Thursday, November 17, 2005 - iPod Rocks This Season

iPod Rocks This Season

First of all I have to admit I don't know much about all this new technology stuff, so I had to do a lot of research for this article. I think it is worth reading. The world of electronics is expanding even as I am typing this into my blog. In a few weeks I will, believe it or not, be able to call it into my blog.

iPod is one of the most asked for gifts this season. iPod is a brand of portable digital audio and video player designed and marketed by Apple Computer. That was surely a mouthful, but this will help to explain it. They store music and or pictures on either a hard drive, or a flash  memory, depending on the size of the model. They also are capable of serving as an additional storage drive when connected to a computer. With so much new technology that is a very important asset.

itunes is the software used for uploading music and photos to the iPod. iTunes is a music 'jukebox' application that stores a comprehensive library of the music on a computer, as well as playing and ripping it. For those of us that don't know what that means I have searched it in my Wipedia and found "ripping"

Ripping

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Ripping is the process of copying the audio or video data from one media form, such as Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) or Compact Disc (CD), to a hard disk. While the original media is typically digital, the extraction of analog media such as VHS video or vinyl records to a digital format can also be referred to as "ripping" by extension. The copied data, called "rips", are usually encoded in a compressed format such as FLAC, MP3, WMA or Ogg Vorbis for audio or MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX or Ogg Theora for video in order to conserve storage space.

For consumers of digital content, there are a number of practical uses for ripping. One is to allow the owners of CDs or DVDs to listen or watch their purchased content in a more flexible way. For example, ripping can allow users to listen to music from a number of different albums without having to change discs and to make customized playlists of the music. Ripping can also be used to allow music to be played on portable digital audio players. Creating a backup of purchased and copyrighted media is legal in some countries, including the United States. In countries like France, anyone is allowed to make a private copy of a copyrighted material for himself and the source copy does not even have to be legal (making copies for other people is however forbidden, and, a fortiori, charging for such copies).

Since the music or video is transferred to a data file, the files can be shared with other computer users over the Internet.

According to a recent article the most recent incarnations of iPod and iTunes have video playing and organizational features. Other forms of data can be added to iPod as if it were any other data storage device connected to a computer. The Wikipedia explains that the Apple Corporation many times uses the reference below.

"Apple Computer often refers to the player as iPod, without use of the definite article the. Apple's web site reflects this usage (for example, "iPod incorporates the same touch-sensitive Apple Click Wheel that debuted on iPod mini"), which resembles Apple's use of the words Macintosh or iMac. The company has other products with a lowercase "i" in front of the name, including iSight, iChat, iTunes, iDVD, and iBook. When Apple first introduced the iMac, the "i" stood for internet, meaning that the iMac shipped with everything you would need for a connection, but the prefix stuck, as the brand recognition associated with it has positive effects on the sales of Apple products. Recently, some media have started referring to the generation primarily born in the late 1980s, and which in particular has made the bipodce popular, as the iGeneration, suggesting that the "i" family of products may have a far-reaching cultural impact."

Tony Fadell first came up with the idea of the iPod. The first iPod was released on October 23, 2001. The tremendous success of the iPod encouraged many people to go back to using Apple Corp. products again.

"iPods can play MP3, WAV, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, Audible audiobook, MPEG-4, and Apple Lossless file formats. The fifth-generation iPod can play .m4v, .mp4 and .mov video files. The Windows version of iTunes can transcode WMA files without copy protection to AAC, MP3, or WAV format for later transfer to an iPod, but WMA files with copy protection cannot be played in iTunes or be copied to an iPod. Reviewers have criticized the iPod's inability to play some other formats, in particular the Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats."

iTunes can automatically organize your MP3 files between your computer and your iPod as well as performing many other functions. An iPod can also be used to organize your contact list and your schedule. It can display notes. You can even play games on it.

The iPod in the past four years has had many different looks and designs. The newest release is shown below:

Pod nano

Main article: iPod nano.

On September 7, 2005, Apple announced the successor to the iPod mini, the iPod nano. Based on flash memory instead of a hard drive, the iPod nano is 0.27 inches (0.685 centimetres) thick, weighs 1.5 ounces (42 grams), and is 62% smaller by volume than its predecessor. It has a 65,536 color display that can show photographs, and connects to a computer via USB 2.0. The headphone jack is located on the bottom. It retains the standard 30-pin dock connector for compatibility with third-party peripherals. This is the first dock connector iPod that cannot sync to any PC (Windows or Mac) via FireWire cable, but the nano can still be charged via a Firewire connection.

The iPod nano introduced several new features to the iPod operating system, including the addition of world clocks, a stopwatch, and a screenlock option. With the world clock, users were given the ability to set the time in cities around the world, and set alarms for each time zone. The clocks could be set to automatically adjust for Daylight Saving Time. The stopwatch feature allowed users to press a button and start the iPod's timer, and stop it with another button. There was also a button for timing individual laps. The nano saves the user's stopwatch stats for multiple timing sessions, which is useful for comparing times. The screenlock option lets users set a 4 digit passcode for their iPod, and once the screenlock is activated the only buttons that can be pressed are the skip forwards and backwards buttons. The click wheel is used to input the digits to the passcode.

The iPod nano is available in white and black, in both 2 GB (US$199) and 4 GB (US$249) configurations.