Thursday, February 4, 2010

iPods

The

is a portable media player designed and marketed by Apple and launched on October 23, 2001. The product line-up includes the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the video-capable iPod Nano, and the compact iPod Shuffle. The iPhone can function as an iPod but is generally treated as a separate product. Former iPod models include the iPod Mini and the spin-off iPod Photo (since reintegrated into the main iPod Classic line). iPod Classic models store media on an internal hard drive, while all other models use flash memory to enable their smaller size (the discontinued Mini used a Microdrive miniature hard drive). As with many other digital music players, iPods can also serve as external data storage devices. Storage capacity varies by model, ranging from 2GB for the iPod Shuffle to 160GB for the iPod Classic.

A digital audio player, usually referred to as an MP3 player, is a consumer electronic device that has the primary function of storing, organizing and playing audio files. DAPs that have image-viewing and/or video-playing support are referred to as portable media players.