In the beginning, iPod had a monochrome screen, a 5 Gb capacity and it was the size of a deck of playing cards. Now it can be purchased with 60 Gb of memory, color screen which can play from television shows to movie uploaded from the computer. It can be connected to a computer with a FireWire or USB port. iPods have a strong reputation for being user-friendly.
The navigation through the iPod is done with a "touch wheel" and it is basically a one hand operation. iPod has a calendar, address book, to-do list application, alarm clock with sleep timer, games and text reader. There are many peripherals special created for iPod, like docks for digital cameras, digital voice recorders and docking stations that are integrated with stereo systems, powered speakers or even entertainment systems for automobiles.

Originally, iPod was platform dependent, but after July 2004, it has been improved and it works on either Windows or Mac, with Apple's iTunes software. iTunes offers the user the possibility to load an entire CD onto the iPod very fast, to organize thousand of songs in playlists, purchase songs and videos from the online store, and subscribe to podcasts. A podcast is a series of digital computer files, most of the time audio or video, which is periodically release and made available for download by web means.
The name for this product from Apple, iPod was suggested by the copywriter Vinnie Chieco, who went to Apple to find a way to introduce the new media player to the public. Seeing the prototype, he thought of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the phrase "Open the pod bay door, Hal!", (reffering to the white EVA Pods). The trademark was registered and assigned to Apple Inc. in 2005.
iPod supports most of the existent audio file formats including MP3, wav, and AAC. It became a personal extension of digital music lovers, and it is continously suffering improvements. Currently, the iPod is the world's most popular portable digital player, with more than 173000000 iPods sold worldwide as of September 2008.
All iPods have an internal hard drive and this means each iPod can also be used as a hard drive. More than a simple music player, the iPod can be used as a backup device, an organizer, or an alarm clock.The exception, concerning the internal disk, is the iPod Shuffle, which uses flash memory, but this doesn't bother its basic functions.
Because it has a superb interface and unmatched ease of use, iPod became the best product on the portable music player market. The "cool" factor of owning an iPod, among other factors, helped it to gain more and more popularity every day.



Cauley added that normally a device exclusive typically ends after 12 months, but AT&T deal, enclosed around 2006, is still on, Roth claiming that it was due to a ‘multiyear’ arrangement with Apple, according to their contractual terms. Going deeper into the matter, the limited duration of exclusive deals between carriers and handset producers do not restrict the developing and selling of the revolutionary products, such as iPhone, and to spread such innovations to more people. The question is: what can happen a year before the law conditions that deal must end? Do the subventions stop? For example, the iPhone 3GS that start at $699 will have the same price for everyone when it comes in the last year of legal exclusivity? This is a thing to be considered by lawmakers and Federal Communications Commission.