History and design

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

iPod came from Apple's digital hub strategy, when the company began creating software for the growing market of digital devices being purchased by consumers. 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",[2] so Apple decided to develop its own. Apple's hardware engineering chief, Jon Rubinstein, assembled a team of engineers to design it, including Tony Fadell, hardware engineer Michael Dhuey, and design engineer Jonathan Ive, with Stan Ng as the marketing manager. The product was developed in less than a year and unveiled on 23 October 2001. CEO Steve Jobs announced it as a Mac-compatible product with a 5 GB hard drive that put "1000 songs in your pocket."

Uncharacteristically, Apple did not develop iPod's software entirely in-house. Apple instead used PortalPlayer's reference platform which was based on 2 ARM cores. The platform had rudimentary software running on a commercial microkernel embedded operating system. PortalPlayer had previously been working on an IBM-branded MP3 player with Bluetooth headphones. Apple contracted another company, Pixo, to help design and implement the user interface, under the direct supervision of Steve Jobs.[2] Once established, Apple continued to refine the software's look and feel. Starting with the iPod mini, the Chicago font was replaced with Espy Sans. Later iPods switched fonts again to Podium Sans — a font similar to Apple's corporate font Myriad. iPods with color displays then adopted some Mac OS X themes like Aqua progress bars, and brushed metal in the lock interface.

The name iPod was proposed by Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter, who (with others) was called by Apple to figure out how to introduce the new player to the public. After Chieco saw a prototype, he thought of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the phrase "Open the pod bay door, Hal!", which refers to the white EVA Pods of the Discovery One spaceship. Apple had previously registered the name "iPod" for Internet kiosks, but never put it to use.

iPod

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple and launched in October 2001. Devices in the iPod range are primarily digital audio players, designed around a central click wheel — with exception to the iPod Shuffle, which uses buttons because of its size. As of October 2005, the line-up consists of the video-capable fifth generation iPod, the smaller iPod nano, and the display-less iPod shuffle. The full-sized model stores media on an internal hard drive, while the smaller iPod nano and iPod shuffle use flash memory. Like many digital music players, iPods can also serve as external data storage devices. In January 2007, Apple announced the iPhone, a device that combined the features of the video-capable iPod with mobile phone and mobile Internet capabilities.

Apple's iTunes software is used to transfer music to the devices. As a free jukebox application, iTunes stores an entire music library on the user's computer and can play, burn, and rip music from a CD. It can also transfer photos, videos, games, and calendars to the models that support them.

Apple focused its development on the iPod's unique user interface and its ease of use, rather than on technical capability. As of October 2004, the iPod is the world's best-selling range of digital audio players and its worldwide mainstream adoption made it one of the most popular consumer brands. Some of Apple's design choices and proprietary actions have, however, led to criticism and legal battles.

On Monday, April 9, 2007, Apple announced that over 100 million iPods had been sold worldwide.This makes the iPod the best-selling music player in history.