Technology Of The Noughties: Apple’s iPod (MP3 Players)

Remember this? The incredibly thin, high capacity MP3 player from Apple, otherwise known as the iPod was most definitely one of the biggest impacts we saw this decade.

Taking the market for digital music players by storm, Apple revolutionised digital music and continue to innovate and update their line of iPod’s.

Before the iPod, the market was screaming out for someone to create an easy to use, functional device. The original iPod, released in October 2001, did just that with its huge capacity of 5GB or 10GB. Consumers went from being able to store maybe a few hundred songs to their entire CD collection on one device and take it with them wherever they went.

Despite this, I don’t think the iPod was truly a game changer until the second generation was released a year later in July 2002. This release saw capacity options double to 10GB and 20GB and the mechanical wheel replaced with a touch sensitive version that worked much better.

The key in the success of the iPod was support for Windows operating systems with the device and their iTunes software. Without this, Apple would be restricted to selling their digital music device to the 2% of the world that used Mac OS X. In supporting Windows, something unheard of as far as Apple was concerned, the iPod was made available to the masses, and the digital music revolution began…

As the iPod developed, it dominated, and continues to dominate, the market for digital music players and over time developed into a portable media player, with many variations offering games, video playback, radio playback and mobile surfing with the latest iPod Touch (3rd generation) as well as the latest iPod Nano (5th generation) offering video recording with it’s built-in camera.

As of September 9th 2009, over 220,000,000 iPods have been sold and account for a lot of Apple’s revenue, as it becomes ever more crucial to the firm once named “Apple Computer Inc”.

Have you bought into the Apple iPod “lifestyle” of portable music that Steve Jobs unleashed onto the world? If so, how many iPods have you personally bought so far? How long do you think Apple can continue to keep selling stand-alone music players? Or have you already moved over to a more integrated device in the form of the iPhone?

Related Pages:

1. iPod Touch 3rd Generation Review
2. Technology Of The Noughties: The Modern Operating System (Windows & Mac OS X)
3. Technology Of The Noughties: Cloud Computing
4. New Apple iPod Nano, Touch, Classic And Shuffle Announced
5. Altec Lansing InMotion Max Portable iPod Speakers Review

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