History of the Ipod

Ipod came from Apple's "digital hub" category, when the company began creating software for the growing market of personal digital devices. Digital cameras, camcorders and organizers had well-established mainstream markets, but the company found existing digital music players "big and clunky or small and useless" with user interfaces that were "unbelievably awful"so Apple decided to develop its own. As ordered by CEO Steve Jobs, Apple's hardware engineering chief Jon Rubinsteinassembled a team of engineers to design the iPod, including hardware engineers Tony Fadelland Michael Dhuey, and design engineer Jonathan Ive. The product was developed in less than one year and unveiled on October 23, 2001. Jobs announced it as a Mac-compatible product with a 5 GB hard drive that put "1,000 songs in your pocket."

 

Uncharacteristically, Apple did not develop iPod's software entirely in-house, instead using PortalPlayer's reference platform based on 2 ARMcores. The platform had rudimentary software running on a commercial microkernel embedded operating system. PortalPlayer had previously been working on an IBM-branded MP3 player with Bluetoothheadphones Apple contracted another company, Pixo, to help design and implement the user interface under the direct supervision of Steve Jobs. As development progressed, Apple continued to refine the software's look and feel. Starting with the iPod mini, the Chicagofont was replaced with Espy Sans. Later iPods switched fonts again to Podium Sans— a font similar to Apple's corporate font, Myriad. iPods with color displays then adopted some Mac OS Xthemes like Aqua progress bars, and brushed metalin the lock interface. In 2007, Apple modified the iPod interface again with the introduction of the sixth-generation iPod classicand third-generation iPod nanoby changing the font to Helveticaand, in most cases, splitting the screen in half by displaying the menus on the left and album artwork, photos, or videos on the right (whichever was appropriate for the selected item).

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