So in my straightforward projection, it was only a matter of time before the iPod would be crushed by the likes of Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, LG, etc. Never did I imagine that Apple would turn the tables on the phone manufacturers so dramatically after 2008...
The the Motorola "iTunes" phone came out in September, and everyone was like "No, I wanted an ipod with cellphone support, not a regular phone with a shitty iTunes app". It seems to only make people want an ipod phone even more.
There were lots of fake "ipod phone" design concepts over the years (and a few leaked patents) until Apple finally announced theirs.
None of the fantasy concepts predicted what we got.
Manually copying mp3 files to a Nokia or Blackberry just didn't come close to cutting it, and any attempts by those companies to compete with iTunes on the desktop ended in miserable failure due to piss-poor software quality.
Sorry, not true. I had a large music collection, and did not bother with iPod in the early days (and when I tried much later, didn't like scrolling wheel). It did not work with OGG Vorbis, nor could it have any moderate amount of storage. My DAP had 40 GB: iRiver H340. This was around 2003/2004.
I had a fairly big collection and I didn't. Just used a folder structure and copied stuff over to my flash mp3 player (it was maybe 1GiB, maybe less).
(shared with <3, it really shows how us geeks had/have no sense of the popularity of a tech product)
I stood in line to buy it at launch anyway, and carried two devices around.
If, on the other hand, it creates a new market for such devices among people who couldn't tell you what MS Exchange is....
And everyone agreed. If you look at the sales graph for the ipod it is basically a trickle until it suddenly explodes upwards.
Why the explosion? USB adaptor connection allowong it to be used on normal Windows machines.
I had a G3 iMac (Graphite) at the time the iPod came out. So I got one. Actually, I got three: the first died after a day, the second was DOA, but the third kept chugging away for about 3 years until the battery died and it was only usable when plugged in.
It's funny to remember how unusual the iPod was. People on the tube in London, which isn't known for conversation amongst strangers, would ask me what it was. Tiny, about the size of a cassette case, with that that amazing white face and silver case. It was like something from the future.
The ecosystem made the iPod.
[EDIT] I don't mean to be dismissive of a feature you'd have liked, I just think that, given the context of the time, I can totally understand why they'd not include that.
It’s heyday was only about 8 years but it had such a MASSIVE effect on the technology and music industries.
Has any other product been so important but only been around for a relatively short amount of time?
Edit: check out the video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbbH77rYaa8
Cingular.
It's also fun to do with future presidents.
- Biden (2000): 27th year in the US Senate
- Trump (1996): Tabloid-famous real estate developer
- Obama (1988): First year at Harvard Law School
- W. Bush (1980): Oil executive son of the VP-elect
- Clinton (1972): Arkansas Attorney General-elect
- H.W. Bush (1968): 1st-year US House Rep
- Reagan (1960): President of the Screen Actors Guild, movie star
- Carter (1956): Farmer, son of a briefly seated US House Rep
- Ford (never elected, 1954): 5th-year US House Rep
- Nixon (1948): 2-year US House Rep
- Johnson (as elected VP, 1940): 3-year US House Rep
- Kennedy (1941): US Navy Officer, son of Ambassador to the U.K.
- Eisenhower (1932): Executive officer to the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army
- Truman (1924): Former county court judge
- F.D. Roosevelt (1913): former 3-year senator, Assistant secretary of the Navy, Ex-president's cousin
- Hoover (1909): Successful mining engineer
- Coolidge (1900): City Solicitor of Northampton MA
- Harding (1900): 1st-year Ohio State Senator
- Wilson (1892): Head of the Princeton Political Science department
- Taft (1888): Judge in the Superior Court of Cincinnati, son of an ex-cabinet secretary
- T. Roosevelt (1880): New college grad, heir to a family fortune.
“The Reality Distiortion Field is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off”
Hilarious.
It looks too ridiculous to be real, I suspect it was ugly by design.
Apple did this on the iPhone design, the ugly software UI was called “skankphone”.
So they make what Apple calls a stealth case, which is just a big plastic box. So our stealth case was so ugly. It looked like they went into an old Russian medical equipment leftover warehouse and just took some plastic boxes, and stuck it in. It was horrible. They said basically, “ You’re writing the file system for this thing. You don’t need to know what’s on the disc. Just make it work.”
David: So, my guess is they were making some sort of secret Geiger counter and they wanted to be able to take it around and look for, I don’t know, people making dirty bombs maybe? But not have it looked like a Geiger counter.
David: if you wanted to go and check if there’s any signs of radiation in some place where you’re not officially supposed to be checking, you’re on a tourist visa in Tehran or something, this would be a very useful device. If you’re arrested with a Geiger counter you’re in trouble, but if someone looks at your iPod and the iPod works and it plays music and it’s totally normal, you’d be much safer, right?
Adam:Yeah, totally. So, they built this and then?
Interestingly, the holes for the screen and the buttons look like they were molded, but the holes for the jacks and wheel look like they were milled. I wonder if the boxes were custom-made or something off-the-shelf that happened to have the right screen size and number of buttons.
This shows that this is complete nonsense.
We could break up Apple into a hardware and software company and little would change in this respect.
Not sure if it still builds, but it was amazing to study and re-build all those little UX details like accelerating scrolling and timeline scrubbing.
I, too, loved the iPod UI, and would love to have something like this again.
^ Fun website that implements a video ipod UI in the browser. The app integrates with Spotify and Apple Music.
Feels somehow nicer to have an independent device doing its thing in the corner of the room, rather than streaming from my phone.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/37638098-creative-sel...
It's an easy read and the reads a bit like a technology-focused biography, not a "how to."
That’s the most important part! How did Panic got it? Why did they had to wait 20 years? Some trade secret deal expired?
(I would link to their story about that but it seems to have not made the transition from a standalone page on their site to their blog.)
Before I had an iPod I had a Creative MP3 player. The player itself was decent, but manually copying the files to it really was a pain in the rear end, especially when I updated metadata.
In fact, I can not! The photo in question has no reference objects. (scroll down to see photos that actually demonstrate its size)
Actually I was just using my iPod 5.5G with Rockbox on 2021-10-05, doing a demo of iPod clickwheel -> USB -> Mac -> Arduino -> Rotary encoder -> (commercial product)
I wanted to use my old iPod 1G too, but serial-over-FireWire is a little complicated to set up.
Repairing iPods is what got me into embedded systems engineering in the first place! From a cassette player (age 9) to a 32 MB Rio 600 (age 10) to a MiniDisc player (age 11) to a 1st gen iPod (age 12, Feb 2002), then 3rd gen iPod (age 13, Sep 2003). After that, I was repairing friends' iPods, moderating the iPodLinux forum, reading the Bible as Notes, or Shakespeare for English class... good memories.
And I still use an iPod now! With an SSD, and adaptors stashed in the back.