The Immense Popularity Of I-pods
Posted on July 1st, 2009 in Technology |
The i-Pod as we all know is one of, if not the biggest portable media displayer available on the market today. First released in 2001 with 5 gigabytes of memory which was an unheard of amount, it took the world by storm and launched the already well known Apple to new corporate heights.
There have been five re-releases of the classic version and it is therefore now in its sixth generation. When you read the specifications of the newest model you can see how far the ipod has come since its original release.
This sixth generation ipod comes with either 80 or 160 gigabytes of memory and supports pretty much any file format. It can play back images, games and videos and due to the vast amount of memory available, it can also be used as a portable hard drive to store anything on.
Of course, there were other models that took different shapes to the classic shape. There was the ipod mini which was only in production for a few years as the release of the ipod nano rendered it somewhat superfluous. The ipod mini was however the first ipod to have a coloured exterior (other than black or white), and was also cheaper than the classic.
Then there was the ipod shuffle, which was essentially a cheap version without the screen. The shuffle is a much simpler version and only plays songs. The lack of a display screen means that they are far cheaper to manufacture and therefore far cheaper to buy.
The most recent version to hit the shelves is the ipod touch. This looks quite similar to the iphone and uses a similar interface. In fact, some have said that the only difference between the ipod touch and the iphone is that you cant make phone calls on the ipod touch. There are some more subtle differences than that, but I would say that is a fair analogy.
All the new models and updates have seen the ipod grow to be the most popular portable media device available today, over 173 million have been sold world wide and that number only looks like it will continue rising as ipods adapt to changes in consumer needs.
