All three models were released in 2005. The iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Computer. Firmware is a special type of software that rarely, if ever, needs to be changed and so is stored on hardware devices such as read-only memory (ROM) where it is not readily changed (and is therefore "firm" rather than just "soft"). Personal computers, the computer hardware familiar to most people, form only a small minority of computers (about 0.2%.