The History of the iPod

2011 marks the 10 year anniversary of the iPod, an incredible music player created by Apple. With the earliest mp3 players being of subpar quality, Apple founder Steve Jobs wanted to create something that would be truly revolutionary. In 2000, Jobs envisioned the iPod and had his company's programmers get to work on his vision.

The iPod first saw the light of day on October 23, 2001 as Steve Jobs introduced it at Apple's headquarters. It carried a capacity of 5GB of space, which held up to 1,000 songs. It was a simple looking white device with a grayscale screen and entered the market at $399.

The next summer, the second generation iPod was introduced in two versions and had a storage capability of either 10 or 20GB. The scroll wheel was slightly different than on the original device, having been redesigned to be touch sensitive. Additionally, the iPod now had Windows compatibility, which introduced it to a whole new group of people who did not own a Mac. However, these users were only able to get their music on their iPod via Music Match, a program that converted tracks for the Windows environment. It also saw the hold switch redesigned and was synced via FireWire.


The third generation iPod was released on April 28, 2003 and boasted a new feature in the form of four touch sensitive buttons directly beneath the screen. It also had a new USB dock at the bottom of the device for synching. At this time, the iTunes Music Store was also introduced, and users could purchase songs for 99 cents each.

The beginning of 2004 saw the release of the iPod mini, a much smaller version of Apple's portable music player for individuals who didn't need a large capacity of space. It carried 4GB of space for music. On July 19, the fourth generation iPod, which was available in 20 and 40GB capacities, was released. The iPod mini was also available with a redesigned clickwheel.

In early 2005, Apple unveiled the brand new iPod shuffle, which had a storage capacity of 1GB and plugged directly into the USB drive of computers for syncing. By September, the iTunes Store introduced games, which were suddenly available for download on the iPod classic. the iPod mini was discontinued to make way for the iPod nano, which had storage capacities of 2 and 4GB. In October, the fifth generation iPod classic was released and had a brand new design which was slimmer, featured a larger screen and color options of white or black.

In 2007, two new revolutionary devices were released by Apple: the iPod touch and iPhone. The iPod touch carried many of the same features as the iPhone, with the exception of calling abilities. With a 64GB storage capacity, the iPod touch was not simply a music player but users could play games and even connect to Wi-Fi by way of internet providers. The iPhone had the same ability but was probably used less as a iPod because of its phone feature.

Many of the games available for download through Apple's App Store are those that originated from Facebook and require Wi-Fi or 3G access to play. Social media networking websites like Twitter and Facebook are also available to download to your device. To this day, an iPod touch can do everything an iPhone can, with the exception of making standard phone calls. Of course, if you have connectivity to internet providers, you can actually make calls via Skype, Fring and other similar apps on your iPod touch. This just proves how far the iPod has come, and how groundbreaking a device Apple created.

This is a guest article by Ruben Corbo, a writer for the website Broadband Expert where you can find internet providers in your area and compare prices on different deals for your mobile broadband needs.