The Latest iPods

The iPod is a portable media player launched on October 23, 2001. Apple, Inc. designs and markets the iPods and has an impressive lineup of iPod products. There are four types of iPods: Classic, Shuffle, Nano and the iPod Touch. The Classic is the only one using a hard drive, while the others use flash memory for storage. Hard drives offer much more storage, but flash-based memory is much more durable.

The latest iPod Shuffle is the smallest iPod so far. By doing away with the screen, the iPod is approximately 1.8 inches tall by 0.3 inches thin, making it smaller than your house key. The controls for the new iPod Shuffle have been moved from the iPod itself and are now located on the right earbud cord, making the controls more accessible and so they can be done by touch instead of sight. The iPod Shuffle has an exciting new feature called VoiceOver. VoiceOver lowers the music in the background and tells you the name of the song without interrupting the music and is done with one push of a button. The program iTunes reads the song information and switches it to the VoiceOver kit, allowing your song titles, artists and playlists to be announced. VoiceOver speaks in 20 different languages. As well, iTunes selects the language by looking at the song data then applying an intelligent algorithm for the correct language. The iPod Shuffle allows you to set a default language if you prefer.

Another iPod released is the iPod Touch. The newest Touch has built in Wi-Fi for web access and music downloads, a large touch screen and multiple applications. The iPod Touch developers have allowed third-party applications that can be downloaded from iTunes, allowing you to make calls without signing an AT&T two-year contract.