight); Center (for menuauthor. However the author´s name and all the
item selection); Play/ Pause (this also works as an offURL´s (links) mentioned in the article and
switch when held for few seconds); Skip Forward/biography must be kept.