iPod (4th generation)

Apple put the Click Wheel back. The fourth generation returned the four controls to the wheel itself as pressure-sensitive zones, which is the arrangement that stayed on every iPod after it, and it was better than the row of glowing buttons in every way that mattered. Battery life went to 12 hours from the third generation's 8. Apple dropped the price to $299 for 20GB and the iPod went from market leader to something closer to a monopoly, holding over 90 percent of the hard-drive player market. A special U2 edition in black and red arrived in October 2004, and the iPod photo shipped the same month with a color screen, which folded back into the main line the following year.