The iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Computer.. Devices in the iPod family are designed around a central scroll wheel except for the iPod shuffle,
Trang 1The iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by
Apple Computer Devices in the iPod family are designed around a central scroll wheel (except for the iPod shuffle, which uses click buttons) and the full-sized model stores media on an internal hard drive, while the smaller iPod nano and iPod shuffle use flash memory Like many digital audio players, iPods can also serve as external data storage devices Apple chose to focus its development on the iPod's simple user interface and its ease of use, rather than on technical capability
As of 2006, the lineup consists of the 5 th generation iPod that plays videos; the smaller, second generation iPod nano; and the display-less iPod shuffle These models were updated in 2006
The bundled software used for transferring music, photos and videos is called iTunes As a jukebox application, iTunes stores a comprehensive library of music on the user's computer and can play, burn, and rip music from a CD The most recent versions have photo and video synchronization features These features open up the possibility of playing back standard definition quality television and movies from the iPod onto a television set In addition to the iTunes Store others sources of legal television content prepared for iPods include Google Video Many of these services work only in the US, including iTunes
The iPod is currently the world's best-selling digital audio player and its
worldwide mainstream adoption makes it one of the most popular consumer brands Some of Apple's design choices and proprietary actions have,
however, led to criticism and legal battles
Contents
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1 History and design
2 User interface
3 Software
o 3.1 iTunes Store
Trang 2o 3.2 File storage
o 3.3 Additional features
o 3.4 Open-source alternatives
4 Connectivity
5 Chipsets and electronics
6 iPod models
o 6.1 Special edition and color variants
7 Criticisms
o 7.1 Battery life advertising
o 7.2 Non-replaceable batteries
o 7.3 Bass response
o 7.4 Equalizer
o 7.5 Worker exploitation
8 Patent disputes
9 Sales
10 Advertising
o 10.1 Earphones
11 Accessories
o 11.1 Car integration
12 See also
13 References
14 External links
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History and design
The iPod came from Apple's digital hub strategy, as the company began creating software for the growing market of digital devices purchased by consumers While digital cameras, camcorders and organizers had well-established mainstream markets, the company found digital music players lacking in user interface and decided to develop its own
Trang 3Hardware design of the 3 rd generation iPod
Tony Fadell, a former Philips executive in the company's Windows CE
division, left Philips to create a hard drive based MP3 player and a music service [1] He founded a company, Fuse, to develop and sell the idea to major media companies After RealNetworks turned him down, Apple accepted and they began developing the iPod in February 2001, one month after iTunes was released It was announced to the public on 23 October 2001 as a
Mac-compatible product with a 5 GB hard drive that put "1000 songs in your
pocket."
Uncharacteristically, Apple decided not to develop the iPod's software in-house Instead, Apple used a Design Chain and contracted with PortalPlayer, who already had a reference design (based on 2 ARM cores) with
rudimentary software running on top of a commercial microkernel embedded operating system PortalPlayer had been working on an IBM-branded MP3 player with Bluetooth headphones [1] Apple contracted another company, Pixo, to create and refine the user interface, under the direct supervision of CEO Steve Jobs
Once established, Apple continued to refine the look-and-feel Starting with the iPod mini, the Chicago font (once used on early Macintosh computers) was replaced with Espy Sans, which was originally used in eWorld and Copland The most recent iPods have switched fonts again to Myriad – Apple's new corporate font The iPods with color displays adopted some Mac OS X themes like Aqua progress bars and brushed metal in the FM tuner and lock
interfaces
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User interface
Trang 4The display screen of a 5 th generation iPod, playing the song Feel Good Inc by the band Gorillaz
The iPods with displays use high quality anti-aliased graphics and text, with sliding animation These iPods have five buttons and newer generations have the buttons integrated underneath the scroll wheel, an innovation which
confers an uncluttered, minimalistic interface The buttons are:
Menu — to traverse backwards through the menus, and toggle the
backlight on older iPods
Center — to select a menu item
Play / Pause — this doubles as an off switch when held
Fast Forward / Skip Forward
Fast Reverse / Skip Backwards
The other operations such as scrolling through menu items and controlling the
volume are handled by the scroll wheel in a rotational manner A Hold switch
on the top of the unit prevents accidental button presses
The iPod shuffle has five buttons that function differently to the larger
models It has a Play / Pause button in the center, surrounded by four
buttons: Volume Up / Down and Skip Forward / Backwards
Newer iPods automatically pause playback when the headphones are
unplugged from the headphone jack, but playback does not resume when the headphones are re-inserted An iPod that has crashed or frozen can be reset
Trang 5by switching 'Hold' on and off, and then holding Menu and Center (Menu and
Play on the 3G iPod) for 6 seconds
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Software
It has been suggested that IPod Video Restrictions be merged into this article
or section (Discuss)
The iPod can play MP3, M4A/AAC, Protected AAC, AIFF, WAV, Audible audiobook, and Apple Lossless audio file formats The 5 th generation iPod can also play MPEG-4 (H.264/MPEG-4 AVC), mp4 and QuickTime video file formats, with restrictions on video dimensions, encoding techniques and
bitrates Apple does not support Microsoft's WMA audio format – unlike many other media players – but a converter for non-DRM WMA files is
provided with the Windows version of iTunes MIDI files cannot be played, but can be converted to audio files using the "Advanced" menu on iTunes Alternative open-source audio formats, such as Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, are not supported, possibly because they were not developed by media standards bodies (such as the MPEG group) of which Apple is a member
Each time an iPod connects to its host computer, iTunes can synchronize music playlists or entire music libraries and the user can choose for automatic
or manual synchronization Song ratings can be set on the iPod and
synchronized later with the iTunes library
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iTunes Store
Main articles: iTunes and iTunes Store
The iTunes Store (formerly iTunes Music Store) is an online media store run
by Apple and accessed via iTunes It was introduced on 28 April 2003 and it