Ok, so your youngsters/teenagers have asked you for an iPOD for Christmas. You don’t even know what these means, let alone how to go about buying the right one and avoiding the dreaded Christmas tantrum… (They could always play with the box, like they did when they were toddlers?)

So, you’ve started a bit of research and you’ve hit this page. Good, because I’m not going to bamboozle you with techo-speak, but try and give you enough information to make a sensible choice about what to buy.

So, let’s start with the basics - what are your kids actually talking about?
What is an mp3 player? what is an iPOD?

An MP3 player (pronounced “emm pee three player”) is a generic term for what is really a modern day Walkman - i.e. a portable music player. The clever part is, instead of using tapes or CDs or minidiscs, it plays back music recorded in computer files, stored in some kind of computer memory (I don’t want to get too technical here, so stick with me, I’ll cover more of this later for those that are interested, but really you don’t need to know the detail if you don’t understand it.)

Mp3 players have become popular because computer music files (or any computer file) are easy to share and copy and transfer from one computer to another; and you can store lots of them on some very physically small devices. In the early 90’s files would be shared by swapping “floppy disks”; now you can fit 50,000 (fifty thousand) times as much information on a device the same size. Pretty good progress!

Now, I was flummoxed the other week when my significant other asked me “Why is it called an mp3 player?”

“Well, ” I said, “It plays M P threes?”

But she still didn’t understand - “But why isn’t is just called a Walkman?”

Ahhh.. the penny finally dropped about what she was asking and where the knowledge gaps were. So first thing to answer is:
what is an mp3?

Here’s the science bit: The “mp3″ part of the name is actually a very technial description of the way computer music files can be stored. You’ll remember that during the 90’s DVDs came to be invented. As part of the work in developing this invention, lots of work had been done looking at how you could store video recording and music recordings as computer files in a very compact form. This work was co-ordinated by the “Motion Picture Expert Group”. Some bright spark figured out a way to store video information on a computer in a very compact way, so this became known as MPEG encoding. Some other bright spark figured out how to compact the audio too, and this became known as MPEG layer 3 - which got shortened to MP3, and the name has lived on.

So, in short, MP3 is the standard by which music and speech is stored on a DVD Video. It just so happens, if you have a computer, it’s a really good way to store your music in general.

So, getting back to the point of “what is an mp3 player?”, it’s a gadget that can store and play back these music files. I should point out that there are other possible ways to store your music files, and different players play the different types (for example - there is WMF = windows media format). But generically these players have come to be known as MP3 players, probably because of their slightly geeky heritage.
What is an ipod?

iPOD is to MP3 player as Hoover is to vacuum cleaner.

I.e. IPOD is the brand name that Apple Computers chose for its famly of Mp3 players. However, the ipod family has become so cool and desirable, that in many circles the name has been adopted generically to describe devices that aren’t even made by Apple! (just like Hoover, you see!)

An Ipod is basically the 21st Century equivalent of the Walkman, and the name is used in the same way as the name Walkman was is the eighties. I.e. it was used to describe any portable music player. The same is happening now with Ipod.

Apple has a whole range of ipods, from tiny ones to small ones (there are no big ones!) that can hold different numbers of songs, have different screens, can show photos, play video etc.

If you have been asked to get an IPOD, then you need to check carefully whether it is a request for a genuine APPLE ipod, or whether it just means any general MP3 player.

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