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iPod Models

August 1st, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

1st Generation iPod

The 1st generation iPod is the first iPod model by Apple announced on October 23, 2001,
the cost of the original iPod was $399 with a 5 GB hard drive.
Critics panned the unit’s price, but it proved an instant hit in the marketplace, quickly

overtaking earlier hard drive MP3 players such as the NOMAD Jukebox. In March 2002 Apple
announced a 10 GB version priced at $499.

Apple designed a mechanical scroll wheel and outsourced the implementation and development
to Synaptics, a firm which also developed the trackpad for Apple’s PowerBooks.

The 1st generation iPod featured four buttons (Menu, Play/Pause, Back, and Forward) arranged

around the circumference of the scroll wheel, and one Select button in the center.

2nd Generation iPod

The 2nd generation iPod came in 10 GB and 20 GB capacities and was introduced on July 17, 2002,
at Macworld, and the mechanical scroll wheel of the original was replaced with a touch-sensitive,
non-mechanical one (manufactured by Synaptics), termed a “touch wheel”.

Due to new Toshiba hard drives, the 20 GB iPod slightly exceeded its 1st generation counterpart in
thickness and weight, while the 10 GB model was slimmer. It came with a carrying case and wired remote and it was the first one that was compatible with Windows.

In December 2002 Apple released 4 limited-edition, laser-engraved, autographed iPods from Beck,
Tony Hawk, Madonna, and No Doubt. They sold for $50 over the normal retail price in each capacity until it was discontinued.

3rd Generation iPod

The 3rd generation iPod featured the four buttons above the touch wheel with “select” in the center
and slightly smaller than its predecessors and was introduced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on April 28, 2003. They had more distinctively beveled edges and Apple produced 10 GB, 15 GB, 20 GB, 30 GB, and 40 GB versions.

These iPods use a 30-pin connector called the Dock Connector (longer and flatter than a FireWire connector). The iPod Dock came bundled with all but the least expensive iPod and also retailed separately. It featured touch-sensitive buttons located between the display and touch wheel. The new buttons featured red backlighting, allowing easier use in darkness.

The touch-sensitive buttons, which was built upon the touch-sensitive scroll wheel introduced in the 2nd
generation iPod, makes it unique in that it has no external moving parts (other than the hold slider on the top of the unit) and is the only iPod that doesn’t have its buttons surrounding the wheel.

Apple stopped shipping separate Mac and Windows versions of the unit and instead, all iPods were shipped with their hard drives formatted for Macintosh use; they included CD-ROM featuring a Windows utility which could be reformatted for use with a Windows PC.

4th Generation iPod

The 4th generation iPod integrated the four buttons into the scrollwheel and it’s considered the model in

which sales greatly increased, thus starting the “iPod Craze”. In the most obvious difference from its predecessors, the 4th generation iPod carries over the click-wheel design introduced on the iPod Mini and was introduced in July 2004.

Some users criticized the click wheel because it does not have the backlight that the 3rd generation iPod buttons had, but others noted that having the buttons on the compass points largely removed any need for backlighting.

Apple also claimed that updated software in the new iPod allows it to use the battery more efficiently and increase battery life to 12 hours.

Other minor changes included the addition of a “Shuffle Songs” option on the top-level menu to make it more convenient for users.

After many requests from users asking for these improvements to operate on earlier iPods as well, Apple on February 23, 2005, released a firmware update which brings the new menu items to 1st-3rd generation iPods.

Originally, the 4th generation iPod had a monochrome screen and no photo capabilities, like its predecessors. It came in 20 GB and 40 GB sizes.

In February 2005 Apple discontinued the 40 GB model and began solely selling a monochrome 20 GB version. The monochrome 4th generation iPod, slightly thinner (about one millimeter less) than the 3rd generation iPod, introduced the ability to charge the battery over a USB connection.

5th Generation iPod

The 5th generation iPod is often called the iPod video or the video iPod was released on October 12, 2005 and it’s available in 30 GB and 60 GB capacity models.
It has the ability to play MPEG-4 and H.264 video with resolutions of up to 480 x 480 (maximum macroblock (16×16 pixel) count of 900) and 320 x 240 (maximum macroblock (16×16 pixel) count of 300), respectively (videos purchased from the iTunes Music Store are limited to 320 x 240).

You can play widescreen resolutions up to 640×360 using MPEG-4 and 400 x 192 using H.264 (total macroblock count falls within the stated maximums).

5th generation models have a 65,536 colour (16-bit) screen, with a 320 x 240 QVGA transflective TFT display, and are able to display video on an external TV via the AV cable accessory, which plugs into the headphone minijack and splits into composite video and audio output connectors with RCA jacks.

It can also display video on an external TV using the iPod AV or S-video cables with the iPod Universal Dock. The dimensions are 103.5 x 61.8 x 11.0 mm for the 30 GB version, and 103.5 x 61.8 x 14.0 mm for the 60 GB version.

The screen size is now 2.5 inches (6.35 cm) diagonally, 0.5 inches (12.7 mm) larger than the previous iPod. It is 30% thinner than the previous full-size iPod. The battery life for the 30 GB is 14 hours and for the 60GB is around 20 hours. Watching movies reduces that amount to 2 and 3 hours respectively.

The click wheel design is the same as the previous generation, but is marginally smaller (1.5″ diameter) than before. The new click wheel is completely flat, unlike older models where the center button is slightly rounded and raised.

Apple stopped producing iPods with the click wheels used in the 4th generation iPod and iPod Mini from their previous supplier, Synaptics, and now use an in-house solution.

Like the iPod Nano, the 5th generation iPod comes in two colors, white and black, and it features the World Clock, Stopwatch, and Screen Lock applications.

In addition, the earphone plug is smaller and comes with a thin slip case, most likely in response to many complaints concerning the iPod Nano’s easily-scratched surface.

Apple also discontinued the inclusion of an AC adapter and FireWire cable and you must purchase these item separately in order to charge the iPod from a household outlet, or use an external, powered USB hub.

The 5th generation iPod no longer supports file transfers via FireWire, but still supports charging using FireWire. This is most likely due to the increased popularity of Hi-Speed USB 2.0 in the consumer market as well as decreasing manufacturing component costs by lowering the complexity of the circuit boards and removing unnecessary accessories.

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iPod Capabilities

July 29th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

Software

iPod Capabilities include playing:

1. MP3 audio file formats.

2. WAV audio file formats.

3.M4A / AAC LC audio file formats.

4. Protected AAC audio file formats.

5. AIFF audio file formats.

6. Audible audiobook audio file formats and

7. Apple Lossless audio file formats.

iPod capabilities of the 5th generation version plays .m4v and .mp4 MPEG-4 video file formats.

Microsoft Windows version of iTunes can transcode regular 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.

What I do not like about the iPod is the inability to play some other formats, in particular the Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats. MIDI files cannot be played on iPods as well, but can be converted into a compatible audio file format by choosing the “advanced” menu on iTunes.

Apple has designed the iPod to work with the iTunes media library software, which lets you manage your music libraries on your computer and on your iPod. iTunes can automatically synchronize your iPod with specific playlists or with the entire contents of a music library each time you connect your iPod to a host computer.

You can also set a rating (out of 5 stars) on any song, and can synchronize that information to an iTunes music library. iTunes lacks the ability to transfer songs from iPod to computer because of legality issues.

However, several third-party programs exist that provide music synchronization facilities similar to iTunes, but also offer the ability to copy music from iPod back to your host computer. Notable examples include vPod and the Ml iPod plugin for Winamp.

iTunes Music Store

The iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is an online music store run by Apple and accessed via iTunes. It was
introduced on 28 April, 2003 and sells individual songs relatively easily and cheaply (e.g. 0.99 USD,
0.99 Euro, 0.79 GBP).

iPod’s are the only portable music player that can play the purchased music, and this exclusiveness has

helped the store become the dominant online music service.

The purchased audio files use the AAC format with added encryption. The encryption is based on FairPlay Digital Rights Management (DRM) system. Up to five authorized computers and an unlimited amount of iPods can play the files.

Burning the files onto an audio CD removes the Digital Rights Management (DRM), at a cost of reduced
quality when re-compressed from one lossy format to another.

iPods cannot play music files encrypted with other rival Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies,

such as Microsoft’s protected WMA or RealNetworks’ Helix-DRM.

Hardware

iPod capabilities was to connect it to a user’s computer to update songs and recharge its battery solely
through FireWire originally. It could also be charged by connecting it to a small power adapter which are shipped for free with several of the first generation iPod’s.

The now standard dock connector was not added until the 3rd generation in April 2003, allowing users

the option of using FireWire or USB to make data transfers, although the device could still not be
charged by USB and the USB cable was not included.

Most PC’s don’t have FireWire ports so this move effectively opened the Windows market to iPod, although USB only Windows users had to keep their FireWire cables to plug into the wall adapter.

The dock connector also made it possible to transfer data, sound, and power back and forth to iPod accesories, which created an explosive market of devices that has been extremely profitable for third parties such as Belkin and Griffin. The resulting myriad of connecting devices is still one of iPod’s greatest strengths over its competititors.

iPod capabilities of the 4th generation version could be charged with USB, and eventually Apple started shipping iPods with USB cables instead of one’s with FireWire. Many Macs shipped before 2004 had only USB 1.1, which has a transfer speed of 11 Mbit/s, as opposed to FireWire’s 400 and USB 2.0’s 480.

Although none of these actually transfers at these exact rates, USB 1.1 is much slower than the other two, and for some USB 1.1 may simply be unusable for transferring music collections to fill a 40 GB iPod. Later introductions has continued to lessen iPod’s reliance on FireWire.

iPod Shuffle, released in January 2005, plugs directly into a USB port, without a dock connector and has no Firewire support. The iPod Nano, released in September 2005, uses a dock connector that allows a FireWire cable to be plugged in to charge the device, but not to transfer data. With the 5th generation iPod, Apple dropped all support for data transfer over Firewire to any model iPod.

Like the Nano, the 5th generation iPod’s dock connector will accept a FireWire cable and can draw power from it, but only the USB connection, not the one with FireWire, will support data transfer - a message stating this appears on the iPod screen.

This has drawn some criticism from the Mac community, since FireWire has been a standard feature on Apple Macs for many years, while USB 2.0 support was only added in October 2003.

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.

The iPod use 1.8 inch (46 mm) ATA hard drives (with a proprietary connector) made by Toshiba and the iPod Mini uses one-inch Compact Flash microdrive hard drives made by Hitachi. It 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 60 GB 5th generation version, has 32 MiB of RAM, a portion of which holds the 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 60 GB fifth-generation iPod holds 64 MiB of RAM, to further extend battery life.)

iPod was originally introduced with a black and white display but no current model uses one. iPod Photo (an addition to the functionality of the 4th generation iPod released in late 2004) introduced a color screen, while iPod shuffle (released January 2005) has no screen at all.

When iPod Mini was replaced with iPod Nano it received a colour screen (and photo capabilty) and starting with the 5th generation all full size iPods have color screens and photo capability.

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iPod Compatibility

July 26th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

iPod compatibility on the original iPod was designed for use with Macintosh computers running Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X but Apple began selling a Windows-compatible iPod too on July 17, 2002. 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.

iPods originally shipped formatted with Apple’s native filesystem, HFS Plus (Hierarchical File System) and consequently would only work with Apple’s Mac OS because Windows does not support HFS Plus. An iPod formatted with HFS Plus is able to serve as a boot disk for a Macintosh computer, allowing one to have a usable, portable operating system installed on their iPod.

With the advent of the windows-compatible iPod, Apple switched iPod’s default file system to FAT32 because FAT32 is the only file system that can be used natively with both Mac OS and Windows. Fourth-generation and earlier iPods could still be made to boot a Macintosh by reformatting their hard disks with HFS Plus.

The iPodLinux project has successfully ported an ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) 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. The Linux interface is known as “Podzilla”.

The interface will run on all iPods, however the development team does not support its usage. 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.

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