The Arrival of the iPod

The year was 2001 when portable CD players were being replaced by iPods. I recall having my first Walkman (a portable cassette player) back in 1986. The Walkman was replaced by the Discman (a portable CD player) shortly after about five years of its circulation. The Walkman made listening to our favorite songs convenient while on the go. All you needed to do was pop in your cassette of choice, toss on your headphones, and walk out the door. The Discman on the other hand was even more convenient. It shared the convenience of portability like the Walkman but also offered instant song skip (rather then waiting to fast forwarding) and no more needing to flip a cassette to complete an album. The arrival of the iPod took portable convenience to the next level. With my iPod I can listen to my entire music library without traveling with additional CDs and it would not skip while in motion (which was an issue for the Discman).

            The iPod’s predecessor was created the same year as the Walkman in 1979. It did not get the same recognition as the Walkman and Discman because at the time there wasn’t enough in home desktops to support sales. There were also complaints of it being too big and difficult to use. The iPod is a lot smaller and compact than a Discman, which made it more durable. By 2001 there was one deck top in almost ever household and laptops were growing in numbers. iPod’s manufacture Apple developed a user-friendly system that made it easy to play and go. This made the sales of the iPod significantly greater than its predecessor.

            Since 2001 iPods have become the product of choice for portable music convenience. There are similar products in circulation but none is as successful as the iPod. The iPod has combined stylish appeal with revolutionary technology, which has constituted to its unimaginable success. Multiple “generations” of five different types of iPods: Classic, Mini, Nano, Shuffle and Touch have been released since its début. With each new generation, Apple makes improvements over the previous one. Over the years, the iPod Classic has gone from a chunky, black-and-white-screened gadget with a maximum memory capacity of 10 GB to a much sleeker, full-color device that can hold up to 160 GB of memory including music, video, photos, documents, calendars, addresses and games. The iPod Mini had two generations, but it was discontinued after 2005 when the Shuffle and the Nano were introduced. The iPod Touch, introduced in 2007, paved the way for the iPhone and inspired other companies to develop hand-held, touch-screen products of their own.

            iPods have become apart of daily living and continues to improve its features. This product entertains, organizes, captures rare moments, connects individuals, and is greatly appreciated by consumers. The convenience the iPod brings to consumers has helped in accessing many fields especially music. We choose and buy music very different then we did before. This has caused problems for music stores like Tower Records (which has gone out of business) but as a consumer it has improved life. Music is apart of our culture and changes almost everyday. With an iPod we can easily stay up to date and even post our own.