How an IPod Works - Essay Example

The iPod is the most pervasive piece of technology ever to enter the American culture. They are everywhere and everyone either owns one or knows someone who does. For many people, it is hard to imagine life after Ipod. It goes everywhere, is ready on a moment's notice, and provides pleasure beyond our wildest fantasies. All this emotion and lust for an inanimate object has been described in psychology texts spanning the last 150 years. Now you've grown up, gone to school, and own your own iPod. It gleams in the sun, brings a smile to your face, and is your closest companion from morning until dusk. You want to know more about this iPod but are overwhelmed by the technical jargon of MP3 and DMZ protocol. Yet, under that veil of secrecy lies a simple device that requires only a simple understanding. The Ipod is a three-step process of getting an input, looking for some human interface, and giving an output.

Long before you listen to a song on your iPod, a studio somewhere on the West Coast had disassembled the song and broken it into small pieces waiting to be purchased. They take these pieces and squeeze them down and compress them into small packets called the MP3 format. When you order this song it is quickly thrown into a delivery system called a download. The packets come through the Internet, into your computer, out to your iPod, and are stored in a box called memory. The squeezed packets, under great pressure, will sit and wait until their next calling. The song that was broken up only moments ago has buried itself deep within your machine through a step called input.

The input sits in the box and waits for the human interface. In the world of Ipod, the output is the small brain, the human is the big brain, and the input is no brain at all. Here in the 2nd step, the Ipod waits for human control. The big brain kicks in and presses the right buttons, it locates the mood and navigates to the proper memory box. The big brain sets the tone, volume, and playlist. The human has completed the programming and hits the play button. The human interface has completed step 2.

After the human locates the box of compressed packets, the process is turned over to the output. Here, the small brain of the Ipod's decoder takes over and begins to sort through the box of compressed data. Each time a new packet is located in the box, the output opens the packet and it expands back into its original size. The output then places these decompressed packets on a wire that runs to your headphones. Here the packets that were being squeezed in a West Coast studio just moments ago are music to your ear.

In conclusion, the Ipod is really just a three-step process. It gets input, asks for some human guidance, and produces a beautiful melody in your ear within a matter of moments. No device on earth is as simple or as elegant. A music processing studio compresses the song into a format called MP3 and is sent to the iPod. Here, the input is stored in a box while it waits for human instruction. The big brain of the human makes all the decisions and once the instructions are received, the output busily unpacks the box and presents the newest and most versatile opportunities that an ear has ever heard. The Ipod, as complex as it may appear, is really just a few simple steps that make an elegant 3-step process.