Ipod Tips and Accessories - Ipod - How To Get A Free Radar Detector In 3 Easy Steps...

Look around, the iPod is changing the world. Before Apple launched the iPod, MP3 players were produced by small companies with limited budgets and none of them had invested in providing music. The handheld music market was being ignored by large electronics companies. Since the launch of the iPod, the entire industry has seen accelerated growth. While it is but 1/10 the size of the cell phone market, the iPod has everybody's attention.

Tony Fadell, is the visionary that brought the iPod to life. He wanted to deliver a small player that had plenty of capacity and was easy to load and use. In addition to the player, he wanted to give users an easy way to download legal, high quality music.

Tony tried a couple of obvious companies and was turned down. He eventually talked to Apple, a long shot because they had sworn off consumer electronics years earlier. To his surprise, Apple was interested. He was hired in early 2001 formed a team and given a deadline of one year to release a product.

Fadell was wanted to hedge his bet, so he looked around for an existing player in development to use as the basis of the first Apple player. PortalPlayer, a new company, was helping other companies to develop MP3 players. Several of the prototypes that PortalPlayer had been working on were delivered to Fadell's group at Apple, but they were still pretty primative.

Steve Jobs took a very active role in the project, which was rare at the time. It reassured the leaders in the group that the project would not be axed immediately and kept developmet on track.

The first iPods used 5 GB Toshiba hard drives that were the size of a quarter, a computer chip, an operating system, a display, and the most recognizable feature of the device - the scroll wheel. For the first time you could spin a wheel to scroll through a list of songs, instead of stepping through them one at a time.

In early October of 2001 Apple began hyping the iPod's release. Up to that point it was a well guarded secret. The iPod was announced to the world from a rented auditorium in Cupertino, near Apple's corporate campus. The audience - and the rest of the computer industry - was shocked by the product. No one grasped the importance of the small device to Apple and the music industry in general until much later. Many reacted to the product with hostility, with criticisms that ranged from its $400 price to the scroll wheel and its lack of Windows compatibility.

A month later, the iPod was released in Europe to an enthusiastic reception. As more units sold, an entire ecosystem began to form around the device, as new accessories and software products were released.

Early on a popular utility emerged that allowed users to sync an iPod with a Windows PC. Apple took note and made the next version of the iPod with the PC using MusicMatch. Apple also included up to 20 GB of storage and PIM software on the iPod. The original spinning scroll wheel was eventually replaced by a solid state scroll wheel similar to a notebook's touchpad.

Another hardware revision came for the iPod in its third generation. In a packed hall, Steve Jobs announced the new iPod would have no mechanical buttons. The function buttons were moved and changed to solid state, like the scroll wheel.

The new version also sported a new FireWire and USB 2.0 connector that made it easier for PC users to connect to their iPods.

Probably the most important change to the iPod was the fulfillment of Tony Fadell's vision of solving all of the issues that stood in the way of a sclable business. The iTunes Music Store (iTMS) was announced in the summer of 2003 and opened days later. Now, the iPod had a fully legal supply of music. The store made it easier for Apple to cut prices.

Althogh the iPod has given Apple new life, it has had a few problems to overcome. A class action suit was brought against the company because of the high rate of battery failures. Apple eventually agreed to replace the iPod's battery, even if it was out of warranty.

During the 2004 Macworld Expo keynote address, Steve Jobs announced that there would be a new member of the iPod family, the iPod mini.

The mini was based on a new Hitachi drive with a capacity of 4 GB. Better yet, the plane jane color was dropped and the mini was available in five different colors. Unfortunately for the competition, the mini cost much less than many flash-based players available at the time, and it had a higher capacity.

Also at the Expo, Apple released a retouched 1984 ad that featured the runner wearing the signature white earbuds of the iPod.

The iPod was a huge hit. Apple had sold millions of devices and was raking in money although barely making a profit from iTunes. Going ultra-shiek, BMW outfitted all of its vehicles with an iPod interface that allows BMW owners to play music over the BMW's sound system and control their iPod through the steering wheel.

In September 2004, the iPod watcher’s rumor mill began to hum. The first was that Apple was stockpiling small, color LCD panels. The entire industry speculated that Apple would release a PDA or video iPod. The second was based on a large quantity flash memory purchase made by Apple. Both rumors proved telling - Apple released the color iPod photo in November - and the iPod shuffle in January 2005.

The iPod photo was identical to an ordinary iPod, but it has a larger battery and hard drive as well as a color display. Users can browse photo albums. It also shows album covers for songs while they played.

During 2005, the iPod photo name was dropped as all full-sized iPods gained color screens. These were the last iPods to support FireWire.

Apple released its first flash based player on January 11, 2005. The new player was the size of a stick of gum and cost $99. This made it a great value among MP3 players, with most comparably priced players providing half the capacity.

In order to keep the price of the device down, Apple scrapped the scroll wheel and LCD display. Without that interface, Apple hyped the device's shuffle mode. The shuffle was also the first iPod not to support FireWire, an Apple interface standard.

Recently Apple announced record profits, largely due to the iPod. They also announced that over 28 million devices had been sold, giving Apple a 75% market share for digital music players. Apple has had its best quarter since it peaked 1995.

The two newest iPods are also the ones that are the most different from their predecessors. They are both powered my dual ARM processors (Apple owns shares in ARM, the company that licenses the ARM CPU design to companies like Intel or TI) and a brand new version of PortalPlayer, the music player.

The iPod nano was designed as the successor to the iPod mini in a little less than a year, and it's tiny. It was designed to mimic the look of hard drive-based players, but it is quite different on the inside. It utilizes a high capacity flash memory chip for its file storage, and it has a brand new scroll wheel.

Introduced only weeks later, the fifth generation iPod might be the most significant update so far for for Apple. The new iPod is capable of playing videos purchased online.

The new CEO of Disney, has agreed to allow Apple to sell copies of ABC programming over iTunes. Incase your wondering, the new 5G iPod is 30% thinner than previous models, but the other dimensions are the same.

Both the nano and video-enabled iPod are equipped with more features and software, making PDA devices look like the next threatened electronic species. These newer devices are equipped with calendar and address book viewers, and they also feature a suite of games, and a screen saver.

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