iPod Generations

The design of iPod's has changed over the years, while the hardware and capabilities have pretty much stayed the same. The batteries in early iPods have been known to fail after a time (300 to 500 charge/discharge cycle / two to three years). People have sued over this problem www.appleipodsettlement.com. Currently there are 4 main generations,

1G - mechanical scroll wheel and four buttons. There was no remote control and games available for it, except for breakout.

2G - touch-sensitive wheel, 10GB and 20GB hard drives.

3G - touch-sensitive buttons and USB connectivity. For third-generation iPod you're eligible for a free battery replacement or a replacement iPod at Apple's discretion. But you need a proof of purchase and to file a claim by September 30, 2005.

4G - click-wheel and only two hard disk version, 20GB and 40GB. The fourth generation of the Apple iPod doesn't sound any better than the third, but it's still the mp3 player to beat. Other improvements are the control wheel adopted from iPod mini and improved battery life. The dimensions are 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.6 inches and weight: 5.6 oz.

5G - Now comes in a 60 GB version. The new 5G 60 GB fifth-generation iPod now had 64 MiB of RAM, this will also extend the battery life as well. The more ram the less work is required of the battery. Comes with iTunes 4.7.1 also so it autosyncs album cover art. The cover art downloaded when you purchase music from the iTunes Music Store is transferred to iPod photo along with the music. So while iPod photo plays your tunes, you can enjoy the album art in colour. The fifth-generation iPod now incorporate all the original iPod buttons into the scroll wheel.

Video iPod - The latest iPod now has video playback. The iPod video is capable of decoding (or playing back) videos encoded in either of two codecs, MPEG-4 or H.264. It seems presently that the MPEG-4 format is likely to be your format of choice if you want to play high-quality converted widescreen DVD videos on your iPod.You’ll want to pick a resolution of around 480 or 720 pixels and encode. Apple have stated publicly that the iPod has the following video limitations:

• H.264 MPEG-4
  
• Maximum Resolution 320x240 480x480
  
• Maximum Bitrate 768 kbps 2500 kbps
  
• Maximum Framerate 30 fps 30 fps