When was 3rd generation ipod touch released

The shape and dimensions of the Touch also remain unchanged 4. Packaged with the Touch is an Apple universal dock connector USB cable, a pair of white earbuds that include a microphone and remote control on the cable, and a molded universal dock insert to use with any charging or speaker accessories.

Features Out of the box, the third-generation iPod Touch includes an amazing music player, podcast support, video playback including iTunes rentals and a YouTube player , a Safari Web browser, photo viewer, an e-mail reader compatible with Outlook, Exchange, MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or any POP e-mail service , an integrated iTunes Store for music and video downloads, and a host of smaller utilities weather, calendar, maps, stocks, notes, voice memos, clock, contacts, and calculator.

With version 4 of Apples iPhone and iPod Touch firmware, the device's stock features are just the starting point of apps available. An iTunes App Store, accessible from the computer or directly from the iPod Touch, lets you download and install thousands of applications, including Internet radio players, games, voice recorders, and social-networking tools.

You can also extend the capabilities of the iPod Touch using third-party "Made for iPod" hardware accessories such as AV docks, external battery packs, and speaker systems. Apple first introduced its Genius playlist feature with the second-generation iPod Touch, letting you create instant song playlists based on the musical characteristics of a single song. The Genius playlist feature is still here on the third-generation version, giving you an easy and fun way to generate playlists, provided their music collection holds enough songs to make interesting connections.

You can create and save Genius playlists directly onto the iPod Touch, and with automatic syncing enabled in iTunes, you can also transfer them back to your computer. With the third-generation of the Touch, Apple broadened the scope of Genius selections to include App Store recommendations and extended, genre-based playlists called Genius Mixes. After clicking on the App Store icon found on the main menu, you'll find Genius App picks in a separate "Genius" tab giving you a list of recommendations based on previous app purchases you've made.

Genius Mixes are intuitively located in the iPod's Music menu, located by default in the lower submenu strip across the bottom, along with selections for artist, songs, playlists, and more.

If you're the kind of person who typically listens to music by hitting shuffle, you might enjoy the way Genius Mixes provide a more curated and genre-specific selection of tunes with a minimum of effort. Those who are more deliberate about their music selections always have the option of knocking the feature into the "more" section and replacing it with a more useful menu item podcasts, audiobooks, and so on.

Oddly, the Touch's Genius Playlist and Mixes features won't work if you haven't enabled Genius on your computer's iTunes software. If you find iTunes' Genius features too demanding on your computer's resources or too invasive of your privacy the feature reports your listening habits to Apple , then you'll need to live without the features on your iPod as well.

Not every member of the third-generation iPod Touch family is created equally. Essentially, the 8GB iPod Touch model is still running on second-generation hardware that uses a slower processor than the 32GB and 64GB models and lacks support for new features such as multitasking, Voice Control, OpenGL graphic support, Bluetooth keyboards, home screen background images, and advanced accessibility features.

As we've already seen with the first-generation Touch, future updates to the iPod firmware may bring features that only the latest hardware will support. So were we. For the record, iOS4 features such as home screen folders, e-mail threading, iBooks support, and spell check are available on all versions of the third-generation iPod Touch. Multitasking, Voice Control, Bluetooth keyboards, and home screen background images, however, are a few of the features we've found so far that can only be found on the 32GB and 64GB Touch models or iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4.

In the next few paragraphs, we'll dive into these features a little more to see if they're worthwhile. Voice control As if touch-screen control wasn't futuristic enough, the iPod Touch now includes the capability to control playback using voice commands. To activate this feature, you'll need to press and hold the headphone remote control button until the Voice Control screen appears. Using the microphone built into the included pair of earbuds, you can call out a song, artist name, album, or playlist, and the iPod will interpret your commands and play the request.

Playback features such as shuffle, skip, play, and pause can also be controlled using voice commands, but it feels a little unnecessary, since the earbud remote control is available to perform these functions without making you look like a crazy person. One of the coolest uses of the technology is the capability to engage the Genius playlist function by saying "Play more songs like this," letting you steer your listening experience without taking the iPod out of your pocket.

We found Voice Control to be consistently accurate when it came to basic commands, such as "play," "next song," "shuffle," and so on. You do run into some trouble calling up artists with funky names or funky spellings too bad, P! NK , but that's to be expected. Overall, Voice Control is a fun feature to have, and even more fun to show off.

We wish Apple had thought of an easy way to let you to Voice Control while the Touch is plugged into a car stereo aux input, but we've no doubt that third-party manufacturers will solve the problem with special cables or in-car charging docks.

It had an actual hard drive inside so dropping your glossy next-wave music device was a terrifying thing. On the 2nd generation, announced in July of , Apple introduced it's "Touch Wheel".

This model came in 10 or 20 GB. The 3rd generation iPod offered up to 40 GB of storage and featured both a "dock connector" on the bottom and a touch wheel. This 4th generation iPod had a "click wheel" like the later iPod Mini, though was still limated to a monochrome display.

The color screen was introduced on the "iPod Photo" model here, available in 20 or 60 GB capacity. It was ideal for viewing album artwork or even looking at slideshows.

In what was surely a marketing coup for U2, Apple released it's first and last band-specific special edition in October of What made it special was it's black plastic exterior and red click wheel -- plus it had engraved signatures of the band members on the back. Several iterations were released through including one based on a 5th Generation iPod with video.

In October the 5th Generation iPod added video and featured a large color display a clickwheel, USB for syncing and either 30 or 60 GB of storage. In late an 80 GB version was made available. In September of the iPod Classic was introduced, sporting an anodized aluminum enclosure and offering a whopping gigabytes of storage. It was a simpler music-focused ipod with click wheel for those who wanted to carry their entire music collection with them.

These became a fan favorite and future iterations were released in and in GB and GB respectively. In January of the iPod Mini made it's debut. It came in an array of pastels and was smaller and lighter than previous models.

It held 4 GB of songs and featured the new "hold" switch. New colors were added to the Mini line in February of , available with either 4 or 6 GB of storage. In a new concept in listening was born with the iPod Shuffle. It was small and light and skipped the display -- and forced users to give up selection control over the music, only offering choices to skip to the next random song that appeared in your "shuffle," or going back to the previous song.

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Sam Costello. Sam Costello has been writing about tech since His writing has appeared in publications such as CNN. Facebook Twitter. Updated on March 11, Tweet Share Email. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. You're in! Thanks for signing up. There was an error. Tell us why! More from Lifewire. The History of iOS, from Version 1.

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