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A 4G iPod, with earphones. The iPod interface is multilingual; here, Dutch is used. The iPod is a portable audio player designed and marketed by Apple Computer. It stores music on a built-in hard drive, which gives it much larger capacity than other portable audio players that rely on flash memory. This also lets it serve as an external hard drive while connected to a computer; a user can store any kind of files on it.
Designed by Apple's Industrial Design Group under Jonathan Ive, iPods feature small size, a simple user interface designed around a central scroll wheel, and FireWire and USB 2.0 connectivity. As of October 2004, the iPod dominated digital music player sales in the United States, with over 92% of the market for hard drive-based players and over 65% of the market for all types of players.
The iPod can play MP3, WAV, AAC/ M4A, Protected AACFairPlay is Apple Computer's name for its digital rights management (DRM) built in to the QuickTime multimedia technology and used by the iPod, iTunes and the iTunes Music Store. Every file sold by the iTunes Music Store is protected by FairPlay. It digit, AIFFAudio Interchange File Format is a file format standard used for storing audio data on PCs. The format was co-developed by Apple based on Electronic Arts Interchange File Format ( IFF) and is most commonly used on Apple Macintosh computer systems. An AIFF, Audible audiobook, and Apple LosslessApple Lossless (also known as Apple Lossless Encoding or ALE is an audio codec developed by Apple Computer, for lossless encoding of digital music. Apple Lossless Encoding was introduced in QuickTime 6. 1 and thus as a feature of iTunes 4. 5 on April 28 2 file formatA file format is a particular way to encode information for storage in a computer file. Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There as. It cannot play Windows Media AudioWindows Media Audio (WMA is a proprietary compressed audio file format used by Microsoft. It was initially a competitor to the MP3 format, but with the introduction of Apple's iTunes Music Store, it has positioned itself as a competitor to the advanced au, or RealAudioRealAudio is a proprietary audio codec developed by RealNetworks. It is especially designed to conform to low bandwidths, and it can be used as a streaming audio format, i. played at the same time as it's downloaded. Many radio stations use RealAudio to s files; and Apple seems unlikely to add support for these formats, as they compete with Apple's QuickTimeQuickTime is a multimedia technology developed by Apple Computer, capable of handling various formats of digital video, sound, text, animation, music, and immersive virtual reality panoramic images. There are three main components to the QuickTime technol.
Apple designed the iPod to work with the iTunes software. When an iPod connects to a computer, it will automatically (by default) launch iTunes and mirror any recent changes to the user's music library.
The iPod uses ultra-thin hard drives made by Toshiba.
The iPod recharges its internal battery while it has a FireWire connection to a computer. It also comes with an AC wall plug which can connect with the FireWire cable; the wall plug sends power over the FireWire connection, but no data, so owners can recharge their iPods without using a computer.
The first incarnation of the iPod functioned solely as a music player. Later, firmware upgrades added some PDA functions: the unit can store a copy of information from the Address Book and iCal applications on the user's Mac, and can also display notes, though users cannot edit any of this information on the iPod.
Newer iPod accessories include a memory-card reader and a voice recording module, both manufactured by Belkin and officially licensed by Apple Computer.
The iPod originally interacted only with Macintosh computers, but on July 17 2002, Apple Computer began selling a Windows version with its internal hard drive formatted as FAT32 instead of as HFS+. [1] A Microsoft Windows version of iTunes was released on October 16, 2003 [2]; previously, Windows users needed third-party software such as Musicmatch Jukebox, ephPod or XPlay to manage the music on their iPods.
The most recent generation of dockable iPods removes the Mac/Windows distinction; the iPod is shipped with its hard drive formatted for use with a Macintosh, and the user can reformat it for Windows use after purchase. An iPod with its hard drive formatted as HFS+ operates only with a Macintosh, because Windows does not recognize HFS+, but since the Macintosh can handle FAT32, an iPod formatted as FAT32 can operate with a Macintosh as well as with a PC. But HFS+ leaves slightly more space available to store data, and it lets the iPod serve as a boot disk for a Macintosh computer.
On January 8, 2004, Hewlett-Packard announced that they would license the iPod from Apple to create an HP-branded MP3 player, dubbed the HPod. The following day, Hewlett-Packard chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina unveiled the new, blue iPod-based device at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show. While a blue iPod never made it into production, the current HP model, completely identical to the Apple iPod, sells as the "Apple iPod + hp". Retailers of this model include (among others) the retail giant Wal-Mart, which includes a disclaimer explaining that it will not work with its own online music service.
Certain developers have expended some effort into getting the open-source operating system Linux to run on iPods, with some success. A SourceForge project exists for the effort [3], and guides exist online. [4]