SeriesApple iPod

Apple's Third Generation iPod was, for most people, their first iPod, and it was the generation of iPods that started it all. My particular model was the 20gb, although I later upgraded it to a different size. Overall, there were 5 different storage sizes of this iPod, including 10, 15, 20, 30, and 40gb models. On the earlier iPods, including this one, Firewire was the primary connection, and you had to charge the iPod over the firewire port. The included cable also had a usb port (in a y-cable like fashion) that you could use with Windows in order to sync the songs. But this was the last model to rely on Firewire, and all newer iPod models would fully support USB in addition to supporting Firewire. What made iPod's revolutionary, and what made then stand out from everybody else, is the capacitive circular control. No one had seen anything quite like it before, and it was very easy, intuitive, and beautiful to use. The main button in the center was also capacitive, as well as the other 4 main buttons on the top of the front (back, menu, forward, play/pause). One problem with the capacitive controls and buttons, though, is that you cannot normally use them while wearing gloves, and you can't control them with pens or other objects. This prevents the buttons from being activate on accident, when the iPod is in your pocket or purse, but it also makes using the iPod during the winter to be a bit of a hassle. The device is relatively small, and definitely portable, considering that there is a hard drive inside of it. And it is very easy to setup using Apple's free music organizing and playing software, iTunes, which in itself is a huge factor to why the iPod has been so successful over the years. Even at ten years old, there is still a demand for these iPods, and that just goes to show, how valuable and popular they have been, and continue to be.

The Apple iPod Shuffle, 2gb version (second generation), is one of the simplest, smallest, and easiest to use music players out there. For a device with no display, is it very easy to use and figure out. It has a master pause/play button, volume up, volume down, fast forward (or skip), fast backwards (or skip backwards), and a master power switch. It also has a switch that triggers shuffle mode; usually you would keep this on. There is also a built-in clip on the back, which has nice spring action to it, and clips easy to just about any article of clothing. I love the simplicity and aesthetics of the design. It is very smooth, no unnecessary edges or bumps. In fact, the clip on the back is neatly designed to look like a semicircle and a triangle, which is very cool. There is also only one external port; the headphones and the charger and the computer connection all function on a special 1/8" port with an extra conductor connection. Very simple and very cool! It does require a special usb adapter dock, which is different than the multi-pin adapter that all other iPods and iPads use. If you already use iTunes, setting up the iPod shuffle is a breeze, simply plug it in, set what playlist to fill the shuffle with (or fill with selections from the entire library), and it will randomly fill the shuffle for you. If you want, you can also turn off the shuffle mode, and set up an ordered song list (usually I would do this to listen to while albums front to back), and the iPod shuffle with play though the song list sequentially. Using the shuffle is a breeze; there is an indicator light that flashes and changes colors, depending on the message it's trying to send, whether that be that it's low battery, it's currently paused, it's turned on, and so forth. Overall, the iPod Shuffle is a great portable listening device, and if you need something simple and portable, this is the one for you.

The new Apple iPod Nano (6th generation) looks and functions quite differently than the previous iPod Nano's, and many people were upset by it. Notably, it is much smaller, and the features have been scaled back (it cannot play video, for example). But I find the new size and shape to be revolutionary, unique, and very cool. I consider it to be like an iPod Shuffle more so than an iPod Nano. In fact, I bought this to replace my iPod Shuffle. The new iPod Nano has two volume buttons, a master on/off button, a headphone port, and a dock port. All of the main controlling is done by the small square touch screen. My version features 8 gb of space. It also includes FM radio, fitness mode, and can view clock faces and podcasts. Notably, one of the reasons I bought this was for the FM radio, and I wanted to use it as a cheap in-ear monitor system receiver. However, there is a 1/2 lag between the fm signal in real time, and when the audio comes through on the iPod Nano. Obviously, this is not a problem when listening to radio, but this latency is unacceptable for monitoring. I was a bit disappointed, and ultimately I used a cheap $10 sony walkman (with analog tuner) as my in ear monitor receiver. Another cool feature is the clock faces, and if you buy a corresponding watchband, you can wear the nano just like a watch! I don't particularly use it for cosmetic or time-keeping reasons, but I do wear it this way when I work out. The fitness mode is also pretty useful. It can keep track of your time, distance (with some calibration), and calories spent, during running or walking workouts. It did take some calibrating with half a dozen runs, in order to get the mileage working correctly, but I am amazing how well it does seem to work without the apparent aid of GPS. Overall, this is a great little device that simply is not part of the Nano line. It is it's own beast, and if you need something like a iPod Shuffle but with a little more space and features, this is the iPod for you.

The Ipod has changed the face of the way we listen to music, everyone has an Ipod these days. This 80G Ipod has enough storage space on it for all of your music still with room to spare. The screen is nice big and bright for you to see extremely easy. I love the design , its very sleek and shiny. Slim as well, and can fit anywhere you need it to be. Ipod’s pride themselves on quality, this will last you a long time. I am going on 3 years with mine and haven’t had a problem yet and I am sure I never will. Itunes is a free software you can download with this, to manage all of your music or download and buy more. Even movies and TV shows and go on this Ipod. Not to mention games that you will have you sucked and make hours of your day fly by. Ipod’s price is very respectable not to high. Allows for anyone looking for an mp3 player to be able to afford this. Don’t waste your money on the heap MP3 players. Go with one that has been trusted for years and has all the specs and memory that this one has. This is basically like a computer in your hand, it can store so much music you wont need cd or the radio any more. They create so many other options for the Ipod like thing you can buy to make it play through your car stereo is a amazing. Apple never fails to create productions that us buyers love. I once had a cheap mp3 back in about 2004 all the up to 3 years ago. When I bought the Ipod, that mpc3 went in the trash. This is a truly amazing product, I take mine everywhere with me.

The Ipod touch is one of the best music players you can get now adays. The 32gb version is the largest one you can get. Some casual music fans might not need 32 GB but back in the day 32GB was a normal size for music players. Apple has kind of herded people into using smaller capacity music players. The Zune I had before this was 32 GB and I thought that was normal sized. Even the Ipods that came before this you could get in like 60 and 80 GB. Compared to the Zune this has more features. . The Ipod touch has an external speaker which the Zune does not have. The interface of the Ipod is much more customizable than the Zune and this is even more so if you jailbreak your device. The Ipod has built in support for audio books as long as you get them from iTunes. The applications you can get on the Ipod make its usefulness next to unlimited. If you can think of it someone has made an application for it. On current devices you can run two applications at once but before when I had gotten mine you could not do this. You can do it if you jailbreak your device but it is very hard on battery life. One thing I wish the Ipod touch had is a volume jack on the top of the device. On the Zune the volume control is on the top of the device. I carry my mp3 player in the pocket of my pants so with the Ipod having the jack on the bottom of the device I have to keep the device upside down in my pocket. With the Zune I did not have to do this. The Ipod Touch is the best mp3 player you can get today. It is pretty much an Iphone without the phone part. One downside is the price. This Ipod is like 250 dollars. I only payed 200 for my Zune a few years earlier and it was the same size. You can get an iphone for nearly the price of this thing and its a phone too.

The original iPod took the world by storm and helped push the MP3 distribution into an unstoppable monster. The device that helped start it all was the iPod, now renamed the iPod Classic. It has gone through tons of different reiterations, and this is probably the last one. Ever since the third or fourth generation iPod, there has been the special scroll wheel. It feells great and responds nicely, but there has been some issues with it sometimes failing due to dirt getting inside of it after years and years of hard usage. The iPod Classic is known to be storage monster, and this is no exception. The 160 GB can hold more music than most people have. However, you have the issue of the hard drive failing since it’s still a standard disk hard drive. The newer devices on the market are faster and more shock/drop reliable since they’re all flash based. You always have two camps -- you have the one that must have their entire storage synced, so they get a device like this. The others are smart enough to realize they don’t have to sync their entire library to their iPod every single time, so they get away with special playlists and selectivity when it comes to putting music on their device. In case you couldn’t tell by the way this was worded, I’m in the latter group. I have well over 200 GB of music, and if I were to sync the entire library, not only would it take forever over the USB 2.0 connection, but I’d also have to deal with scrolling through all of that every time I want to listen to music. It’s just not really practical. If you’re looking for a new iPod, I recommend trying to get the iPod Touch or the iPhone if you need a phone as well. If you need the extra storage space, I recommend you just rethink the way you sync.

The Ipod Touch pretty much changed the mp3 player industry. Before the Ipod Touch was around mp3 players were pretty simple. They just played music and you might be able to access a music store with them to buy songs. When the Ipod touch came out it had way more features than any other mp3 player had at the time. I will compare the Ipod Touch to the mp3 player I had before it, the Microsoft Zune. The Zune at the time was a pretty advanced mp3 player. It could access the internet but only to synch your player or access the proprietary music store. The Ipod Touch has an internet browser and you can go anywhere with its wifi connection but unlike the Zune you cannot sync your device wirelessly without hacking it. Because of the full internet access the device is much more versatile than the Zune. The Zune I had I paid 200 dollars for and it was 32 gigs. The Ipod Touch I had goes for roughly 200 dollars and only had 16gigs with only about 14 of that usable. The Ipod touch has an external speaker which the Zune does not have. The interface of the Ipod is much more customizable than the Zune and this is even more so if you jailbreak your device. The Ipod has built in support for audio books as long as you get them from iTunes. The applications you can get on the Ipod make its usefulness next to unlimited. If you can think of it someone has made an application for it. On current devices you can run two applications at once but before when I had gotten mine you could not do this. You can do it if you jailbreak your device but it is very hard on battery life. One thing I wish the Ipod touch had is a volume jack on the top of the device. On the Zune the volume control is on the top of the device. I carry my mp3 player in the pocket of my pants so with the Ipod having the jack on the bottom of the device I have to keep the device upside down in my pocket. With the Zune I did not have to do this. The Ipod Touch is the best mp3 player you can get today. It is pretty much an Iphone without the phone part.

The Apple iPod Mini was a miniature version of the famous iPod that Apple released from 2004 to 2005. The device contained a standard scroll wheel found on the older iPods, had a monochrome screen and was available in either 4 GB or 6 GB versions. The iPod Mini was never a device I liked. While it was smaller than the original iPod (now called the iPod Classic), it was never that much smaller. On top of that, you had a limited storage space. For someone like me who has hundreds of gigs of music, the small audio capacity was very limiting. The battery life on the device was only eight hours on the original one, but the newer one bumped it up to eighteen. The device itself was marketed more towards people who were active with their lifestyle. If you were a runner or someone who does lots of exercising while listening to music, you were the target audience of the iPod Mini. It seemed to work nicely thanks to the smaller form factory and ability to not skip like crazy. The headphones that come with this unit are pretty bad. They are cheaply made and sound pretty thin overall. Most people who got an iPod during this time (and even today) tend to replace them with higher quality headphones. The navigation of the unit remains unchanged from the fourth, fifth and sixth generation units, so there’s no issues when it comes to finding your music thanks to Apple’s extremely intuitive interface. In the end, the device was short lived thanks to the introduction of the iPod Nano. In fact, the Nano is still made to this day. While the device wasn’t too bad at the time, it still had its flaws. Considering how much Apple has advanced during these six years, I wouldn’t even buy one used due to reliability issues.

The Apple iPod Nano Chromatique is a great iPod that gives you excellent sound quality to listen to your music or watch videos. This iPod is great for just listening to music and relaxing. The iPod Touch has the same, but with Internet, Apps, Videos, etc. This iPod is great for what it is for; listening to music. You can watch videos in it and it's cool but the screen might be a little to small for that, but you can. All you have is videos to watch, music and games which aren't very entertaining but for listening to music, it's as good as the iPod Touch or any other iPod's. The value might be a little too expensive. I think this iPod shouldn't be 150 dollars when the best thing in it is listening to music while the iPod Touch 3G with 8GB costs about 200 dollars. The quality of the sound is as good as the iPod Touch. It really depends on what headphones you are using. If you listen to the iPod Touch with Beats by Dre headphones and you listen to the Apple iPod Nano Chromatique with regular Apple headphones, the sound will be better on the iPod Touch with the Beats by Dre but if you listen to the Apple iPod Nano Chromatique with Beats by Dre and the iPod Touch with regular apple headphones, the Apple iPod Nano Chromatique will be better. Before this iPod, I had the iPod Nano 2nd Generation which was probably no different from this one. The only iPod that makes a big difference was the iPod Touch because of it's different applications and utilities. You could really buy any other iPod Nano for a cheaper price and have the same experience I did with music and entertainment. You should just buy the 1st iPod ever invented, there is barely any difference upon its purpose, the only difference is the look and maybe some small details.