With iTunes you could have smart playlists like “create a list of all of the songs I haven’t played in X days”.
Normal people didn’t want to tag songs and use the filesystem.
Do I really need to bring up the “No Wireless. Less Space than a Nomad. Lame.” Meme and how geeks didn’t get the iPod?
https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
Literally iTunes does this, by default, without changing its configuration.
You can manage the files yourself and point it at that, but the default, eg. if you choose to open a file from any old place, is to copy into its own naming and organization scheme.
You really think the iTunes filesystem layout is what made iPod successful?
Not, say, the fact that it was solid hardware, good UI, etc., from a desirable brand?
The comment was saying, my read of it anyway, is they didn't appreciate that it would slurp up and rename the files you give it.
A la M3u files.
People love to bring this up... but that product (pretty much) did fail, in no small part because it had less space than a Nomad. The iPod wasn't successful until a couple revisions later and after the introduction of iTunes (which led to an end-to-end rethink of how you loaded music on these devices). No matter how hard Apple-acolytes want it to be true, if I come out with a bad product, and then later come out with a good product, it doesn't make the bad product retroactively awesome.
There was a winner
The major things that changed after the iPod was released: adding online music sales, switching from FireWire to USB for all the people stuck with the slower Windows hardware interface, and iTunes for Windows.
None of those changed the core iPod design; I don’t think the first one failed in any meaningful way.
"?playedLast < 30d" is not a hard query filter
This geek doesn't understand why we need two nearly-identical systems. Once you make the more-general form, refactor the prototype to use it!
Normal people wouldn't need to "use the filesystem" any more than they do with iTunes now. Just make iTunes use these features internally so we don't have two incompatible sets of tools, and two separate sets of bugs.
They are already used by Windows to provide the major Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, etc. locations.
