See Apple designs from changes of iPod

On September 1st, 2010, Apple announced the whole newly-refreshed line of iPod family.  To Rockia, this is really nothing impressively new.

iPod Shuffle

One thing really interests me is the control wheel is brought back to iPod Shuffle.

	Released on January 11, 2005, the first generation iPod Shuffle weighed 0.78 ounces (22 g) and was designed to be easily loaded with a selection of songs and to play them in random order. The first generation iPod Shuffle is more like a USB flash drive because it has the USB male plug with the iPod Shuffle. You can bring the iPod Shuffle with you to transfer your files with no extra USB cable needed. The design is the mid 90s Apple Classic Glossy White design.
	On September 12, 2006, Apple announced the release of the second generation iPod Shuffle, calling it “the most wearable iPod ever”. The second generation iPod Shuffle goes tiny. It’s labeled as “clip to anywhere” on the go.  Back then, I was quite impress by the size it comes with as Apple claimed it was the “world’s smallest MP3 player”. This size includes the new built-in belt clip; the actual unit itself is thinner, with the entire device weighing only 15.5 g (0.55 ounces). The design is metallic clip with control wheel.
	The third generation iPod Shuffle was released on March 11, 2009 and is said by Apple to be “jaw-droppingly small” and “The first music player that talks to you” with dimensions of 45.2 x 17.5 x 7.8 mm (1.8 x 0.7 x 0.3 in). The selling point for the 3rd Gen iPod Shuffle is the “voice over” and the size with no buttons.  All the control is done with “Voice Over” that only requires you to speak out the command. The size is only as big as my thumb. I was actually thinking Apple should rename iPod Shuffle as iPod pico.
	The fourth generation iPod Shuffle was announced on 1 September 2010 and featured the return of clickable track and volume controls from the first two generations. The control pad is 18% larger than the second generation of iPod shuffle and the model also features VoiceOver from the third generation in twenty-five languages.

OK, right! The 4th Gen iPod Shuffle it’s more like a combination of 2nd Gen and 3rd Gen. Have you noticed? Apple seems to be so proud of taking away the wheel when they announced the 3rd Gen iPod Shuffle but now they brought it back. Why? I guess the “VoiceOver” just doesn’t work that well as they might have expected. Look at the design of the 4th Gen iPod Shuffle, and then take a look at the 2ng Gen iPod Shuffle, will you ask yourself are they two a bit too similar to each other?

iPod Nano

I could see the same thing on iPod Nano too. If you compare the 5th Gen iPod Nano with the 4th Gen iPod Nano, you might just find Apple adds a video camera to it. And the “revolutionary” component of an iPod Nano was taken away in the latest 6th Gen iPod Nano.

Will Apple brought back the camera in the 7th generation of iPod Nano? We will see.

iTunes

Can’t make a note on iTunes, Apple’s player software, while talking about the iPods.

Previous iTunes logo

iTunes 10 logo

So, how is the newly designed logo? Apples loves it, do I ? Absolutely not!

Snow Leopard

I have mentioned it in Snow Leopard installation interface revealed as

Agree it or not, I found the design is not appealing at all, to a point that I am disappointed. To me, this is a drop in artistic level; I can’t help to ask, is Apple running out of resource or product designer?

That was a year ago. And now, we all know that the package is really as ugly as it is.

Post Note:

Apple is known to have the good design of their products as well as being creative in the computing industry.  Over the past two years, how many “wow” products did they actually brought to the customers? Well, maybe this is hard to define, but obviously not to me.

I am still an Apple fan and I really would like to see some more “revolution” out from Apple.