Ipod

iPod is a brand of portable digital media player designed and marketed by Apple Computer. Devices in the iPod family provide a simple user interface designed around a central scroll wheel (with the exception of the iPod shuffle). Most iPod models store media on a built-in hard drive, while the smaller iPod shuffle and iPod nano use flash memory. Like most digital audio players, an iPod can serve as an external data storage device when connected to a computer.

Discontinued versions of the iPod include two generations of the popular iPod mini and four generations of the full-sized iPod, all of which had monochrome screens except for the fourth-generation iPod with color screen (previously sold as iPod photo before it replaced the monochrome iPod in the top line). As of January 2006, the lineup consists of the fifth-generation iPod which can play videos, the iPod nano which has a color screen, and the iPod shuffle; all three iterations were released in 2005. The iPod is currently the world's best-selling digital audio player. The bundled software used for uploading music, photos, and videos to the iPod is called iTunes. iTunes is a music jukebox application that stores a comprehensive library of the user's music on his/her computer, as well as being able to play and rip music from a CD. The most recent incarnations of iPod and iTunes have video playing and organization features. Other forms of data can be added to iPod, thus treating it as an external hard drive.

Ipod's from Apple

Name

Apple Computer often refers to the player 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 words Macintosh or iMac. The company has many other products with a lowercase "i" in front of the name, including iSight, iChat, iTunes, iDVD, and iBook. When Apple first introduced the iMac, the "i" stood for internet (as well as a possible tongue-in-cheek reference to Steve Jobs's title with the company at the time, interim CEO, abbreviated iCEO), meaning that the iMac shipped with everything you would need for a connection, but the prefix stuck, as the brand recognition associated with it has positive effects on 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. The iWeb Software which is part of the iLife '06 suite and was released at Macworld Expo in January 2006, is the latest product to be christened with the "i" prefix.

History

Development of the iPod grew out of Apple's digital hub strategy, as the company was creating software applications for the growing number of digital devices being snapped up by consumers. While digital cameras, camcorders and organizers had well-established markets, the company found digital music players lacking in quality and Apple decided to develop its own. Apple's Hardware engineering chief Jon Rubinstein assembled a team of engineers to design and build the first iPod in less than a year, and it was unveiled by CEO Steve Jobs on October 23, 2001 as a Mac-compatible product with a 5GB hard drive that put "1,000 songs in your pocket."

Apple originally released the iPod on October 23, 2001 as a Mac-compatible product. In 2002, Apple released the second-generation iPod in two versions, one for Mac users and one for Windows users. The only difference though was the bundled software, since there was no iTunes for Windows at the time, the Windows iPods came packaged with Musicmatch software. The actual iPods could work with either system (though to work with Windows, they had to use the FAT32 filesystem, Mac iPods could use either the FAT32 or HFS Plus filesystem). In 2003, Apple released third-generation iPods that included a single CD that included a Windows version of the iTunes software along with the Mac version. 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. The iPod has sold at a tremendous rate, now past 42 million units since its release. 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.

Patents and patent disputes

In 2005, Apple Computer faced two 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".

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).

Capabilities

Software

iPods can play MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, Audible audiobook, MPEG-4 and Apple Lossless audio file formats. The fifth-generation iPod can also play .m4v (H.264) and .mp4 (MPEG-4) video file formats. The Windows version of iTunes can transcode non copy-protected WMA files to an iPod supported format. WMA files with copy protection cannot be played in iTunes or be copied to an iPod. Reviewers have criticized the iPod's inability to play some other formats, in particular the Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats. Midis can also be played on iPods, but they first must be converted to the MP3 format by choosing the "advanced" menu on iTunes.

Apple designed the iPod to work with the iTunes media library software, which lets users manage the music libraries on their computers and on their iPods. iTunes can automatically synchronize a user's iPod with specific playlists or with the entire contents of a music library each time an iPod connects to a host computer. Users may also set a rating (out of 5 stars) on any song, and can synchronize that information to an iTunes music library. Apart from iTunes there are also several third-party applications available that can be used to transfer songs to the iPod. iTunes lacks the ability to transfer songs from iPod to computer because of legality issues.

In addition to playing music and storing files, the iPod has limited PDA functionality. Since January 2003, Mac users have been able to synchronize their contacts and schedules from Address Book and iCal to their iPods through iSync. With the 2005 release of iTunes 5.0, Apple integrated contact/schedule syncing into iTunes and added the ability for Windows users to synchronize their contacts and schedules from Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. Although Mozilla Calendar and Mozilla Sunbird use the same iCalendar file format used by iCal and the iPod, there is no way to automatically sync schedules across from these programs. However the files can be manually dragged and dropped into the correct directory on the iPod.

It can also display notes, and hence host simple games and store restaurant information. However, iPod has limitations as a PDA, since users cannot edit this information on the iPod but only on a computer.

iPods (with the exception of the iPod shuffle) also feature games. All iPods (except the shuffle) feature "Brick", a clone of the Breakout arcade game from Atari (originally created by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak) along with three other games: Parachute: a game in which the user controls a turret and attempts to shoot down paratroopers and the helicopters which release them. Parachute is similar to the Apple II game Sabotage by Mark Allen.

Solitaire: a simple card game resembling the Klondike solitaire card game.

Music Quiz: an interactive music quiz featuring the user's own songs. The game plays a portion of a random song and prompts the user to identify it from a list of 5 (or of 4 on the iPod mini). A song drops off the list every few seconds. The faster the users choose the right song, the more points they get. Music Quiz became available through a free firmware update for third generation iPods released in October 2003 and later came standard with the iPod mini and fourth generation iPods. No record is kept of the score, and there is no limit on the amount of songs played; however, the songs repeat after the first 100.

Notes: iPod also has the function to read EBooks through use of the Notes Function. This allows the user to read small text files.

December 2005 saw the release of one the first iPod Game to make use of the iPod's ability to act as a "Sonic Gaming Platform". The game, "Rock and Pop Trivia Quiz" from Coolgorilla takes the listener through 40 narrated questions on well known Rock and Pop artists.

Hardware

Except for iPod shuffle, iPod nano, and fifth-generation iPod, all previous models of iPod offered FireWire connectivity. Apple stopped shipping FireWire cables with iPods in favor of only using Hi-Speed USB (USB 2.0), more than likely a cost-cutting and size-saving measure since many Windows-based PCs do not have FireWire ports. iPods can recharge their internal batteries using either FireWire (all generations) or USB power (only fourth generation and later) while connected to a computer or to an iPod AC power adapter. Both USB-based and FireWire-based power adapters exist. First- and second-generation iPods had a standard FireWire connection port. Newer iPods, iPod minis and iPod nanos use a proprietary 30-pin dock connector to connect the iPod to a computer's FireWire or USB port with a proprietary cable. The iPod shuffle has a built-in USB connector that plugs into a standard USB port for recharging and for data transfer, but a connector for AC charging can be purchased.

The first three generations of iPod used two ARM 7TDMI-derived CPUs running at 90 MHz, while later models have variable speed chips which run at a peak of 80 MHz to save battery life. iPods use 1.8-in (46-mm) ATA hard drives (with a propietary connector) made by Toshiba. The iPod mini uses one-inch hard drives made by Hitachi. The iPod has a 32-MiB flash ROM chip which contains a bootloader, a program that tells the device to load the operating system from another medium (in this case, the hard drive). All iPods, except for the 60GB fifth-generation iPod, have 32 MiB of RAM, a portion of which holds the iPod OS loaded from the firmware and the vast majority of which serves to cache songs loaded from the hard drive. For example, an iPod could spin the hard disk up once and copy about 30 MiB of upcoming songs on a playlist into RAM, thus saving power by not having the drive spin up for each song. (The 60GB fifth-generation iPod holds 64 MiB of RAM, to further extend battery life.)

Earphones

All iPods come with earbud headphones with distinctive white cords, a color chosen to match the design of the original iPod. The white cords have become symbolic of the iPod brand, and advertisements for the devices feature them prominently. Despite the fact that new generations of the iPod now appear in black as well as white, the cords still remain white.

Like most headphones that come bundled with other hardware, the stock white earbuds are fairly low quality, and some users choose to replace them. Users rate the substandard bass response as the most apparent negative characteristic found in the standard headphones. They are also known to develop a clicking noise at volume peaks, due to the membrane being displaced. This is often easily solved by applying a small amount of suction to the problem earphone.

The signature earphones have such good recognition characteristics that they can become a liability - after a 24% rise in robbery and a 10% increase in grand larceny in the NYC subway system, a spokesperson for the New York City Police Department suggested that iPods might be behind the increases.

Compatibility

The original iPod interacted only with Macintosh computers running Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X until July 17, 2002, when Apple began selling a Windows-compatible iPod, with its internal hard drive formatted in FAT32 instead of the original HFS Plus. Apple released a Windows version of iTunes on October 16, 2003 ; previously, Windows users needed third-party software such as Musicmatch Jukebox (included with Windows iPods before the release of the Windows version of iTunes), ephPod, or XPlay to manage the music on their iPods.

An iPod with its hard drive formatted as HFS+ operated only with a Macintosh, because Windows does not support HFS+, but since the Macintosh could handle FAT32, an iPod formatted as FAT32 could operate with a Macintosh as well as with a PC. Currently, iPods ship with FAT32 by default and are reformatted for use with Macintosh computers, but they previously shipped formatted for Mac and would be reformatted for PC.

HFS+ leaves slightly more space available to store data, and it allowed the iPod to serve as a boot disk for a Macintosh computer. The ability to use an iPod as a boot disk for a Macintosh computer was lost when Apple removed FireWire with the introduction of the fifth-generation iPod since none of the G5-based Macintosh models can boot from an external USB drive.

The iPodLinux project has successfully ported an ARM version of the Linux kernel to run on iPods. It currently supports first through third generation iPods, and features simple installers for Mac OS X and Windows. A SourceForge project exists for the project [6], and copious documentation appears online. The linux interface is known as "Podzilla". Running this interface on an iPod photo has been known to cause irreparable problems.

The iPod uses standard USB and FireWire mass-storage connectivity, and therefore any system with mass-storage support can mount it and use it as an external hard drive. The iPod will also charge from any powered USB or Firewire port, regardless of software support. However, a special database file serves to list the songs available to play, so a program such as iTunes is required to upload songs. As of 2005 only gtkpod offers such functionality for Linux and other Unix variants; however in early 2006, AmaroK will have full support for most iPods. Apple has not yet released a Linux version of the software used to flash the firmware of the iPod.

Design

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 the iPod photo has incorporated some visual elements from Mac OS X, such as the animated Aqua style progress bar. More recent iPods, such as the nano and 5th Generation, also incorporate the "brushed-metal" effect, previously used in iTunes before version 5.0, in their stopwatch and screen lock features. Until the release of iPod mini, the user interface of all iPods used "Chicago", the font used on the original Macintosh computer from 1984. The iPod mini uses the "Espy Sans" font (previously seen in eWorld, the Newton, and Copland), while the color fourth-generation iPods (previously known as iPod photo) and fifth-generation iPods use Myriad, Apple's current corporate typeface.

Operation

iPods (other than the iPod shuffle) have five buttons:
'Menu' (which backs up one level in the menus)
'Play/Pause' (which plays or pauses the track in play)
'Previous' (which skips back through tracks in play)
'Next' (which skips forward through tracks in play)
'Center' (the button in the center of the scroll wheel; this selects a menu or a menu item)

(Note that fourth and fifth-generation iPods, iPod minis, and 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.

Fourth and fifth generation iPods, second generation iPod minis, iPod nanos and iPod shuffles also automatically pause playback when headphones are unplugged from the headphone jack.

iPods with FireWire ports can be put into FireWire Disk Mode, in which it behaves like a FireWire hard drive without any of the additional iPod functionality.

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.

Models

Apple currently markets three distinct players bearing the iPod name. Some models come with different capacities (a higher capacity allows the storage of more music) or with different designs. The model range as of October 12, 2005 includes:
iPod (30 GB and 60 GB).
iPod nano (2 GB and 4 GB).
iPod shuffle (512 MB and 1 GB).

The iPod mini (4 GB and 6 GB and in various colors) are now discontinued, having been replaced by the iPod nano. The iPod U2 Special Edition was also discontinued. The Harry Potter 20 GB Collector's fourth-generation iPod was replaced by the Harry Potter 30 GB Collector's iPod, which is simply a fifth-generation iPod with a Harry Potter engraving and the Harry Potter audiobooks pre-loaded.

Several product revisions have taken place since the original model of iPod appeared, leading to the existence of five distinct generations. As with most hard drive-based devices, the actual drive space available for music, photo, video and data storage does not quite attain the advertised capacity. This comes about because the capacity advertised uses metric prefixes, not binary prefixes. For example, a 4 GB iPod mini actually had 3.77 GiB of usable storage. Some of this is also taken up by the iPod's firmware.

iPod

While all iPods have roughly the same size and the same capabilities, the design has undergone several revisions since its introduction to the market. Five distinct generations of iPods exist, commonly known as: first, second, third, fourth and fifth generations.

Within any generation of iPods, various models with different sizes of hard drives have come onto the market at different price points. During the third generation, three sizes of iPods have coexisted in the marketplace at any given time, priced at US USD 299, USD 399, and USD 499. Currently, Apple sells two sizes of iPod: a 30 GB hard drive for USD 299, and a 60 GB model for USD 399. Note that Apple claims that 1 gigabyte of storage will hold 250, 4-minute songs in 128 kbit/s AAC. For the first and second generation iPod, 1 gigabyte will hold 200 songs. Encoding songs at higher bitrates will take up more space on the hard drive. One can scale this proportion up; the current 30-gigabyte iPod can hold roughly 7,500 songs, though the Apple website states that 'actual formatted capacity may be lower.'

Battery life

Apple designed the iPod with an internal lithium ion battery that users cannot easily replace (the first and second generation iPods used lithium polymer batteries). Like most lithium-based batteries, the iPod battery lasts roughly 500 full recharge cycles. In other words, the battery will continue to have a useful life through the equivalent of five hundred complete discharges and recharges; through time and use, the life of the battery will generally decrease until eventually it is not able to power the iPod for more than a few minutes. Apple has published guidelines on its web site for maximizing the life of an iPod battery.

The battery in all iPod models cannot be removed or replaced by the user without levering the unit open. This is unusually difficult for a consumer device, but at least half a dozen well-known rivals to the iPod have a similarly enclosed battery. Compounding this problem, Apple would not replace worn-out batteries either. The official policy was that the customer should buy a refurbished replacement iPod, at a cost almost equivalent to a brand new iPod.

This situation led to a small market for third-party battery replacement kits. On November 14, 2003, Apple quietly announced a battery replacement program that initially cost USD 99 (now USD 59), and one week later offered users the option to extend the warranty of their iPods for USD 59.

On November 21, 2003, a short film produced by iPod owners The Neistat Brothers was released on the Internet. The movie, called iPod's Dirty Secret, apparently made before the change in policy, expressed anger because the battery on their early model iPod had failed after eighteen months and Apple refused to replace it. The movie depicted the Brothers vandalizing Apple ads in the New York City area with graffiti proclaiming that "iPod's unreplaceable battery lasts only 18 months." The movie was widely linked and viewed, with much of the commentary failing to mention Apple's recent change in policy. Some iPod users also defended Apple by pointing out that their iPods had lasted longer than 18 months, while other viewers suggested that the brothers had attacked Apple solely for the sake of publicity.

As a response to the battery problem, multiple 3rd parties have appeared that are selling iPod battery replacement kits for one third of the price that Apple charges customers for a battery replacement. These batteries often contain more capacity than the standard Apple batteries.

The big question now is if the 5th Generation iPod battery can be replaced by users in the same manner as the other generations of iPod. Some reviews in the arstechnica.com showed that the battery in iPod nano is soldered in the mainboard and in the 5G iPod it is more difficult to be removed and "It's actually affixed to the metal backplate and sits above its own power management circuitry and right next the headphone port and its driver circuitry".

Car integration

Not to be confused with "iPod your Car" which allows car integration on a personal car, iPod Car integration allows one to connect an iPod to a car, and listen to premade car playlists for the car, or the entire library through car speakers. In some cars, music can be controlled through the steering wheel. This feature is only available in certain cars:
Acura RL, TL using Acura Music Link (option only - installation and parts required)
BMW: Z4, X3, X5
Mercedes-Benz: C-Class, CLK, CLS, E-Class, SLK, M-Class, R-Class
Mini: Cooper, Cooper S
Scion: xA, xB, tC
Volvo: S40, S60, S80, V50, V70, XC70, XC90
Volkswagen: 2006 Beetle

This feature will also be available in other cars soon: Audi, Chrysler, Dodge, Ferrari, Honda, Infiniti, Jeep, Nissan, and Volkswagen.

In 2006, this feature will also be available in other foreign cars (outside US): Japan: Lexus, Nissan, Mazda, Daihatsu, BMW, MINI, smart, and Alfa Romeo.