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| iPod |
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A
family of extremely popular digital music players from Apple
introduced in 2001 for the Mac and in 2002 for Windows. iPods
were noted for their user interface that featured a circular
scroll wheel, which later became touch sensitive and clickable.
Connection to the computer is via FireWire
or USB, which charges the iPod's batteries even while downloading. |
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By
the fall of 2005, Apple was offering the following units below.
The disk-based Mini, which was launched in early 2004, was
superseded by the flash-based Nano in the fall of 2005. Color
screens, which were available first on a special iPod Photo
model, were retrofitted to the regular iPod in 2005. |
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| iPod |
20GB disk |
5,000 |
2" color |
| iPod U2* |
20GB disk |
5,000 |
2" color |
| iPod |
60GB disk |
15,000 |
2" color |
| iPod Photo** |
60GB disk |
15,000 |
2" color |
| iPod Mini** |
4GB disk |
1,000 |
1.7" mono |
| iPod Mini** |
6GB disk |
1,500 |
1.7" mono |
| iPod Nano |
2GB flash |
500 |
1.5" color |
| iPod Nano |
4GB flash |
1,000 |
1.5" color |
| iPod Shuffle |
512MB flash |
125 |
none |
| iPod Shuffle |
1GB flash |
250 |
none |
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* = black with red
click wheel and signatures of all U2 band members on
back of case |
| ** = obsolete |
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iPods
store and play songs in MP3, AIFF, WAV and Apple Lossless
file formats as well as its featured AAC file format. AAC
files incorporate copyright protection, which is managed by
Apple's iTunes jukebox software, and songs are for sale at
the iTunes online music store. AAC files are widely known
to offer better sound than MP3s, and the combination of sound
quality, sleek design and slick user interface made the iPod
quite a hit. A whole industry has grown around it.
iTunes software also lets you rip files from
CDs into the space-saving MP3 or AAC formats. However, for
audiophiles with bigger iPods, the CD-quality Apple Lossless
format is an option. In order to maintain the highest quality,
Apple Lossless compresses CD audio only to 50% of its original
size (MP3s compress to 10% of original). |
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The
bigger iPods also include an address book, calendar and games,
and vendors have developed a variety of Internet search programs
and other applications for the device. See iPod compatible,
car podding, MP3, AAC and FairPlay. |
Within
a couple years, the iPod became one of the hottest consumer
electronics devices on the market and created its own industry.
In 2004, this rural Vermont family was delighted to show us
their "iPoddery." On the right is the first iPod
tabletop docking station and speaker system, from Bose. The
smaller Altec Lansing unit is portable and lets our young
hero carry his own iPod boom box. |
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What
present did a 13-year-old girl want for her birthday in 2004?
An iPod Mini... of course. Powder blue, if you please. |
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iPod
is a brand of portable digital mp3 audio players designed
and marketed by Apple Computer. (Hewlett-Packard also markets
the product under the name Apple iPod + HP, but announced
on July 29 2005 they would stop reselling it effective September
2005, when existing stock is projected to be depleted). Devices
in the iPod family offer a simple user interface designed
around a central scroll wheel. Most iPod models store media
on a built-in hard drive, while the smaller iPod nano and
iPod shuffle use flash memory. Like most digital audio players,
an iPod can serve as an external data storage device when
connected to a computer. |
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Apple
Computer refers to the player and technology as iPod, without
use of the definite article the. Apple's web site reflects
this usage (for example, "iPod incorporates the same
touch-sensitive Apple Click Wheel that debuted on iPod mini"),
which resembles Apple's use of the word iMac. The company
has other products with a lowercase "i" in front
of the name. These include: iSight, iChat, iTunes, iDVD, and
iBook. When Apple first introduced the iMac, the '"i"
stood for internet, meaning that the iMac shipped with everything
you would need for a connection, but it stuck, as it seems
to bring good luck to the sales of Apple products. Recently,
some media have started referring to the generation primarily
born in the late 1980s, and which in particular has made the
iPod popular, as the iGeneration, suggesting that the "i"
family of products may have a far-reaching cultural impact. |
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Tony
Fadell first conceived of iPod outside Apple. When he demonstrated
his idea to Apple, the company hired him as an independent
contractor to bring his project to the market, putting him
in charge of assembling the team that developed the first
two generations of the device. Apple's Industrial Design Group,
working under the direction of Jonathan Ive designed the subsequent
incarnations.
Apple originally released iPod on October
23, 2001 as a Mac-compatible product, but the company later
added Windows compatibility. As of October 2004, iPod dominated
digital music player sales in the United States, with over
90% of the market for hard-drive-based players and over 70%
of the market for all types of players. iPod has sold at a
tremendous rate, moving close to twenty million units in a
total of four years. Apple has posited that the iPod has a
"halo effect", encouraging users of non-Apple products
to switch to other Apple products, such as to Macintosh computers.
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In
March 2005, Apple Computer faced two pending lawsuits claiming
patent infringement by the iPod and its associated technologies:
Advanced Audio Devices claimed the iPod breached their patent
on a "Music jukebox" and Hong Kong-based IP portfolio
company Pat-rights filed suit on behalf of inventor Keung
Tse Ho, claiming that Apple's FairPlay technology breached
their patent on " Protection of software against unauthorized
use". [1]Apple's application to the United States
Patent and Trademark Office for a patent on "rotational
user inputs", as used in the iPod's interface, received
a third "non-final rejection" (NFR) in August 2005.
Also in August 2005, Creative Technology,
one of Apple's main rivals in the MP3 player market, announced
that it too held a patent on part of the music selection interface
used by the iPod (U.S. Patent No. 6,928,433: "Automatic
hierarchical categorization of music by metadata", which
Creative dubbed the 'Zen Patent', granted on 9 August 2005).
[2]
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Jeff
Robbin headed the iPod firmware team at Apple. His team integrated
the core firmware from PortalPlayer with the user interface
library developed by Pixo. (The founder of Pixo had worked
on the Apple Newton, a personal digital assistant formerly
produced by Apple.) The Pixo libraries provide the user interface,
though iPod photo has incorporated some visual elements from
Mac OS X, such as the animated Aqua style progress bar. Until
the release of iPod mini, the user interface of all iPods
used "Chicago", the font used on the original Macintosh
computer from 1984. iPod mini uses the "Espy Sans"
font (previously seen in eWorld, the Newton, and Copland),
while the color fourth generation iPod (previously known as
iPod photo) uses Myriad Pro, Apple's corporate typeface. |
| This photograph
shows the internal view of a third-generation iPod: |
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| From left to
right: |
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An
intact third-generation iPod. |
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The front of
the iPod casing (facedown). The lighter green circuit
board controls the iPod (and leaves room for the battery
to fit beside it), and the darker green board beneath
it controls the touch-scroll wheel and the buttons.
Note three connectors: the battery connects in the lower-right
corner; the hard drive connector lies to the left of
the black area in the lower left; and the headphone
jack, wired remote control jack, and Hold switch (all
located on the top of the iPod) connect as a single
plug in the top right. |
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The hard drive,
surrounded by a layer of soft rubber which also extends
beneath it to insulate it from the circuit board. The
layer of rubber also helps to protect a spinning hard
drive from shock damage while the owner of the iPod
moves about. |
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The rear of
the iPod. Wires connect the ports and switch on the
top of the case to a small plug. A hole on the bottom
of the case allows access to the dock connector port
on the circuit board. |
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| The unit's case
snaps together, with no screws or glue involved (though the
4G has some glue holding the battery in place). The plastic
front of the case has clips which lock under a ridge inside
the rim of the metal case back. A servicer can pry the iPod
open by carefully inserting a small non-metal screwdriver to
pull the metal away from the clips. |
| iPod contains
a small internal speaker which generates the scroll-wheel clicks
and alarm clock beep sound, but this internal speaker cannot
play music. |
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| iPods (other
than iPod shuffle) have five buttons: |
| 1. |
'Play/Pause'
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| 2. |
'Menu' (which
backs up one level in the menus)
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| 3. |
'Previous'
(which skips back through tracks in play)
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| 4. |
'Next' (which
skips forward through tracks in play)
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| 5. |
'Select' (the button in the center
of the scroll wheel; this selects a menu or a song to
play).
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(Note
that fourth-generation iPods, the iPod minis, and the iPod
nanos incorporate these buttons into the "click wheel"
scroll wheel.)
A 'Hold' switch also exists on the top of
the unit. Setting this switch to display orange will make
the buttons and scroll wheel unresponsive, so that users do
not activate them accidentally.
Holding down the 'Menu' button for two seconds
will turn off the display's backlight. Holding down the 'Play/Pause'
button for two seconds will turn the unit off.
Fourth generation iPods and second generation
iPod minis also automatically pause playback when headphones
are unplugged from the headphone jack.
If the iPod becomes unresponsive, the user
can force it to reset. On a 3G or earlier iPod, slide the
switch on the top of the unit to 'Hold' then back the other
way, then hold down the 'Menu 'and 'Play/Pause' buttons for
six to ten seconds until the Apple logo appears. On a 4G (click
wheel) iPod, toggle the 'Hold' switch as above, then hold
down the 'Menu' and 'Select' buttons.
Users can place iPod into FireWire Disk Mode,
in which it behaves like a FireWire hard drive without any
of the additional iPod functionality. On a 3G or earlier iPod,
reset it then hold the 'Previous' and 'Next' buttons until
the display reads "Disk Mode". On a click-wheel
iPod, hold 'Select' and 'Play/Pause'. Reset the unit again
to return it to normal functionality.
iPod firmware contains a diagnostic menu.
On a 3G or earlier iPod, reset it then hold 'Previous', 'Next',
and 'Select'; on a click-wheel iPod, hold 'Previous' and 'Select'.
Release the buttons after a few seconds, and the unit will
chirp and briefly show a backwards Apple logo before displaying
the diagnostic menu. Navigate through the menu with the 'Previous'
and 'Next' buttons (not the scroll wheel), and select items
with the 'Select' button. Press 'Play/Pause' to exit a test.
(Apple has never publicly documented the functionality of
the diagnostic menu.)
An iPod unable to start (due to either a firmware or a hardware
problem) displays the "sad
iPod" image , reminiscent of the sad Mac icon of
earlier Macintosh computers.
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