iPhone Info : Technology
The iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Computer. Devices in the iPod family are designed around a central scroll wheel (except for the iPod shuffle) and 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 audio players, iPods can also serve as external data storage devices. Apple chose to focus its development on the iPod's simple user interface and its ease of use, rather than on technical capability.
As of 2006, the lineup consists of the 5th generation iPod that plays videos; the smaller, second generation iPod nano; and the display-less iPod shuffle. These models were updated in 2006.
The bundled software used for transferring music, photos and videos is called iTunes. As a jukebox application, iTunes stores a comprehensive library of music on the user's computer and can play, burn, and rip music from a CD. The most recent versions have photo and video synchronization features. These features open up the possibility of playing back standard definition quality television and movies from the iPod onto a television set. In addition to iTunes others sources of legal television content prepared for iPods include Mobovivo and Google. Many of these services work only in the US, including iTunes.
The iPod came from Apple's digital hub strategy, as the company began creating software for the growing market of digital devices purchased by consumers. While digital cameras, camcorders and organizers had well-established mainstream markets, the company found digital music players lacking in user interface and decided to develop its own.
Tony Fadell, a former Philips executive in the company's Windows CE division, left Philips to create a hard drive based MP3 player and a music service [1]. He founded a company, Fuse, to develop and sell the idea to major media companies. After RealNetworks turned him down, Apple accepted and they began developing the iPod in February 2001, one month after iTunes was released. It was announced to the public on 23 October 2001 as a Mac-compatible product with a 5 GB hard drive that put "1000 songs in your pocket."
Uncharacteristically, Apple decided not to develop the iPod's software in-house. Instead, Apple used a Design Chain and contracted with PortalPlayer, who already had a reference design (based on 2 ARM cores) with rudimentary software running on top of a commercial microkernel embedded operating system. PortalPlayer had been working on an IBM-branded MP3 player with Bluetooth headphones.[1] Apple contracted another company, Pixo, to create and refine the user interface, under the direct supervision of CEO Steve Jobs.
Once established, Apple continued to refine the look-and-feel. Starting with the iPod mini, the Chicago font (once used on early Macintosh computers) was replaced with Espy Sans, which was originally used in eWorld and Copland. The most recent iPods have switched fonts again to Myriad - Apple's new corporate font. The iPods with color displays adopted some Mac OS X themes like Aqua progress bars and brushed metal in the FM tuner and lock interfaces.
