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A Prototype Original iPod

panic.com

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Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#111

Post by numpad0 »

amelius wrote: post #80
_jal wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is imho a better way of building things than having everything completely integrated in a single company. Sounds like you should run your firm that way, then.

How would you feel if (hypothetically speaking) Samsung bought TSMC and thereby pushed Apple and other smartphone/laptop vendors out of the market? Wouldn't you agree that it is better if all companies have equal access to TSMC's services?

Just as much as I believe in diversity I love matte black Apple and blue/blue-green Sony PCBs.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#112

Post by iloveyouocean »

thought_alarm wrote: post #92
em500 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the heydays of the iPod craze, around 2005-2008, I was convinced that product line would be short lived. It was apparent that music playing was a trivial application of mobile phones, which were already becoming ubiquitous. In those days, Nokia was a far bigger cultural phenomenon outside of North America (where Nokia never gained much of a foothold). And it was truly global, not just European: even tiny villa…

Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes to manage their library, and were hence locked in to the iPod/iTunes eco-system. There was no reasonable alternative. 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.

There were quite a few programs that synced iTunes playlists to non-Apple phones. This supports your assertion that people were dependent on iTunes for library management, but not that there was lock-in to Apple hardware. I feel that it was the seamless ease of iTunes/iPod/iPhone that won, rather than a hard moat.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#113

Post by rashkov »

mbar84 wrote: post #101

I hope Apple will make a 25th anniversary edition of the iPod, with modern connectors and internals but a physically clicky wheel like the original.

I was going through my things this weekend and I found an old iPod and one of those speakers with an integrated iPod holder. Was about to try and give the speaker away, but instead I set it up, put it on shuffle, and it’s delightful. Like a time capsule jukebox.

Feels somehow nicer to have an independent device doing its thing in the corner of the room, rather than streaming from my phone.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#114

Post by maguay »

egypturnash wrote: post #109
tambourine_man wrote: post #102

> We don’t know much about where it came from. That’s the most important part! How did Panic got it? Why did they had to wait 20 years? Some trade secret deal expired?

It might have something to do with the time they almost ended up selling their MP3 player Audion to Apple and turning it into iTunes. (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.)

Looks like this might be the original story: https://panic.com/extras/audionstory/

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#115

Post by Waterluvian »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #45
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #3

Was this used to effectively silo developers from each other? Ie, don’t let the hardware team see the real software UI, and don’t let the software team see the real hardware UI. 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”.

It's so cool to see these pictures. It does seem to match David Shayer's description: 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. Yo…

I get why this is done when something is top secret. But I think there’s no better way to be reduced to a fungible coding cog than “you don’t actually need to understand the big picture. Here’s a spec. Implement it.”

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#116

Post by kalleboo »

toast0 wrote: post #108
dylan604 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as I got an iPhone, I remember pointing Safari at an M3U link and was so happy to have streaming on a hand held device. It took many years, but it was finally doable. I was pleasantly surprised when the stream continued flowing even once the screen locked. That was still years before music apps became a thing, but I was snug as a bug listening to my website streams on mobile.

I did a little bit of streaming on a Nokia 3650, had to go down to 40kbps if i recall correctly, but the battery life would be minutes. Then my free data loophole ended and my dream of music streaming was postponed.

I did a lot of streaming on my Sony Ericsson K800i (2006). The local public broadcaster had a deal with the mobile operators to zero-rate their streams from data plans. Using 3G UMTS you actually got better reception inside buildings/basements/on trains etc than with FM radio which would fade in and out.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#117

Post by teeray »

rashkov wrote: post #113
mbar84 wrote: post #101

I hope Apple will make a 25th anniversary edition of the iPod, with modern connectors and internals but a physically clicky wheel like the original.

I was going through my things this weekend and I found an old iPod and one of those speakers with an integrated iPod holder. Was about to try and give the speaker away, but instead I set it up, put it on shuffle, and it’s delightful. Like a time capsule jukebox. Feels somehow nicer to have an independent device doing its thing in the corner of the room, rather than streaming from my phone.

It drives me nuts that we have orders of magnitude more storage in our pockets now, yet many user experiences encourage streaming everything. Sure, unlimited plans ameliorate the costs of streaming, but why introduce all that complexity when you have unused storage sitting right there.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#118

Post by samplatt »

Fnoord wrote: post #104
thought_alarm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes to manage their library, and were hence locked in to the iPod/iTunes eco-system. There was no reasonable alternative. 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.

> Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes to manage their library, and were hence locked in to the iPod/iTunes eco-system. There was no reasonable alternative. 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 amou…

My collection at that time ('05-ish) was mp3, ogg, & flac, ~33% each. WinAMP was still king (and still is, dammit!) and could even manage my iPod Nano without needing to install itunes bloatware.

A statement like "Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes" is ignorant to the point where I almost feel insulted.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#119

Post by batmanthehorse »

bryans wrote: post #87
gwbas1c wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Syncing music with iTunes was so much easier than the junk sync apps that other players had.

You mean copying and pasting files that already contain metadeta? That was difficult? Because I'm pretty sure everyone universally hated the formats and auto-renamed files that iTunes forced.

yes everyone hated that. that's why itunes failed and we're still manually copying files to this day.
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