Ten years of the MP3 Player

 

The first MP3 player to be a success was the Diamond Rio 300 which was a relatively large piece of kit compared to some of the models we are used to seeing today such as the Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen. However, the Rio sparked a whole new generation of portable music and had only 64 MB of internal memory which now seems pretty poor in comparison to the iPod Classic which has 160GB of storage.

 

Following the Rio, we were then treated to the likes of Creative's efforts which went down in a big way offering upto 60GB of storage giving us the power to carry a big selection of our CD collections around with us and now today they offer the Creative Zen, Mosaic and Zen X-Fi packed with hi-tech features and loads of on-board storage.

 

Sony later followed suit and introduced many portable media players and today offer the like of the new Sony Zappin NWZ-B135 and Sony NWZ-X1060 with a huge touchscreen and 32GB of storage.

 

Apple blew them all out of the water with the iPod range. The first iPod Classic as it is now known featured the fantastic rotary touch control we see on all iPods now, and it was soon followed after a few generations by the iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle and iPod Touch with more features than you could ever imagine possible, until they conjured up the iPhone!

 

Today, there are so many different models to choose from with ever growing memory sizes, stunning designs and new innovative features that are quite simply, mind blowing. Technology today eh?