FINAL PROJECT

Description of an artifact: iPod

By: Elena Fernndez Navarro

iPod is a line of portable media players designed by Apple. They were introduced to the market in 2001.

The name iPod make reference to the pods in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Because of the analogy to the relationship between the spaceship and the smaller independent pods in the relationship between a personal computer and the music player.

Apple's iTunes software can be used to purchase, download and transfer music, photos, videos and games to iPod.
Storage capacity varies by model, from 2 GB to 160 GB. Battery life can be as short as 15 hours and as long as 40.

Types
There are 4 four ipod models: the ultracompact iPod Shuffle, the compact iPod Nano, the touchscreen iPod Touch, and the hard drive-based iPod Classic. Each of them has different, storage capacities, battery life, size and price.

Components
An iPod contains 451 different parts. that tiny electronic device that you use to play your favorite songs is really complex. iPods are composed of the hard drive, the video and audio chips, circuit board, RAM, battery pack, and the screen.

Shape
All iPod versions have a rectangular shape except iPod Shuffle and one of the iPod nano versions which are square. They are also thin and have rounded corners.

Colors
Depending of each iPod model there are different colors available as red, green blue, pink, purple, yellow, orange, black and silver.
The iPod is made from different materials that include: aluminium, plastic, stainless steel and many more.

Materials

Apple is an American multinational corporation, headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software and personal computers.

Designer/design studio

In particular, the idea of this MP3 Player didnt come from Apple boss, Steve Jobs. It was Tony Fadell, who has the idea for connecting portable music player with an internet service. Having been rejected by various companies, the idea was subsequently accepted by Apple in early 2001.

Production
An iPods hard drive is manufactured by Toshiba, a Japanese company. However, Toshiba often outsources its work to China and the Philippines. Broadcom, an American company, is responsible for manufacturing the two chips that are located inside of an iPod, but the chips are made in Taiwan. Basically, Apple is responsible for creating the idea of the iPod and marketing the iPod, but has no role in the production of this popular electronic device.

Brief history of other artifacts to cope with the same problem

Cassette player Portable tape recorders were released in the 1950s, initially they were highpriced units for reporters. Cheaper units came out later. In the mid1960s Philips introduced the batteryoperated compact cassette recorder, originally used for recording speech. Then the 8-track player was introduced. The first truly personal cassette player was the Sony Walkman, it came out in 1979. It was much smaller than an 8track player or the earlier cassette recorders, and was listened to with stereophonic headphones, unlike previous equipment which used small loudspeakers

Portable CD players
A portable CD player is a portable music player used to play compact discs. The first audio player that came out to the market was the D-50(also called the 'Discman) by Sony, in 1982. It was released just one year after the CDs were introduced to the market.

Digital players
In 1998, digital audio players (DAPs) based on flash memory or hard disk storage became available (The Rio PMP300 from Diamond Multimedia is considered to be the first digital player).

Smartphones Many people today have replaced portable music players for smartphones. Even though they have the disadvantage of not having as much storage capacity for the music library and the fact that smartphones batteries dont last too much, its considerably more convenient than having two separate devices. The first cell phone to have MP3 music capabilities was created by Samsung in 2000. By 2006, more MP3 players were sold in mobile phones than all MP3 players put together

Reasons for this artifact to be a good solution

It has a really good design and attracts the attention. Its portable so you can take it wherever you want. Its thin and small so it doesnt take up so much space. Besides the fact that its mainly used to listen to music you can also watch films and TV programs, play games and share your photos. It has a photo function, the multimedia slideshow, that allows you to match songs and photos together as a slideshow which can play by itself. It has the ability to create playlists, that are basically groupings of songs that fit a certain mood or fulfill a need for some type of greater organization of your music. With 160 GB of storage, can hold up to 40.000 songs, 200 hours of video, or 25.000 photos.