Unit 5 (Certificate), 2.1 "Use appropriate research methods and techniques to carry out research into an existing media product."

Unit 5 (Certificate), 2.1 - "Use appropriate research methods and techniques to carry out research on an existing media product."

All the research methods and techniques that I previously spoke about in 1.1 of this unit, I am going to put into practice, and try and find out all I possibly can about an existing media product - the iPod.

The first port of call on the internet for me is usually Wikipedia, and that goes for mostly everything I end up researching. Even though it is a website that is edited by your everyday user, the site has become a lot more reliable over the last few years as more and more people begin to use it. Really, it has become an encyclopedia for the internet generation.

The next place that I visit is Apple's site. Here, in terms of getting information about the actual products that Apple sell, and the kinds of things they can do, it is probably the best website to retrieve all the technological details that are needed.

Because Apple are such a well known company, there are many websites dedicated to their products, and of course, that includes the iPod, so, for my next task in order to find out as much as possible about the iPod, I start with a search engine, Google, and carry out my last part of the research this way.

Here are the list of websites and search engines that I used to carry out my research:


Wikipedia 

Apple

Google

iPodHistory (google search)

Crave.cnet (google search)


And here is the important information, using these techniques and methods, that I have found out about the ipod:

• Ordered by Steve Jobs to create a music player that wasn't "big and clunky and small and useless", the Apple CEO assigned his engineering chief, Jon Rubinstein, and the team of his choice, to create the iPod 
• It took just over a year to invent the iPod. 
• The iPod name was invented by a man who was asked to help Apple market the product, Vinnie Chieco. 
• The name for the iPod came from the the quote in 2001: A Space Odyssey "Open the pod door, Hal!"
• 23rd October 2001 was the date, month, and year, that Apple introduced their first generation of the iPod.
• The first Apple iPod was priced at a steep £300, and had the storage capacity of either 5 or 10GB.
• Since 2004, Apple has dominated the sales in digital music players, with 90% of the market for hard-drive based players, and 70% for all types of players. 
• To date, there have been six generations of the 'Classic' iPod, the MP3 that is notoriously known for holding the most amount of data, two generations of the Mini iPod, six for the Nano and four for the Shuffle and Touch. 
• The current generations of the iPod, fourth for the Touch and Shuffle, sixth for the Nano and Classic, and second for the Mini, have all have progressed from their former versions significantly in terms of the amount of GB's of data they can hold. 
• The classic iPod now can hold either 80GB, 120GB or 160GB of music, photos, videos, etc.  
• As of October 2011, Apple have sold 300 million different types of iPods worldwide since it's inception (2001).

There is so much information out there to do with the iPod and its different generations, but, I believe, I have put into bullet points the most vital and valuable details about the infamous MP3 player out there.