It's possible to listen to an iPod almost anywhere.
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If you like to take your music with you while exercising or studying at school, you are probably familiar with Apple's series of iPod devices. Starting out as simple MP3 players, iPods have evolved into multimedia devices that have the ability to play games and video as well.
Early iPod History
The first iPod device was released in October of 2001. Apple included a scroll wheel that allowed users to quickly skip through songs to find the ones they wanted to play. This differed from other MP3 players that had "Skip" buttons for navigating through a playlist one song at a time. The first iPod had a $400 price tag and no compatibility with computers running Windows. As of February 2011, the iPod classic comes with up to 120GB of memory, allowing a user to store about 30,000 songs.
iPod Mini and iPod Shuffle
The iPod mini, a smaller version of the original iPod, was released in 2004. The original iPod mini included four GB of storage space and was priced at $249. The device could be purchased in five different colors: gold, silver, green, pink and blue. A new edition was released in 2005 that featured a longer, eighteen-hour battery life.
The iPod shuffle, released in 2005, was Apple's first flash-based music player. At the time, it was priced at $99, and did not include a screen or scroll wheel. As of February 2011, the latest version of the iPod shuffle audibly announces the name of the current song and artist that is playing.
iPod Nano
The iPod nano was introduced in 2005, and, like the iPod shuffle, the device used flash-based storage. The iPod nano was also very small and thin. The following year, the iPod nano was cased in aluminum to help prevent scratches, and could be purchased with up to eight GB of memory. The device was revamped again in 2007, this time becoming shorter, although just as thin, as its predecessors. The highest-capacity model was priced at $199 for eight GB of storage space.
iPod Touch
In 2007, the iPod touch was released. It greatly resembled the company's iPhone device, with a full touchscreen, video playback and the ability to download and run applications among its features. The device, lacking a scroll wheel or buttons, is simply operated by the touch of a finger. As of February 2011, the iPod touch records video in high definition and can even function as a phone with the included video calling feature Facetime.
References
Photo Credits
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