iPod, as most people know, is a sub-brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple.
The product line of iPod now consists of 4 types of models: iPod Classic, Touch, Nano, and Shuffle(see complete product description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod)
Most of the iPod products(excluding iPod Touch) also serve as external data storage devices.
Despite the wise marketing strategy of Apple, iPod has been always succeed not only in its unique styling, but also from several important aspects. First of all, the iTunes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes). Unlike other PMP(portable media player), iPod is perfectly supported by iTunes for the services of synchronizing music files, photos, video clips, podcast(orderable online radio program) and even calendar. Simply hook up your iPod to your PC, the iTunes take care everything for you. You can even buy music, movies, TV show, games, Podcast on iTunes without spend more effort on searching contents on other platform.
Other than these easy-to-use function, the hardware interface itself is also an appealing innovation. By simply rotating your thumb on the round shape touch control panel on iPod, you can use only one hand, one finger, to get you to every function you need. This creative control panel is not only fancy while using but also give the designer to have more spaces to work on its styling.
While the rounded touch control panel us, iPod gave us another surprise: iPod shuffle, the first PMP that is really tiny and plays music in random order. Back to the time before Apple launched iPod shuffle, they discover that sometimes people don't really want to decide the order of each songs, they just need some music being played to listen to, then Apple decided to create this tiny little iPod that you can easily put it in your pocket, in a style like LEGO toy that play random songs.After the successful iPod Shuffle, Apple presented the thinest one screen PMP: iPod Nano. Again this product was a superstar not simply because it's stylish, but also it solves the problem that people want a tiny PMP but still they want to have some control on the sequence of playing songs that iPod Shuffle cannot do.
Who use it? (or should I say, who doesn't?)
Since its major function is to serve as a PMP, most of its users are people who have the habit to listen to music through portable media. It's a bit hard to define its user demography because the iPod has cheap entry level price product as iPod shuffle, even young students can afford, at the same time it also has pretty fancy one: the iPod Touch which is a touch-screen operational interface. Some people bought it because they use it as a portable video player in which you can watch TV series like Prison Break, Lost, and etc.
I use it everyday, because...
The reason I chose iPod Classic with 60G memory is because at the time I bought it, I was about to leave my country to study abroad. I need a device to store all of my beloved songs in order not to bring them as 10 boxes packed with CD.
4 main function that I use a lot on my iPod classic: play mp3 music, store data from PC, listen to Podcast, and check calendar. Within these functions, I love the Podcast best because it saves me sometime to check on news on the internet. I sign up for 3 different free news Podcasts on iTunes and everyday it automatically update the latest news for me to listen to on subway. The calendar function let me check my schedule while I don't have my laptop, or in places without wireless signal to check the online calendar. Other reasons I like it are because its photo upload function sweep away my worry about not enough memory space of my camera when I travel abroad.
Conclusion
iPod has powerful supported service(iTunes), fancy styling, different products in line for different types of consumer.
There's a very useful plugin I love best, called iConcertCal. It shows you the dates of concert or new released album of your beloved band or artist. In an interface like a calendar, you can easily check when you can buy these album or concert tickets. It's good to have this plugin since I'm in New York, with a lot of concert that I can choose to go.
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