iPod charging; how to go from 2 amps to 1 amp?

[tooki]

Your memory of the iPod timeline is a bit fuzzy: Apple deliberately withheld USB from the entire iPod line until after USB 2.0 became widespread, because Apple thought the user experience of syncing over USB 1.1 was terrible, which is why they went with FireWire.

The first iPod with USB syncing support was the 3rd gen, from 2003. The 4th gen in 2004 added USB charging. The 5th and 6th gen dropped FireWire syncing support, but retained FireWire charging.

(Note that Apple waited with adding USB 2.0 to Macs until it was obvious that it was here to stay. The first Mac to get it was the Power Mac G5 in 2003. Only after this did Apple release iPods with full USB support.)

[ade]

USB 2.0 was NOT in widespread use when the iPod 3rd gen came out in Spring 2003. 

They only people who had USB 2.0 in 2003 were those who just bought brand new computers, from Apple or otherwise.  In fact, major PC manufacturers continued to sell computers without USB 2.0 until the end of 2003 because many motherboard chipsets did not yet supported USB.

The vast majority of PCs in existence at the time only had USB 1.1 or older.

[tooki]

I didn't say it was universal, only widespread, which it was. I remember at the time, when the G5 introduced USB 2.0 to the Mac, that the reaction from the Mac world was "Finally!!!" because lots of PCs had already had it for a while. (Many PCs were sold with preliminary USB 2 support before the standard was even finalized in 2001!)

Of course some systems were sold with just USB 1.1 for long after 2.0's release. But they were obviously in the minority.

And as I said, it wasn't until a year late, in 2004,  that iPods with full USB support (sync and charge) were released. By that point USB 2.0 had been on the market for 3 years and change.

[ade]

(Many PCs were sold with preliminary USB 2 support before the standard was even finalized in 2001!)

The first PC with USB 2.0 was the Gateway 700XL in May 2002.

Intel didn't even ship chipsets supporting USB 2.0 until 2Q 2002!  And Microsoft did not include USB 2.0 support until Windows XP Service Pack 1 in September 2002.

USB 2.0 was not widespread at the time, USB 1.1 was. In 2002/2003, only those with brand new computers had USB 2.0, plus the few early adopters who had purchased specialty USB PCI add-on cards.

[tooki]

Hm, I could have sworn I'd seen PCs with pre-ratification USB 2.0, just the way that back in 1995 or so, some PCs shipped with bleeding-edge, but useless, pre-ratification USB 1.0 ports because Windows didn't have any support for it yet!

In any case, I still maintain that by the beginning of 2003, most computers for sale had USB 2.0, because again, Mac users had been complaining for a while that Apple was dragging its heels on it! (I never said anything about installed base, which indeed was still mostly 1.1 at that point.) But given that most computers were replaced on 3 year cycles back then, by 2004, when the 4th gen iPod was released that had full USB support, USB 2.0 certainly was quite widespread.