iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Inc. and launched on October 23, 2001. As of 2008, the current product line-up includes the hard drive-based iPod classic, the touchscreen iPod touch, the video-capable iPod nano and the screenless iPod shuffle. Former products include the compact iPod mini and the spin-off iPod photo (since re-integrated into the main iPod classic line). iPod classic models store media on an internal hard drive, while all other models use flash memory to enable their smaller size (the discontinued mini used a Microdrive miniature hard drive). As with many other digital music players, iPods, excluding the iPod touch, can also serve as external data storage devices. Storage capacity varies by model.
Apple’s iTunes software is used to transfer music to the devices. As a jukebox application, iTunes stores a music library on the user’s computer and can play, burn and rip music from a CD. It can also transfer photos, videos, games, contact information, E-Mail messages, Web bookmarks, and calendars to iPod models supporting those features. Apple focused its development on the iPod’s unique user interface and its ease of use, rather than on technical capability. As of September 2007, the iPod had sold over 150 million units worldwide making it the best-selling digital audio player series in history.
iPod came from Apple’s “digital hub” category,[ when the company began creating software for the growing market of personal digital devices. Digital cameras, camcorders and organizers had well-established mainstream markets, but the company found existing digital music players "big and clunky or small and useless" with user interfaces that were "unbelievably awful,"[3] so Apple decided to develop its own. As ordered by CEO Steve Jobs, Apple’s hardware engineering chief Jon Rubinstein assembled a team of engineers to design the iPod, including hardware engineers Tony Fadell and Michael Dhuey, and design engineer Jonathan Ive.[3] The product was developed in less than one year and unveiled on October 23, 2001. Jobs announced it as a Mac-compatible product with a 5 GB hard drive that put “1,000 songs in your pocket.”Uncharacteristically, Apple did not develop iPod’s software entirely in-house, instead using PortalPlayer’s reference platform based on 2 ARM cores. The platform had rudimentary software running on a commercial microkernel embedded operating system.
PortalPlayer had previously been working on an IBM-branded MP3 player with Bluetooth headphones.Apple contracted another company, Pixo, to help design and implement the user interface under the direct supervision of Steve Jobs. As development progressed, Apple continued to refine the software’s look and feel. Starting with the iPod mini, the Chicago font was replaced with Espy Sans. Later iPods switched fonts again to Podium Sans — a font similar to
Apple’s corporate font, Myriad. iPods with color displays then adopted some Mac OS X themes like Aqua progress bars, and brushed metal in the lock interface. In 2007,
Apple modified the iPod interface again with the introduction of the sixth-generation iPod classic and third-generation iPod nano by changing the font to Helvetica and, in most cases, splitting the screen in half by displaying the menus on the left and album artwork, photos, or videos on the right (whichever was appropriate for the selected item).
