iPod (Scroll Wheel)

Contexto histórico

The iPod was a hard disk based digital music player that was smaller than most portable tape decks. The iPod could compete with both flash-based and hard disk based players: By using a 1.8" hard disk, Apple was able to make the iPod smaller than most other hard disk MP3 players, small enough to go up against flash-based players, whose capacity was more than an order of magnitude less than the 5 GB available on the iPod. The 5 GB iPod was priced at $399 U.S. In March 2002, Apple added a 10 GB model to its iPod lineup, for $499 U.S. Several months later, in July 2002, Apple replaced the mechanical scroll wheel with a solid-state touch wheel, added a $499 U.S. 20 GB model, and dropped the prices of the 5 and 10 GB models to $299 U.S. and $399 U.S., respectively (The 5 GB iPod kept its mechanical scroll wheel). In addition, Apple for the first time made iPods available to Windows users.