Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone, then,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette, and
Speaker 1: I am an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as always, his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I've got a hole in me pocket. I like that one.
Speaker 1: So you might hear some giggles in the background, just
Speaker 1: ignore that. That's our that's our our podcasting sprite who
Speaker 1: was joining us today. Yes, yes, because it's a magical
Speaker 1: time of year, we're recording this just before the new year. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. Actually, uh, it's right after the holidays in
Speaker 1: the aforementioned sprite actually has a bearing on what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, because, uh, this the the spriting question would
Speaker 1: be my daughter and she just received her very first iPod. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to talk today about the iPod. This
Speaker 1: actually comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail.
Speaker 1: This listener mail comes from Nick, and Nick says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I love your podcast and I've been a loyal listener
Speaker 1: for a long time. Now, I really think that you
Speaker 1: guys choose good topics, and I really like that you
Speaker 1: always release episodes on time. Thanks Nick, we like that too.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you could do a podcast on
Speaker 1: the history of the Apple iPod line, or for another idea,
Speaker 1: you could do a podcast on how Xbox Live, PlayStation
Speaker 1: network game center work and how they compare. These are
Speaker 1: just a few ideas, and I would love for you
Speaker 1: to do one either way. Keep up the good work
Speaker 1: sent from my iPod. So we decided we were going
Speaker 1: to tackle the iPod today and kind of talk about
Speaker 1: its history and its place in technology. Of course, there's
Speaker 1: no denying the iPod has taken a prominent place in
Speaker 1: technology today. That's true. But it wasn't. It wasn't the
Speaker 1: very first and three player on the market. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was relatively late to the game. That's true. Um
Speaker 1: although a lot of people think the very first MP
Speaker 1: three player was was from a company called Diamond, the
Speaker 1: Diamond Multimedia Rio p MP three. Yes, that was not
Speaker 1: the first shut your mouth, okay, but it's going to
Speaker 1: be a really boring podcast. Um. No, it was the
Speaker 1: the MP three man from Sayhand, which was actually launched
Speaker 1: in Asia in the late spring. I found that out
Speaker 1: from Elliott Van Buskirk Att c NET, who then moved
Speaker 1: on to write for Wired. Indeed, um it was actually
Speaker 1: released in the United States by Igor Labs, the MP
Speaker 1: man F ten and F twenty again, and just a
Speaker 1: scant few months before Diamond released the Rio here in
Speaker 1: the United States. There was also before that there was
Speaker 1: a device called the Listen Up Digital Audio Player. But
Speaker 1: you can argue whether or not that truly fits the
Speaker 1: MP three player model. It was definitely a digital audio player,
Speaker 1: but I would say that the MP man and the
Speaker 1: the Diamond Ultimate Multi Media Rio, those are probably more
Speaker 1: traditional MP three players the way we think of them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so so you guys know, do you did you
Speaker 1: happen to see how many I had to look this
Speaker 1: up in another source. Did you have to see how
Speaker 1: many megabytes of music it held? Yeah, it's funny you
Speaker 1: should say that megabytes, not gigabyte. No, No, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about gigabytes, thirty two megabytes because these were these
Speaker 1: were flash memory based and at the time when they
Speaker 1: were released, flash memory was still very a very young
Speaker 1: technology compared to hard drives, but no one had really
Speaker 1: invested in making a hard drive version of an MP
Speaker 1: three player. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And uh as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, it was also an expensive technology compared
Speaker 1: to what it is now. You can go into ah,
Speaker 1: go into convenience stores and pick up a gigabyte thumb
Speaker 1: drive for you know, four or five dollars now may
Speaker 1: be exaggerating, but not by much. Well, let me put
Speaker 1: it this way. When you go to something like the
Speaker 1: Consumer Electronics Show, a lot of them will put their
Speaker 1: press kits on digital formats on a thumb drive, and
Speaker 1: the average size of those thumb drives, I would say,
Speaker 1: is two gigabytes. So these are companies that are are
Speaker 1: creating hundreds of these to give away to vendors and
Speaker 1: the press. So it's clearly not as expensive as the
Speaker 1: old ones. That's true. But so so. The MP three player,
Speaker 1: as it was before the launch of the iPod was
Speaker 1: um a very small device as far as storage goes,
Speaker 1: there was, although it was you know, in general solid
Speaker 1: state UM, so that seemed very very high tech. Um.
Speaker 1: They also sort of resembled the cassette players of the time. Yes,
Speaker 1: they were a little clunky. They had a lot of
Speaker 1: button I will say that I in my research. I
Speaker 1: did uncover one hard drive MP three player that predated
Speaker 1: the iPod. It was the Hango Slash Remote Solutions Portable
Speaker 1: Jukebox p j B DASH one hundred, which was released
Speaker 1: in actually and it could hold up to six gigabytes
Speaker 1: of music, but that was mainly limited to Asia. There
Speaker 1: wasn't really, there wasn't an attempt to break into the
Speaker 1: Western market. Yes, it's actually funny that you would say that, because, uh,
Speaker 1: that sounds sort of foreign, but it kind of wasn't
Speaker 1: because Van Busk points out that was actually developed by
Speaker 1: Compact but licensed to Hango, which was Korean company. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know at that point, you know, as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, when Hewlett Packard acquired Compact, they
Speaker 1: licensed the iPod. Yeah, it's kind of funny. It's funny
Speaker 1: that they could have gotten a jump on the market
Speaker 1: in the United States, But of course there was no
Speaker 1: way of knowing at that time. No, So why would Apple,
Speaker 1: a company that at that point was known mainly for
Speaker 1: creating computers, that did try to do some personal electronics
Speaker 1: that to one extent or another did not work out
Speaker 1: So well, Newton, I'm looking at you. I'm sorry, did
Speaker 1: you say Pippen, So why what what would lead them
Speaker 1: to invest in creating a digital music player. Actually, uh,
Speaker 1: it's funny too, because it wasn't really Apple's idea. According
Speaker 1: to some of the information that I've read, the idea
Speaker 1: came from outside the company, from a from a guy
Speaker 1: named Tony Tony Fidel or Fatal. I'm going with Fidel.
Speaker 1: I would say that a D E. L. L yea.
Speaker 1: He he had worked with Phillips in the past and
Speaker 1: with General magic um, but basically was pitching the idea
Speaker 1: of I don't know, an MP three environment, a music player,
Speaker 1: and something where you could get your music from your
Speaker 1: computer to the MP three player. Yeah, he was looking
Speaker 1: at an entire ecosystem, everything from the software that would
Speaker 1: live on your computer that would organize your music and
Speaker 1: let you put it into different formats or different playlists,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and as also a device that
Speaker 1: you would store that music on and you could play
Speaker 1: it back later. So he was definitely looking at the
Speaker 1: big picture, and he thought that no one had nailed this.
Speaker 1: People had created some devices that you could put music on,
Speaker 1: but no one had really taken the model so that
Speaker 1: it had everything encapsulated in one big package, and so
Speaker 1: he actually shopped this idea around to several companies, yes,
Speaker 1: including a couple that probably were kicking themselves years later.
Speaker 1: Real Networks was one UM, Real being famous for providing
Speaker 1: computer software that would allow you to play streaming content,
Speaker 1: audio and video files on your computer. UM. They were
Speaker 1: looking at the Rhapsody music service, which still exists in
Speaker 1: a form or two. UM, but also Phillips, his former employer,
Speaker 1: known for consumer gadgets of all different kinds. UM. You
Speaker 1: have thought that one or both of them would have
Speaker 1: been interested in the idea of coming out with something
Speaker 1: like this, but they weren't, and he turned to Apple instead. Yep.
Speaker 1: And strangely enough, Apple at that time said this sounds interesting.
Speaker 1: We are going to invest in it, and essentially Fidel
Speaker 1: got hired to work on this project. He was assigned
Speaker 1: a team of about thirty people from Apple. He also
Speaker 1: had a company called portal Player that was helping UM
Speaker 1: and there were about two hundred or more people and
Speaker 1: at portal Player who are also working on this project. UH.
Speaker 1: And then as the project went on, as they began
Speaker 1: to develop what would eventually become the iPod, a certain
Speaker 1: Mr Steve Jobs got very involved in the process to
Speaker 1: the point where I saw it described as being one
Speaker 1: involved that it became almost a daily activity for Jobs
Speaker 1: to check in on the project to and to give
Speaker 1: notes which essentially said it's not loud enough. Make it louder,
Speaker 1: which I saw was attributed according to one writer, to
Speaker 1: Jobs having uh some hearing problems. Which is why the
Speaker 1: which is why the the iPod is louder than some
Speaker 1: of its uh some other MP three players. Why the
Speaker 1: settings go this one goes to eleven. It's one louder.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there was another fellow who was very likely
Speaker 1: heavily involved in the design of the iPod, the physical
Speaker 1: design Jonathan I've, who is the He's a senior vice
Speaker 1: president of of design over at Apple and has had
Speaker 1: a hand in designing all sorts of Apple products. And
Speaker 1: when when you sit there and talk about how Apple
Speaker 1: products are really sleek and beautiful and they have great
Speaker 1: lines and uh you know, even the whole no buttons thing,
Speaker 1: we can we can thank Jonathan i for a lot
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, uh, Steve Jobs as well, so Jobs
Speaker 1: and I've together they really shape the way things look
Speaker 1: coming from Apple. Yes. Indeed, so this um this project
Speaker 1: that goes on UH. It actually comes to fruition UH
Speaker 1: and in late two thousand one, UM actually October two
Speaker 1: thousand one, the first generation iPod debuts. Yes, yeah, on
Speaker 1: the twenty three, they had the first generation iPod. Now,
Speaker 1: when they announced this UM, Apple had rented UH presentation
Speaker 1: space in California and basically all they had told the
Speaker 1: media was, Hey, we've got a big announcement coming and
Speaker 1: it's not going to be about the Mac. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: was really really seek. In fact, they were so secretive
Speaker 1: about this that even within Apple people were not allowed
Speaker 1: to look at this. That's right. It was only the
Speaker 1: design team that had any access to what it looked like.
Speaker 1: And if anyone was going to test it, anyone from
Speaker 1: outside that team, they would have to go into a
Speaker 1: room where the iPod would be kept in a box
Speaker 1: that had only a couple of little windows and access
Speaker 1: points for you to kind of poke your fingers in
Speaker 1: and push the different buttons and and to to play
Speaker 1: with it without getting a full look at the device.
Speaker 1: So no one from outside that team would be able
Speaker 1: to describe what it looked like. It's a great, great
Speaker 1: design method. So yes, the first generation iPod UM. There
Speaker 1: were two versions. You know, the first one only could
Speaker 1: well could hold five gigabytes worth of music. I say only,
Speaker 1: but really, when you think about it competing NP three
Speaker 1: players at the time, we're between thirty two to sixty
Speaker 1: four megabytes, so five gigabytes was quite a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the big selling points. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course it didn't achieve this with flash memory. It
Speaker 1: used a physical hard drive, very hard drive inside a
Speaker 1: very small hard drive. And then the later one that
Speaker 1: was added was because the very first one five gigabytes.
Speaker 1: It was shortly followed by a ten gigabyte model, but
Speaker 1: otherwise had the same specs. Uh. And this one, this
Speaker 1: iPod was a little different from all future iPods. Uh.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about the the the interface
Speaker 1: that was, so that's unlike all the other iPods. Yes, this,
Speaker 1: this particular iPod UM had a mechanical wheel that you
Speaker 1: would use to scroll through the songs. Now, Um that
Speaker 1: actually the the interface was one of the things that
Speaker 1: set the iPod apart from its competition, because if you'll
Speaker 1: remember when I mentioned it a few minutes ago, Um,
Speaker 1: everybody else was still stuck in the old fashioned using
Speaker 1: buttons for play fast forward and rewind. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was making navigate. It was hard to navigate long playlists.
Speaker 1: It's really tedious to use that kind of feature. And
Speaker 1: especially when you're talking about a player that could hold,
Speaker 1: you know, thousands of songs in comparison with the older ones,
Speaker 1: you were going to be spending a lot of time
Speaker 1: just skipping songs. So they wanted something that they could use,
Speaker 1: and they came up with the scroll wheel. But this
Speaker 1: was a mechanical scroll wheels instead of later editions where
Speaker 1: you used you know, we'll get into that in a moment,
Speaker 1: but a touch a touch scroll wheel, um. And it
Speaker 1: did have a ring of buttons, um, you know, for
Speaker 1: the menu and for ford and back that surrounded the
Speaker 1: outside of it. And of course a black and white screen.
Speaker 1: Uh used the old Chicago font for those of us
Speaker 1: here a long time, I was wondering if you were
Speaker 1: going to go with the fonts too. Had that I
Speaker 1: had that written down as trivia at the end. Yes,
Speaker 1: you scooped me. Let you scooped me. You know what happens.
Speaker 1: And you used a FireWire as far as the interface goes,
Speaker 1: so you could hook it up to your your Macintosh
Speaker 1: confect that's all you could hook it up to It
Speaker 1: was not Windows compatible. The very first iPod was only
Speaker 1: compatible with Mac computers that used the FireWire cable to
Speaker 1: sink and to charge. It had an arm processor. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the operating system was designed by a company called
Speaker 1: Pixel and the Do you know how much it originally cost?
Speaker 1: I believe it was four It was four hundred dollars
Speaker 1: four hundred smackers for this thing. And uh and so
Speaker 1: the very first iPod, you can't really call it a
Speaker 1: runaway success, although it did definitely make a huge impression
Speaker 1: on everyone at the event because no one knew what
Speaker 1: was coming and no one no one really thought of
Speaker 1: Apple as a music company. You know, today it's hard
Speaker 1: to think of Apple as a computer company. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: think of it as a music company. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: changed its name since then too, since its success in
Speaker 1: portable electronics. Now Apple is not Apple Computer, it is
Speaker 1: Apple Inc. Also, of course, there was something else that
Speaker 1: we have mentioned in a few times in the past,
Speaker 1: that being Apple's uh feud with Apple Core, the Beatles company, um,
Speaker 1: you know, over its music capabilities. Of course they were butting.
Speaker 1: The two companies butted heads for a while, whether or
Speaker 1: not they were allowed to uh to play music on
Speaker 1: a Macintosh computer or any of the other mac or
Speaker 1: the excuse me, any of the other Apple computers up
Speaker 1: until that point. That is where uh it is famously
Speaker 1: said the so sumi uh sound came from error sound. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so that that was one of those things.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know Apple a music company. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And and the iTunes version they ahead at the time,
Speaker 1: which was iTunes two point one. Um, it was really
Speaker 1: a music management system. It wasn't designed to um, you
Speaker 1: couldn't purchase music. There was no music store at that time. No, no,
Speaker 1: so you would you used it to manage your music,
Speaker 1: but you didn't use it to acchoir music. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was that was One of the things that l didn't
Speaker 1: know when he came to Apple was that Apple had
Speaker 1: already purchased a company that made a software called sound Jam.
Speaker 1: And those of us who are fans longtime fans of
Speaker 1: another at that point competing company Panic they make really
Speaker 1: awesome uh mac software. They made a program called Audience,
Speaker 1: which was in a feud that they were the two
Speaker 1: big MP three players for the Macintosh at that time.
Speaker 1: There were others, but those were the two big ones.
Speaker 1: And UM, a lot of people were kind of upset
Speaker 1: that sound Jam ended up getting purchased by Apple, but
Speaker 1: that the acquisition was actually kept quiet and sound Jam
Speaker 1: became what you know became iTunes in its later incarnations.
Speaker 1: But it was originally a very uh simple management program
Speaker 1: and music player for the Macintosh. Right, and then let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's skip ahead a little bit. On July sevento two,
Speaker 1: we got the second generation of the iPod. Now, this
Speaker 1: one came in ten and twenty gigabyte versions gigabytes, yes,
Speaker 1: and it worked with Windows uh to some extent. There
Speaker 1: was a new scroll wheel. It was the tactile scroll
Speaker 1: wheel that we're familiar with now. It's not no longer mechanical.
Speaker 1: Now it's like the touch screen type, well not touch screen,
Speaker 1: but the tactile like the touch pads you would find
Speaker 1: on laptops. It's a capacitive, capacitive touch surface. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was that was what you were familiar with. Now.
Speaker 1: The look seemed pretty similar. It still has the ring
Speaker 1: of buttons around there and they still has the black
Speaker 1: and white screen with Chicago still uses FireWire, although you
Speaker 1: can get an adapter to work with PCs and UH
Speaker 1: it also on PCs it did not use iTunes because
Speaker 1: there was still no iTunes for PC yet. It used
Speaker 1: music Match Jukebox instead, I remember them. So that was
Speaker 1: so you could still uh. Well, now now they've opened
Speaker 1: up to a much larger market, it's still pretty expensive,
Speaker 1: um and the price will go down in the next generation.
Speaker 1: But we'll talk about why that is in a second.
Speaker 1: So this was this was a pretty big leap for Apple,
Speaker 1: and they're now taking aim at a market beyond just
Speaker 1: the Apple die hard enthusiasts, you know. Uh. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about the third generation, which comes out in April
Speaker 1: of two thousand three. Yes, a in fact, and then
Speaker 1: this one came out in a series of sizes. They're
Speaker 1: released ten, fifty, thirty and forty gigabyte versions of this
Speaker 1: third generation iPod UM. The scroll wheel no longer had
Speaker 1: the buttons surrounding it. In fact, it had a series
Speaker 1: of buttons above the scroll wheel. But it's still black
Speaker 1: and white, right, and it fully supported Windows. Uh. It
Speaker 1: used iTunes four point one or early on you can
Speaker 1: still use music Match Jukebox, but quickly it became iTunes
Speaker 1: uh specific, and that was the only management software you
Speaker 1: could use to to well legally used I guess you
Speaker 1: could say or sanctionally used on your iPod. Sanctionally Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a real word, that's a uh so it
Speaker 1: Also they switched they changed up the battery used to
Speaker 1: be a lithium polymer battery in the first two generations,
Speaker 1: but they switched to lithium ion, which sadly meant that
Speaker 1: the playtime actually decreased from the second generation to the
Speaker 1: third generation. That went from ten hours to eight hours playtime.
Speaker 1: But now it was a fully support Windows so you
Speaker 1: didn't have to worry about this kind of namby pamby support.
Speaker 1: And also it had a USB sinking capability, which you
Speaker 1: know that was the next big step was that that
Speaker 1: still supported FireWire, but you could also use the USB
Speaker 1: to to sink it. Now. Also, if you just throw
Speaker 1: it in water by itself, right, don't do that, they
Speaker 1: don't support it if you if you get your iPod wet,
Speaker 1: you will not get it fixed. Do not throw your
Speaker 1: iPod in water. So right around this time in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, there was something else that was starting. It
Speaker 1: was a kind of a revolution in uh in in
Speaker 1: getting information out into the wild. Um. It was this
Speaker 1: thing that was called eventually it was called pod casting,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's what we're doing right now. But right
Speaker 1: around the two thousand three was when Christopher lydon h
Speaker 1: began to to podcast, although at the time it wasn't
Speaker 1: called that. It was kind of called audio blogging or
Speaker 1: you know, they had a lot of different words for it.
Speaker 1: Somebody talking into a mic and then you download it
Speaker 1: and stick it on your m P three player. Ring. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The earliest mention of the word podcasting that I could
Speaker 1: find came from an article in The Guardian called Audible Revolution,
Speaker 1: written by Ben Hammersley, and it was just in what
Speaker 1: do we call this podcasting? I had always heard it
Speaker 1: attributed to Adam Curry. It would not surprise me. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it, you know, that's true. That's always
Speaker 1: what I had heard. It could very well be true.
Speaker 1: So at any rate, that also helps propel the iPod
Speaker 1: and MP three players in general to even greater prominence
Speaker 1: because now now people are starting to use it for
Speaker 1: things beyond just managing music it. Uh So in two
Speaker 1: thousand four we get a new product in the iPod line, Yes,
Speaker 1: the iPod Mini. Yes, that's true and uh and in
Speaker 1: keeping with the uh still popular iMac series of computers
Speaker 1: at that point, which we're coming in a different, uh
Speaker 1: line of color, the whole range of colors. They did
Speaker 1: that with the iPod Mini as well, right, because early
Speaker 1: the early iPods were only arriving in white. That was
Speaker 1: the only color that they came in, So the iPod
Speaker 1: Mini gave a little bit of a splash of color.
Speaker 1: They were of course smaller than the other iPods. That
Speaker 1: was also in the air storage capacity. They could only
Speaker 1: hold up to four gigabytes of music. That's still, granted,
Speaker 1: more than any of the flash based players that were
Speaker 1: around at that time, although by this time there were
Speaker 1: other players on the market that also used many hard drives,
Speaker 1: um you know, like Creative had come out with a few,
Speaker 1: and there were others as well. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it's uh worth noting that at this point
Speaker 1: the iPod was competitive but not dominant in the market.
Speaker 1: I mean, the machines were held far more music, but
Speaker 1: they were so expensive. I mean that's you know, at
Speaker 1: this point in two thousand four, when the iPod Mini
Speaker 1: was released, I started thinking about the possibility that maybe
Speaker 1: at some point I would actually go out and buy
Speaker 1: one of these things. But they were so darned expensive. Um.
Speaker 1: And I actually had a Sonic Blue Uh. They were
Speaker 1: the company that had acquired the Rio. Uh. I had
Speaker 1: a real volt Do you remember those? I remember seeing them. Yes,
Speaker 1: they they were CD players, UM, so you could play
Speaker 1: regular CDs on them. But they were MP three players too.
Speaker 1: They could record a a a disc with MP three's
Speaker 1: on them if you were uh encoded in the Windows
Speaker 1: format if you don't think it would read Mac discs
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, I no longer have it. But um,
Speaker 1: you could you know store. It was sort of iPod
Speaker 1: like for me because you could store you know, however,
Speaker 1: any CD songs you could fit on a single CD.
Speaker 1: You know, seven hundred megabytes worth of music. That was
Speaker 1: far more than you know, the little pocket flash players. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't as much as like a you know,
Speaker 1: forty gigabyte. You still needed a disk to be able
Speaker 1: to play stuff. I mean, but but yeah, storing stuff
Speaker 1: as a as a digital file as opposed to the
Speaker 1: audio format, you could fit a lot more onto a CD,
Speaker 1: and you could carry fewer CDs than you would if
Speaker 1: you had to say a discman, Sony's Discsman, discs men
Speaker 1: discman um so sort of in between, you know, I
Speaker 1: still was thinking someday I would actually have one of
Speaker 1: these things. Well, and the price for the iPod was
Speaker 1: starting to go down a little bit, just because they
Speaker 1: had at this time launched the iTunes music store, which
Speaker 1: helped them generate revenue beyond just selling the devices, So
Speaker 1: by selling music, they were making money. As it turns out.
Speaker 1: The next one, the iPod fourth generation black and White eight,
Speaker 1: which released on the nineteenth of July two thousand four,
Speaker 1: was my very first and I still have it iPod.
Speaker 1: I got the twenty gig version. There is a forty
Speaker 1: gig version that also came out. UM had a longer
Speaker 1: battery life twelve hours, amped it up, UM, and uh
Speaker 1: it was. It was really neat, except and I got
Speaker 1: a Christmas that year, so it was December of two
Speaker 1: thousand four, and I was really happy for about eight
Speaker 1: to ten months. Yeah, this seems to be a running
Speaker 1: theme with you and and Apple products. Well, actually, I
Speaker 1: think it's probably pretty safe to say with most tech products,
Speaker 1: but you tend to adopt them. Just before they announced
Speaker 1: the next model, and the next model was a doozy.
Speaker 1: So you just talked about version four, right, Yes, the
Speaker 1: fourth generation iPod, So the fifth generation iPod, that's what
Speaker 1: we're looking at now. Well, I'm thinking, are you looking
Speaker 1: at the stuff that they released in between the stuff
Speaker 1: that was released on October of two thousand four, At
Speaker 1: least that's the date I have, but I remember it
Speaker 1: being announced a little later than that, because that was
Speaker 1: what some people call the fifth generation was the first
Speaker 1: color iPod, uh, and it was essentially it was called
Speaker 1: the iPod photo Um, which was the first color a screen.
Speaker 1: And really other than that, other than the size and
Speaker 1: the color screen wasn't a whole lot different. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: couldn't playback video yet, it could do photos, but not video.
Speaker 1: I was so annoyed that it was a color iPod
Speaker 1: and I had just gotten one. And right around this
Speaker 1: time actually was a real network enters the story just
Speaker 1: briefly again. They created a software called Harmony, which reverse
Speaker 1: engineered the fair play copy protection that Apple was using
Speaker 1: so that it would allow they could they could allow
Speaker 1: Reel's Rhapsody music service to work with iPods, and an
Speaker 1: Apple released a patch that prevented iPods from interfacing with Rhapsody. Yes,
Speaker 1: and thus began the the the stories about Apple and
Speaker 1: how closed off. It was, but this was the idea
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. The idea was to create that
Speaker 1: music ecosystem. And part of that means that you control everything. Yes,
Speaker 1: you don't let other folks jump in there. Yes. The
Speaker 1: iTunes store now is one of the biggest, if not
Speaker 1: the biggest music retailer in the world. Um. They sell
Speaker 1: millions and millions and millions of songs, uh and now
Speaker 1: video and apps and all sorts of other things. And
Speaker 1: part of uh their ability to do that hinged on,
Speaker 1: you know, having a device for you to use to
Speaker 1: play those songs. Yeah. Now, two thousand five was a
Speaker 1: huge year for Apple. On the iPod line, the iPod
Speaker 1: Shuffle first generation came out. Uh. That one is the
Speaker 1: device that doesn't have a screen. It uses flash memory, um,
Speaker 1: and you just it just shuffles your your playlist so
Speaker 1: you you know, plays it randomly. And it came in
Speaker 1: twelve megabyte version and one gigabyte version. Because it was
Speaker 1: using the flash memory, it lasted about twelve hours of
Speaker 1: battery life. This is the very first flash memory iPod,
Speaker 1: which the pundits had been predicting pretty early on for
Speaker 1: the iPod line, But this is the first time they
Speaker 1: actually got around a releasing one, which was four years
Speaker 1: after the first iPods debut, and then a little bit
Speaker 1: later you get the iPod Mini second generation. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then you also got the iPod Color, which came out
Speaker 1: in June of two. Then you also get the iPod
Speaker 1: Nano first generation. So the Nano was what really replaced
Speaker 1: the Mini line. It's actually kind of funny because the
Speaker 1: Mini second generation came out February twenty, two thousand five.
Speaker 1: The iPod Nano first generation came out September seven, two
Speaker 1: thousand five. So within the same year they introduced and
Speaker 1: then replaced a line of iPods. That's pretty uh. It's
Speaker 1: becoming very very common for devices such as these. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the Nano had a color screen, but the nanos
Speaker 1: themselves were only available in black or white at first,
Speaker 1: which was kind of that kind of bummed out people
Speaker 1: who were used to the colorful minis. Uh. Then on
Speaker 1: in on October twelve, two five, you got the fifth
Speaker 1: generation iPod, which that a lot of people talk about
Speaker 1: that being like the real game changer for Apple as
Speaker 1: far as design goes. UM. It came in thirty and
Speaker 1: sixty gigabyte versions. It lasted up to twenty hours on audio,
Speaker 1: but it also could playback video. At this point they
Speaker 1: dropped the SINC support for FireWire. It only charges. Now
Speaker 1: you can still use a FireWire to charge your iPod,
Speaker 1: but it won't sync with your computer. You have to
Speaker 1: use a USB to sink it. UM. And then a
Speaker 1: little bit later on they got kind of a mini
Speaker 1: many update UM where the sixty gigabyte version was dropped
Speaker 1: and an eighty gigabyte version was introduced. But people sometimes
Speaker 1: call that generation five point five UM. So that was
Speaker 1: two thousand five and two thousand six. You see the
Speaker 1: second generation of the iPod Nano come out, and they
Speaker 1: actually have some different options for U for colors now
Speaker 1: not just black and white are back. Still no video
Speaker 1: on that, but it comes into four or eight gigabyte versions.
Speaker 1: Then you had the second generation of the iPod Shuffle.
Speaker 1: This was the one that looked like kind of like
Speaker 1: a postage stamp. I had a clip on the back
Speaker 1: and they'll let you clip to your clothing. Still no
Speaker 1: screen or anything like that. No, that's a that's true,
Speaker 1: but I believe that was the only one to actually
Speaker 1: have a clip built in and until until later, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that one had a clip built in. It
Speaker 1: was the first one and the only one at that time. Um,
Speaker 1: and then let's see, now I've lost my Oh, here
Speaker 1: we go the iPod sixth generation. Now this is uh
Speaker 1: to skip two thousand and six or did I just
Speaker 1: talk about that? Now? We just did. Suff This is
Speaker 1: what I get for not wearing my glasses when I'm
Speaker 1: looking at my notes. I Pod sixth generation and two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, Uh, September five. Okay, So now we're getting
Speaker 1: into the point where the previous year they announced the
Speaker 1: Nano and the Shuffle on September twelve, two thousand six.
Speaker 1: This is where we're starting to get into that annual
Speaker 1: September announcement for i hood products. Two thousand six was
Speaker 1: really the first year where they really did concentrate on that,
Speaker 1: and then two thousand seven they come out big. On
Speaker 1: September five, they released the iPod sixth generation, which really
Speaker 1: just uh gets the updates of iPod with eight and
Speaker 1: sixty gigabyte versions. Otherwise it pretty much stays the same.
Speaker 1: The iPod Nano third generation comes out. This is the
Speaker 1: first Nano that allows video playback. The iPod Touch debuts,
Speaker 1: the first generation iPod touched. Hey, what generation iPod Touch?
Speaker 1: Did you get? First generation? All right? So anyway, first
Speaker 1: generation iPod Touch came out eight sixteen and thirty two
Speaker 1: gigabyte versions. This was the first first touch screen iPod.
Speaker 1: It was meant as sort of an alternative to people
Speaker 1: for the iPhone, for people who liked the iPhone form
Speaker 1: factor but didn't want to get locked down into a contract. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was That was funny because at the time in
Speaker 1: my I made jokes that the iPod Touch didn't actually exist.
Speaker 1: That when you got to the Apple store and said
Speaker 1: I want an iPod Touch, they'd say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you can have an iPhone for just a hundred dollars more,
Speaker 1: and they would go, oh, okay, I'll do that. So
Speaker 1: they never had to actually show that they didn't have
Speaker 1: what It did exist, and I do own one and
Speaker 1: it still it still works very well, although it could
Speaker 1: stand a battery replacement after two years. That's another thing
Speaker 1: that just just as a note, Apple does not let
Speaker 1: you replace your your battery, not not on your own anyway.
Speaker 1: You have to you have to get service for that. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of That was one of the big complaints
Speaker 1: people had about the iPod line all the way from
Speaker 1: the very beginning was that you could not replace the battery. Okay,
Speaker 1: is that closed of an ecosystem? Yeah, and we're already
Speaker 1: over thirty minutes. So we're gonna zoom through the rest
Speaker 1: of these because most most of these are just updates. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll mention the ones that have the really big changes.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand and eight September nine, two eight,
Speaker 1: they released the iPod Classic version too. Because the sixth
Speaker 1: generation was technically the first iPod Classic, I thought Classic
Speaker 1: version two just it only came in a D twenty
Speaker 1: gigabyte version, but otherwise was the same. The iPod Nano
Speaker 1: fourth generation. This was the one that was really tall
Speaker 1: and narrow and you could shake it to shuffle the music. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The iPod Touch second generation added some stuff like the
Speaker 1: external volume control and external speaker, but other than that
Speaker 1: that really weren't a whole lot of updates to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then except I spent a lot of time complaining
Speaker 1: that I didn't wait for the second generation, right, I
Speaker 1: remember that? And then uh, the in March of two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, they released the iPod Shovel third generation. This
Speaker 1: was the one that um looked like a solid little
Speaker 1: stick of aluminum gum. Yes, and there was so there's
Speaker 1: no there were no controls on the device other than
Speaker 1: a power switch. You had to control it using controls
Speaker 1: on your headphones, so you had to buy Apple headphones
Speaker 1: for it. This would not prove popular and they would
Speaker 1: change that on the next generation. So then we get
Speaker 1: to the nine nine event September nine, two nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a big one. iPod Classic version three comes out.
Speaker 1: That's a hundred sixty gig version. Uh. You get the
Speaker 1: Nanogeneration five, which included the FM radio and the pedometer
Speaker 1: and a longer screen, different colors, and it had a
Speaker 1: camera on the back which allowed you to record video.
Speaker 1: But you know what didn't have a camera. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: iPod Touch. They improved the voice controls and they did
Speaker 1: it was about it. iPod Shuffle. Uh. Fourth generation came
Speaker 1: out the next year. Uh and uh. The Shuffle at
Speaker 1: this point takes the square form factor. This is the
Speaker 1: one that's current where it looks like a perfect square.
Speaker 1: It's got the control or the play button in the middle.
Speaker 1: There's still no screen. It's got the voice stuff on
Speaker 1: the so you can listen to it in the headless,
Speaker 1: but they put the buttons back, Yes they did. They
Speaker 1: realized people wanted to use their own headphones, and they
Speaker 1: just updated the firmware on that one. That's the one
Speaker 1: my daughter got for Christmas, and uh, they just updated
Speaker 1: that so that you can use the play button as
Speaker 1: a lock ah. And then they also at that same
Speaker 1: event they introduced the iPod Nanos sixth generation. This is
Speaker 1: the square one that has the touch screen interface. That
Speaker 1: was very pretty, but it confused some people because it now,
Speaker 1: the iPod Nano doesn't have a camera anymore. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have video playback anymore, but it still has the FM
Speaker 1: radio and you can use it for data storage, and
Speaker 1: it looks like it has apps on it, but it doesn't. Right.
Speaker 1: It's confusing because it does have a little touch screen
Speaker 1: interface like the Touch and the iPhone do, but there
Speaker 1: are no apps. And then the fourth generation iPod Touch
Speaker 1: with the display and the camera and the camera finally
Speaker 1: and FaceTime capability. It also used the same processor as
Speaker 1: the iPhone, the A four processor. So that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of where we are in now we've got um you know,
Speaker 1: like the iPod Classic hasn't really had an update since
Speaker 1: two thousand nine and probably I would doubt, I doubt
Speaker 1: that they're going to update that. They probably still support it,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's they're really pushing people for the
Speaker 1: iPod Touch, for the for the flagship product, and then
Speaker 1: you have then and the Shuffle supporting it. Now, over
Speaker 1: the years, many many, many other people have entered the
Speaker 1: flash uh MP three player market. There are tons and
Speaker 1: tons of people that that are doing that, but there's
Speaker 1: still the iPod has come to dominate the MP three
Speaker 1: player market, even in the face of stiff competition from
Speaker 1: companies like Microsoft with the Zoom UM, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: upgrading the Zoom with every iteration and offering new features.
Speaker 1: Now here's a twist. Uh, Samsung I saw the other
Speaker 1: day is rumored. Now that's as of this recording. It'll
Speaker 1: probably be announced by the time it actually goes live,
Speaker 1: is coming out or is expected to come out with
Speaker 1: an Android based competitor to the iPod Touch, which I
Speaker 1: imagine will be if it can run applications from the
Speaker 1: Android Store, the Android market. Uh, that will be serious
Speaker 1: competition for the iPod Touch. Yeah, of course, you would
Speaker 1: have thought that the Zoom HD would have had some
Speaker 1: some legs on it, but Zoom it's never really I mean,
Speaker 1: it has its it has its champions, right. There are
Speaker 1: people who love the Zoom products, and it is a
Speaker 1: it is a nice MP three player. UM, I haven't
Speaker 1: quite figured out exactly why it hasn't done better than it.
Speaker 1: I think part of the problem is that the Zoom
Speaker 1: HD really really performs well against devices like the Nano.
Speaker 1: It's when you get to the iPod Touch that you say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this this doesn't really measure up to the Touch. And
Speaker 1: there's not you know, there's not a model above the
Speaker 1: Zoom HD that really goes toe to toe with the Touch.
Speaker 1: That's what That's what I think an objective person coming
Speaker 1: at it completely without bias would say. And you have
Speaker 1: to understand I originally I did not want to own
Speaker 1: an iPod when I when I got into MP three's
Speaker 1: I owned a creative zen Zen Touch. That thing was
Speaker 1: a brick. Let me tell you. It was like having
Speaker 1: a brick of lead in your pocket. But it held
Speaker 1: lots and lots of music. It had a much higher
Speaker 1: hard drive capacity than anything Apple had at that time,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't as ex pensive. Then when I got
Speaker 1: my Mac, I realized how awesome iPods could be. And
Speaker 1: the reason for that is that the iTunes integration with
Speaker 1: Mac and the integration with iPods that that works great.
Speaker 1: iTunes on the PC doesn't always work great, right, it
Speaker 1: doesn't always work great on Max either, but but it's
Speaker 1: more seamless that way. So, um, we're gonna wrap up.
Speaker 1: But you mentioned that the the iPod up to the
Speaker 1: fourth generation anyway used the Chicago font, iPod Minis used
Speaker 1: sp sands, the iPod Photo up through the fifth generation
Speaker 1: iPod used a font called Myriad, and everything else except
Speaker 1: for the latest iPod Touch uses hell Vettica. iPod Touch
Speaker 1: fourth generation uses hell Vetica knew in EU Eui. So
Speaker 1: to all of our Neui listeners out there, thank you
Speaker 1: for tuning in. This is heard that word we're gonna well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's justifiable homicide in my opinion, put that
Speaker 1: many vowels together, it's just destined to happen. All right, guys, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna wrap this up. We hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: episode about iPods. We'll probably do others on specific technologies
Speaker 1: in the future. If you have any suggestions or tips,
Speaker 1: or you just want to share your own iPod story.
Speaker 1: You can let us know on Twitter and Facebook are handles.
Speaker 1: There are text stuff h s W or you can
Speaker 1: shoot us an email that email. I just is tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and
Speaker 1: I will trought you again really soon. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
Speaker 1: on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
Speaker 1: our homepage. The How Stuff Works ipone app has arrived.
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