Course:HIST104/ Ipod - Historical Fact

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Brief History

The iPod is a line of portable media players by Apple. Apple released their first iPod in 2001 and since then iPods have dominated the digital music industry and has become a significant and dominant social and cultural item/product in North American society.[1] Today virtually everyone has an iPod or a portable media player. Currently there are four iPod products a consumer can purchase: the iPod Classic, Nano, Tough and Shuffle. The iPod Classic is the original portable media player by Apple, and as its name alludes, is a classic. Apple released their first iPod to the general public on October 23rd 2001 with the advertising pitch of “1,000 songs in your pocket.”.[2]

First iPod Advert:

Current iPod Advert:

There have been six editions of the iPod Classic.

The First Edition The first iPod Classic was released on October 23, 2001.[3] The photo below is the same iPod shown in the advertisement. This iPod had two different capacities: 5GB and 10GB. It also as a battery life of 10 hours.[4] [5]

The Second Edition The second edition iPod classic was released on July 17, 2002.[6] There were two capacities for this one as well: 10GB and 20GB, with a battery life at 10 hours of audio.[7] [8]

The Third Edition The release date for this iPod was April 28, 2003.[6] There were five different capacities for this iPod, ranging from 10GB to 40 GB; however, the battery life for this iPod was less then the previous one, at only eight hours.[7][9]

The Fourth Edition This iPod was released October 26, 2004 and was the first iPod with a colour screen and picture viewing.[6] There were three different capacities at 30, 40 and 60 GB of music and photos with a battery life of 15 hours.[7][10]

The Fifth Edition The 5th edition was released October 12, 2005 and has three capacities of 30, 60 and 80 GB.[6] This iPod had a larger screen and a slimmer case than the previous ones. It was also offered in two different colours, black or white. It had approximately 20 hours of battery life.[7][11]

The Sixth edition The latest edition holds up to 40,000 songs, 25, 000 photos, 200 hours of video and has a battery life of 36 hours.[1] This iPod classic comes in both black and silver colours.

Specifications of the iPod Classic

  • Height – 4.1 inches
  • Width – 2.4 inches
  • Depth – 0.41 inches
  • Weight – 4.9 ounces[7]
  • Display - 2.5 inch diagonal colour LCD with LED back light; 320 by 240 pixel resolution at 163 pixels per square inch.[7]

The iPod classic has changed immensely over time. As technology has improved, so has the iPod’s capacity, battery life, size, weight and graphic display. Since its initial release in 2001, the iPod classic has gone from a portable music device that holds approximately 1,000 songs to one that has the capacity to hold over 40,000. This small device has revolutionized the way people listen to music, and throughout the last ten years Apple consumers have seen this small portable media player change into what is arguably one of the most iconic products of our time.


Conception

The rapid growth in popularity of digital music, which can be attributed to music sharing sites like Napster, was complimented by the timely introduction of Apple’s phenomenal iPod. Rumored to be conceived by Steve Jobs and a small team of Apple executives, the revolutionary mp3 player is still wildly popular after ten years on the market and years of evolution from its original form to the more sleek and efficient edition available on shelves today.

The creation of the iPod was a team effort made by the key players on the original Apple team, which allegedly consisted of Steve Jobs as well as engineer Tony Fadell and then head of hardware division Jon Rubenstein. At the turn of the century, there was a rapid rise in the popularity of music sharing sites like Napster, but a gap in the availability of mp3 players. Napster users were trading mp3 files and burning music to CDs, many using the newly released iMac G3 for these transfers, but at the time, Apple had no digital music management software to keep up with the growth of the mp3 sharing community. Looking for a way to encourage consumers to buy more Mac products, the team at Apple seized the opportunity to fill this void during the fast and furious rise of the digital music era. Apple licensed SoundJam MP music player from a small company and hired their programmer, Jeff Robbin.[12] To compliment their developing music management software, Apple jumped at the opportunity to improve upon current mp3 players. The creators observed the poor design of the few mp3 players that were on the market at the time, and worked to improve upon these flaws. These included extremely small storage space, large and inefficient size, and short battery life. To fix these blaring issues in current models on the market from other electronic companies, Jon Rubenstein hired engineer Tony Fadell in February 2001 to design Apple’s proposed mp3 player by the fall, to be available to consumers just before the holiday season. Apple purchased the design for their new mp3 player from Silicon Valley, California startup Portal Player. At the time, Portal Player had been developing mp3 players for several different companies using one main design, but quickly jumped at Apple’s offer to purchase this design exclusively. However, Apple saw several flaws in the design, including a limit of ten songs per playlist, no equalizers, and an overall poor interface design.[13]

To create the most efficient player, Apple purchased parts from Toshiba, Sony and Texas Instruments. Many of these design components, namely the scroll wheel, seemed to be entirely innovative, but were inspired by existing technology of the era. The scroll wheel had appeared previously on the Palm thumb wheel and on scrolling mice, and as far back as the Hewlett Packard 9836 Workstation, which had a keyboard with a wheel to scroll through text on the screen. Apple also utilized Palm’s HotSync wireless technology for automatic download and file transfer from iPod to computer.[12] The speed at which Rubenstein called for required highly efficient team organization. Apple hired groups of engineers to work on each individual portion of the mp3 design, from the power, to the display, to the battery life. The key to the speed and success of Apple’s design process, according to Robert Brunner, former head of Apple’s design group, was the process of manufacturing prototypes. "Apple's designers spend 10 percent of their time doing traditional industrial design: coming up with ideas, drawing, making models, brainstorming," he said. "They spend 90 percent of their time working with manufacturing, figuring out how to implement their ideas."[12]

The name “iPod” was inspired by the turn of the century focus on the future. This was a nod by Vinnie Chieco, a San Francisco-based freelance copywriter, to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. "As soon as I saw the white iPod, I thought 2001," said Chieco. "Open the pod bay door, Hal!"[12]. The creation of the iPod marked an era of looking to the future, especially at the peak of the technology boom.


Key Players

If there is one name that is synonymous with the Apple brand, it is Steve Jobs. He is often considered the mastermind behind Apple products, but Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs is just one on a team of many who brought us the famous Apple products, particularly the iPod Classic. The idea for the iPod was conceived outside the Apple company, by some small-named people with big ideas.

The brainchild for the iPod came from Tony Fadell, a hardware expert who had worked on handheld devices for companies such as Philips and General Magic.[14] Fadell had the idea of catering a music sales service to an mp3 player, saying "This is the project that's going to remold Apple and 10 years from now, it's going to be a music business, not computer business".[14] Future-friendly Apple snapped it up. Fadell was hired to the company and assigned a team of designers, hardware engineers, and programmers to begin work on what would eventually become the iPod.[14]

Their first few attempts did not please perfectionist Steve Jobs - they were bulky, and aesthetically unappealing. Jobs was looking for a design that was both sleek and modern. In came Jonathan Ive and Ben Knauss. Jonathan Ive is currently the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple. He is credited as “one of the most influential” designers of the original iPod Classic.[15] He is the one who gave the iPod its famous titanium and aluminum looks, along with the revolutionary click wheel. Ben Knauss was part of next few steps. Tony Fadell and his crew had put together a mp3 player, but it had the appearance of "an FM radio with a bunch of buttons".[14] Knauss, who at the time was working for a company called PortalPlayer, was hired to give Apple's mp3 player an operating system and a new interface - the screen we control with the click wheel. In the next eight months, the Apple mp3 player went from an unsightly brick with three hours of battery life to a trim and streamlined iPod with a design no one had ever seen before.[14]

The iPod is known for something else - its universally recognized name. 'IPod' was certainly a strange name for an mp3 player, and once again came from a source outside of the Apple company. Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywritier is the one credited with naming the iPod.[4] Chieco was inspired by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. He reflected back on the small white pods in which the crew members go into space with and the large white mothership, and applied the relationship between them to the personal computer (independent pod) and music player (the mothership).[4] Pair this imagery with the classic line “Open the pod bay door, Hal!” and the name iPod was born.


Music Culture and the iPod

In the examination and study of history, music is often one of the best tools to bring us back to the time being studied. For centuries, music has played a crucial role in the development of human culture and society. Music can help us cope with problems, affect our emotions, or just play in the background while we perform day to day tasks. While it may only play a small role in the lives of some, music plays a massive role in many cultures, including our own. Many of the main religions practised worldwide use music and song as ways of worship and prayer. Natives have been using music in their culture for as long as their history has been documented. They use song and dance in rituals, as well as pass stories down orally through music. Europeans have also included music in their day-to-day life for thousands of years. From baroque music to classical to modern, music has always surrounded humans, providing a small context of understanding to those outside of any certain culture. Musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez claims that music and sound are all one in the same: “The border between music and noise is always culturally defined – which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus. By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be.” Nattiez argues that because different cultures and different people see music differently, any sound could be music to anyone.

Music has an obvious impact on the day to day life of humans. In the fast-paced societies of developed countries, music on-the-go has become very important. Portable music has been around since music has, as musicians could bring their instruments with them. Portable music for personal listening experiences however, has been a phenomenon of the twentieth century. In the late 19th century, the first record player was starting to be invented, and that lasted well into the 1900’s. This equipment was large and very difficult to move, however. The 1980’s and 1990’s saw the “walkman” and the “discman” as the first practical modes of portable music. They played audio cassette tapes and compact disks, respectively. At the time, the inventions were monumental to music on the go. The walkman was made obsolete, because cassette tapes were becoming outdated and CD’s were more popular. With CD’s though, only about 20 songs could be stored at a time. There was a large want to have one’s entire musical library with them, not just 20 select songs.

This all came to an end as mp3 players broke onto the portable music scene in the early 2000’s. These mp3 players stored digital files of recorded songs. The sound quality was just as good, the music did not skip like it did on some CD players, and most importantly, the mp3 player was compact and small. This music player was perfect for its time, but with so many different MP3 players, it was hard to determine which was best.

After a short period of time, the original iPod hit the market. This mp3 player was unlike any other. It held more songs than other players, it was able to store photos, and it was easy for almost anyone to use. It was also marketed very well by Apple Inc. Today, there are different types of IPods that one can purchase. They come as small as an inch and half by an inch and a half. The iPod can be seen as a result of a technologically advanced world, in which it is better for things to be compact and easily transportable. The iPod is a culmination of cultural practises in music and technology coming together in a largely commercialized society.


The iPod Remains on Top

Apple has shown, especially during the last decade, its commitment to remaining on the cutting edge of technology. This commitment to ingenuity has seen Apple iPods cut a swath through the hundreds of other mp3 players currently available on the market. Industry statistics indicated that, in 2007, Apple had sold an astonishing 110 million iPod units worldwide. As a result, it is the best-selling digital audio player to date.[16]

The iPod’s popularity is due in large part to its appeal to a wide variety of people; this, in turn, is due chiefly to the fact that Apple maintains four different mp3 player models, each of which cover a range of designs, features and price points. The diversity in Apple’s specs and design helps it attract a wide variety of customers, but its attention to detail is what really sets it apart. The iPod Classic, for example, offers the user an unrivalled amount of space—160 GBs, enough to store 40,000 songs, 25,000 photos or 200 hours of video [2]. The Touch model has an industry leading, user-friendly touch screen interface, which allows the consumer to interact with their content and thousands of available games and apps. Other highlights include the Genius Playlists feature, which automatically creates a playlist based on what music you’re listening to and FaceTime, Apple’s wifi video chat service for the Touch. In addition to all this, iPods boast such basic, but necessary, features as quick charge times and a battery that can last through 36 hours of continuous music play time.[17]

Apple’s iTunes store also provides an experience that the vast majority of other mp3 players cannot rival. Users can access to thousands upon thousands of artists and their music, movies, television shows and podcasts all in one place, and can also access most of that content while they’re on-the-go via their iPod. In addition to this, Apple users can access an almost endless amount of applications through the App Store, which range from being entertaining to practically useful.

Owing to its worldwide popularity, the number and type of third-party accessories available for Apple’s iPods are nearly endless. This provides a huge advantage for those who wish to use their mp3 player in a variety of situations. Third-party accessories allow the consumer to wake up to their own music when using iPod-compatible alarm clocks, play their music through AM and FM transmitters in their cars, and play music and movies through home entertainment systems with the use of a simple dock and their iPod.[18] With accessories like these iPods are making it possible to remove the use of CD’s, CD decks, DVD and BluRay players and are making entertaining accessible almost anywhere.


References

1. Apple, “iPod Classic,” Apple, http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_classic?mco=MTAyNTQzMjU.

2. Greg Kot, Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music (New York, New York, Scribner, 2009), 204.

3. Ibid, 201.

4. Wikipedia, “iPod,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod.

5. Wikipedia, “iPod 1st edition,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_1G.png.

6. Apple, “iPod + iTunes Timeline,” Apple, http://www.apple.com/pr/products/ipodhistory/.

7. Ibid.

8. Wikipedia, “iPod 2nd edition,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_2G.png.

9. Wikipedia, “iPod 3rd edition,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_backlight_transparent.png.

10. Wikipedia, “iPod 4th edition,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPodphoto4G_1.png

11. Wikipedia, “iPod 5th Generation,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_5th_Generation_white_rotated.png.

12. Kahney, Leander. "Straight Dope on the IPod's Birth." Wired.com. Wired, 17 Oct. 2006. Web. 22 July 2011. <http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2006/10/71956?currentPage=all>.

13. Hormby, Tom, and Dan Knight. "A History of the IPod: 2000 to 2004." Low End Mac: Long Term Value. Low End Mac, Sept. 2007. Web. 22 July 2011. <http://lowendmac.com/orchard/05/origin-of-the-ipod.html>.

14. http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2004/07/64286

15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Ive

16. http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/2008/iPod_mp3Player.asp

17. http://www.apple.com/ipod

18. http://www.apple.com/ipod/accessories/

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