iPod History

The iPod in 2010: Year in Review

Ten billion songs

Johnny Cash's "Guess Things Happen That Way", bought by Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia, became the 10 billionth song sold by the iTunes Store, a milestone announced on 25 February. The store's catalogue then held more than 12 million songs. A month earlier, on 27 January, Apple had presented the iPad, which ran almost all of the more than 140,000 apps then available on the App Store.

The iPod in 2010: 1 Sep iPod nano (6th generation); 1 Sep iPod shuffle (4th generation); 1 Sep iPod touch (4th generation). Timeline of the five iPod lines with 2010 highlighted.
What Apple announced in 2010, and where the year sits in the iPod timeline.

A new line-up on 1 September

At its September event Apple replaced three of its four iPod lines at once and said more than a quarter of a billion iPods had been sold. The sixth-generation iPod nano dropped the Click Wheel for a small multi-touch screen and a built-in clip, at nearly half the size and weight of the previous model; it kept an FM radio with live pause and a pedometer, and cost US$149 for 8 GB or US$179 for 16 GB. The fourth-generation iPod shuffle restored clickable buttons, with a separate VoiceOver button that spoke song names and switched between playlists and Genius Mixes, and held 2 GB for US$49. The iPod classic continued unchanged as a 160 GB model at US$249.

Cameras on the iPod touch

The fourth-generation iPod touch gained a 960 × 640 Retina display, Apple's A4 chip and two cameras: a front one for FaceTime video calls over Wi-Fi with other iPod touch and iPhone 4 owners, and a rear one that recorded HD video. Apple called it the thinnest and lightest iPod touch so far and priced it at US$229, US$299 and US$399 for 8, 32 and 64 GB. Game Center arrived with iOS 4.1, free from 8 September for owners of second- and third-generation models.

iTunes 10 and the Beatles

iTunes 10, also announced on 1 September, introduced Ping, a social network for music offered to more than 160 million iTunes users in 23 countries; within 48 hours it had more than a million members. On 16 November the Beatles' recordings went on sale through the iTunes Store for the first time, including the 13 remastered studio albums, the two-volume "Past Masters" and the "Red" and "Blue" collections.