iPod is a line of portable media player

Portable media player

A portable media player or digital audio player, is a consumer electronics device that is capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, video, documents, etc. the data is typically stored on a hard drive, microdrive, or flash memory. In contrast, analog portable audio...

s created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic

IPod classic

The iPod Classic is a portable media player marketed by Apple Inc...

, the touchscreen iPod Touch

IPod Touch

The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...

, the compact iPod Nano

IPod nano

iPod Nano is a digital media player designed and marketed by Apple Inc.. The first generation of iPod Nano was introduced on September 7, 2005 as a replacement for iPod Mini. It uses flash memory for storage. iPod Nano has gone through six models, or generations, since its introduction...

, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle

IPod shuffle

The iPod Shuffle is a digital audio player designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is the smallest model in Apple's iPod family, and was the first to use flash memory...

. iPod Classic models store media

Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

 on an internal hard drive, while all other models use flash memory

Flash memory

Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...

 to enable their smaller size (the discontinued Mini

IPod mini

The iPod Mini is a digital audio player designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It was the midrange model in Apple's iPod product line. It was announced on January 6, 2004 and released on February 20 of the same year. A second-generation version was announced on February 23, 2005 and released later...

 used a Microdrive

Microdrive

Microdrive is a brand name for a miniature, 1-inch hard disk designed to fit in a CompactFlash Type II slot. The release of similar drives by other makers has led to them often being referred to as 'microdrives'...

 miniature hard drive). As with many other digital music players, iPods can also serve as external data storage devices

USB mass storage device class

The USB mass storage device class, otherwise known as USB MSC or UMS, is a protocol that allows a Universal Serial Bus device to become accessible to a host computing device, to enable file transfers between the two...

.