October 26, 2004: Apple debuts the iPod Picture, a tool able to placing not simply 15,000 songs in your pocket, but additionally 25,000 images. The brand new machine “allows you to take your whole music and picture library with you wherever you go,” Apple says.
It’s the first iPod to supply a colour display and the power to show digital pictures and album cowl artwork. The iPod Picture represents a giant step ahead within the performance of Apple’s iconic music participant.
iPod Picture: The height of the iPod’s success
A fourth-generation iPod, the iPod Picture entered the product line on the peak of the Apple music participant’s cultural influence. (Learn extra about that in our iPod retrospective, “An illustrated historical past of the iPod and its large influence.”)
The iPod Picture launched on this present day in 2004 introduced revolutionary new options along with its 2-inch, 65,536-color LCD display with LED backlight.
“iPod Picture holds as much as 25,000 digital images alongside your music library and shows them on its beautiful high-resolution colour display, permitting you to scroll by your picture library virtually immediately utilizing iPod’s patent pending Click on Wheel,” Apple mentioned in a press launch asserting the machine. “iPod Picture allows you to mix your music and your favourite images to create magical slideshows in your iPod, and options TV-out for sharing your slideshows on huge display televisions and projectors.”
Enhancements included elevated playtime and the power to ship pictures to a tv through composite- or S-video cables. Past the display and different updates, it retained the identical Click on Wheel controller as different iPods, together with then-standard FireWire and USB 2.0 connections.
It got here in two configurations: a 40GB mannequin that retailed for $500 and a 60GB model that price $600. This made the brand new machine a comparatively pricy (though tempting) proposition.
Apple’s up to date music participant is all about that colourful display
In fact, that candy colour display was the iPod Picture’s huge promoting level. It made an enormous distinction when in comparison with earlier iPods’ drab, monochrome shows.
Menus regarded cleaner and the built-in Solitaire sport lastly proved playable. Even higher, artist names or music and album titles that didn’t match on the display now not acquired minimize brief with an ellipsis. Now, they scrolled throughout the display. It was like dwelling sooner or later!
Wanting again from as we speak’s vantage level, it’s apparent that gadgets just like the iPod Picture weren’t merely makes an attempt to lengthen the lifespan of a product getting lengthy within the tooth by slapping on a couple of low-cost (or not-so-cheap) gimmicks. As an alternative, the power to hold a high-end colour show in your pocket, and to have the ability to use this to view images, was a part of the build-up to the iPhone, which Apple unveiled three years later in 2007. In that means, the iPod Picture helped pave the best way for Apple’s arrival as a real “cellular first” firm.
The iPod line continued lengthy after the iPhone’s launch, nevertheless. Apple lastly pulled the plug on the iPod contact in Could 2022.
Did you personal the iPod Picture? Depart your feedback beneath.
