How to Find Out the Generation of Your iPod

Video Transcript

"It's Rokosz, your digital lifestyle expert, here, trying to unravel the mystery of what generation iPod you have. Well, the generational differences between the iPod's are great. Since two-thousand and one, they've made a lot of major and minor and changes to it, and made a lot of models. This we'll refer to as the iPod classic now, where they sort of drop their generational designation, of course, is the iPod Nano, iPod Touch, and iPod Shuffle, all in multi-generations. We're talk a little bit about the iPod classic, or what was called the iPod video, or the original iPod first and second generation. One way to tell is how it behaves, how it operates, and some of the functions it has. If you want to truly determine what generation you have, indefinitely, is to take, if you look very, very, very, very closely at the very, very back, or you still have the box, you can actually type that serial number in or type that model number in and poof! It'll come up on Apple's website with those ending numbers, which generation, and which features it has. But there've been some major changes over the years, like I say, since late two-thousand and one that designate the differences in iPod's. First of all, if you move your finger around here and the whole wheel physically moves, you've got a first generation unit. Here, notice as I move it around, we're seeing things move and it's just reading the tip of my finger. These are fourth and fifth generation options. If it plays video, you know you're in a later generational model. Now, you can see that the differences are subtle. This is a a fifth and a sixth generation side by side here, the back almost impossible to tell, except for the afore mentioned serial number. But also here, with these, they tend to have a a glassy finish over the whole bit, as to where the later models would taper off and have a little bit better fit and finish here on the model. They went with more of a matte finish then they did with a glassy style finish. There's a lot of subtle differences, storage, how it behaves, or the connectors. Some of the original iPod's had USB connectors into the bottom, excuse me, fire wire connectors into the bottom of 'em. And some of 'em did have actual real USB connectors. Here, they've gone for a standard what they've called the iPod connector, or the one's that Apple's put together to control both the charging and the audio video in and out of the unit, kind of a wonder connection, if you will. iPod's are great and fun. If you're buying one used or ya found one and you don't know what generation it is, well the easiest way is to go ahead and type in the model number on-line and it'll tell you precisely what it is. But if you've got video, and you're touching the wheel, good chances are you're in the fifth or sixth generation of these wonderful, wonderful units. I'm Rokosz, your digital lifestyle expert saying "click ya later!""