What is an iPod Mini?

By Daniel Dwase...

iPod Mini was built around the type of harddrive used in the tiniest laptop computers and other consumer electronics such as cell phones.

Apple entered the market for "Mini"-form-factor digital audio players in January 2004, with the introduction of the iPod Mini, competing directly with players like Creative's Zen Micro and Digital Networks Rio Carbon.

It had largely the same feature set as the full-sized iPod, but lacked support for some third-party accessories.

Its smaller display had one fewer line than previous models, limiting the on-screen track identification to title and artist only, and not the album.

In addition, it introduced the ability to charge over a USB connection and used Microdrive hard drives for storage.

It was discontinued on September 7, 2005, after Apple announced it was to be replaced by the iPod Nano, which is 62% smaller in size and has a coluor screen.

The device retained the popular touch-sensitive scroll wheel of the third generation iPod; however, instead of the four touch buttons located above the wheel, the buttons were once again made mechanical beneath the wheel itself (hence, the new wheel was known as a "click wheel").

To access one of the four buttons, a user physically pushed the edge of the wheel inward over one of the four labels.

Like its predecessors, the wheel was developed for Apple by Synaptics.

The click wheel is now also used in the fourth and fifth generation iPods as well as in the iPod Nano; although in the case of the nano and 5th generation iPods, the clickwheel is now developed in-house, as opposed to Synaptics.

Above the wheel was a monochrome display which showed menus or information about the currently selected track.

Newer generation iPods have since moved to color displays.

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