By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
With 300 million units sold in ten years, the iPod is possibly Apple's most successful product and the one series of devices that managed to transform and then dominate the digital music player market. Evolving from being purely an MP3 player to a true personal media player and, with newer iterations approximating the features of the iPhone, the next best thing to a handheld computer and PDA. This is my iPod story as I look back at the iPods I've owned and what made them so special.
Pre-iPod MP3 players looked like portable disc players and had about the same capacity, 1 hour of music
Like most people, I was highly skeptical of the very first iPod when it came out. I had owned an MP3 player ( am Eiger MPMAN F20) and it was designed to look like a Discman. It could only play around 60 minutes of music even with a 64MB SmartMedia Card attached to it.
The manufacturer description said it all "the MPMan weighs in at less than 2.5oz (not including the batteries). It is smaller than a 3.5 floppy diskette and even thinner than a pack of gum! You can now truly take your music anywhere!!"
The truth was that the experience was extremely lacking. Navigation was tedious and the audio quality was not that great, plus you had to find a way to encode your CDs into the proper format and then choose the 24 songs you liked most to take with you.
The first generation iPod was a bold move. It was expensive at $399 but it did offer 1,000 song storage plus fast music transfer via FireWire. This was before iTunes and file strnasfer was drag and drop into the iPod's music folder. The clickwheel worked well and the navigation system still remains today.
I got my first gen iPod through eBay and it served me for a good four years (and two batteries, which I changed myself using a butter knife). Here's the thing, back then, I could never fill up the 5 GB capacity on the device. I mostly used ripped CDs and some digital files to populate the iPod but always had around 2.5 GB free.
Since then, I've had a slew of iPod Classics, a few Nanos and iPod Touches and one shuffle (my least favourite iteration). I've used a bunch of other MP3 players too but eventually found my way back to the iPod and iTunes, things are just much simpler. I do think that iTunes has become a bloated bit of software, specially since it needs to manage iPods, iPads and iPhones and work not just with music but with apps, movies.
Of all the iPod models, I have to say that the Classic still appeals to me.
It is a mostly singular device focused on music and maybe movies but has the best battery life and can really excel at providing music lovers access to all their tunes all the time. iCloud is a great idea and I am sure a lot of people will love accessing their music that way.
The iPod Classic today remains as one of the most accomplished devices. 160GB of storage is a staggering amount of music and even video and photos. The fact that all that fits in your pocket still surprises me today.
The iPod Nano, which evolved from the iPod mini is now completely multi-touch and has a lot of cool features that appeal to a certain user set.
The Nike Plus capability has proven to be stellar for runners and doesn't even require a sensor to be placed in your running shoes.
Apple also listened hard to how its customers liked to use the iPod Nano (as a wristwatch) and has now designed a variety of faces for the device including homage to such characters as Kermit the Frog and Mickey Mouse.
I had one of the original nanos with the clip and it was my contstant gym and running partner since it allowed me to listen to my favourite podcasts and even radio stations.
Unfortunately, I had clipped it to my pocket and it wasn't secure so I lost it crossing the street in the snow and since it was so light, I hardly noticed until hours later.
So, maybe wearing it as a watch is really the way to go.
Apple recently updated and dropped the price on iPods nano and Touch.
The latter model, which very much resembles the iPhone in look and functionality now comes in white and starts at $199. With iMessage and FaceTime capability now, the iPod Touch is a great communication device as well as s handy PDA or pocket computer.
Apple has iPod offerings starting from $50 to $400. This pretty much covers the whole spectrum of this market and we see it difficult for competition to squeeze into the gaps. The most important feature of the iPod is that it has, in a way, been the gateway to the Apple ecosystem. Customter who grew up using the media player were soon using the phone, the tablet, the computers and all the accessories which makes the iPod the smallest yet most successful trojan horse in history.