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A Prototype Original iPod

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Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#131

Post by mywittyname »

InitialLastName wrote: post #100
mywittyname wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it fun to think about what the biggest companies in the world will be in 10, 20, 30 years. There's a good chance that some haven't actually been founded yet, but I'm sure others are household names even now. FWIW, I think media will displace tech on the top spot and Disney will lead the pack in 2040. It's also fun to do with future presidents.

Presidents are tricky because (recent circumstances excluded) US voters don't tend to reward people who have been in the public eye for a long time with the presidency. Looking at recent presidents, almost none were in nationally visible political offices 20+ years before their elections (though a number were famous outside of politics). The 20th/21st century presidents, and their situation 20 years before election (…

If you look at the set of VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president, you get a pretty good list of candidates. Sure, you'll miss odd-balls like Obama, but he was still a Senator; he just got lucky with timing and probably expected his bid for presidency to occur in like 2020-2024.

Future presidents might be someone like, Paul Ryan, AOC, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Christie, Antony Blinken.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#132

Post by dragonwriter »

mywittyname wrote: post #131
InitialLastName wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presidents are tricky because (recent circumstances excluded) US voters don't tend to reward people who have been in the public eye for a long time with the presidency. Looking at recent presidents, almost none were in nationally visible political offices 20+ years before their elections (though a number were famous outside of politics). The 20th/21st century presidents, and their situation 20 years before election (…

If you look at the set of VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president, you get a pretty good list of candidates. Sure, you'll miss odd-balls like Obama, but he was still a Senator; he just got lucky with timing and probably expected his bid for presidency to occur in like 2020-2024. Future presidents might be someone like, Paul Ryan, AOC, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Christie, Antony B…

> If you look at the set of VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president, you get a pretty good list of candidates.

Interesting, then that of your list:

> Future presidents might be someone like, Paul Ryan, AOC, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Christie, Antony Blinken.

3/5 are not covered by ”VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president”.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#133

Post by InitialLastName »

mywittyname wrote: post #131
InitialLastName wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presidents are tricky because (recent circumstances excluded) US voters don't tend to reward people who have been in the public eye for a long time with the presidency. Looking at recent presidents, almost none were in nationally visible political offices 20+ years before their elections (though a number were famous outside of politics). The 20th/21st century presidents, and their situation 20 years before election (…

If you look at the set of VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president, you get a pretty good list of candidates. Sure, you'll miss odd-balls like Obama, but he was still a Senator; he just got lucky with timing and probably expected his bid for presidency to occur in like 2020-2024. Future presidents might be someone like, Paul Ryan, AOC, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Christie, Antony B…

My point is that the intersection of people who become president and had been VP's, Governers, Senators or previously run for president (20 years before) in the modern era is 2 (out of the last 21 presidents). I didn't go through and look at other major candidates, but the other major candidates didn't get elected; my sense is that the losing candidates, at least recently, have been more experienced politicians (hence, "Americans don't elect people who have been in the public eye for a long time"). Trump, Obama, W. Bush, Clinton, Reagan and Carter all got elected as "outsiders" against clearly more experienced establishment politicians.

An interesting thing I noticed going through that list, though, is that a much larger number of presidents came into a more visible position (such as the ones you mentioned) by T-15 years. It seems (and in fact this somewhat mirrors other leadership-oriented career paths) that ~15 years of visibility and experience (usually preceded by a local politics, private sector, or military career to build a network) is roughly optimal for a presidential career path.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#134

Post by anaganisk »

teeray wrote: post #117
rashkov wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

How else can corporates extract money for every-time you play your favourite song? You don’t own music when you stream.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#135

Post by gwbas1c »

bryans wrote: post #126
batmanthehorse wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sorry, but while Apple did succeed in manhandling the music industry, iTunes has never been a beloved piece of software. It has always been trash and barely worked. So to put it on some kind of pedestal is disingenuous, at best.

I loved iTunes. To this day it was my favorite all-in-one player, metadata editor, and syncing tool.

(Granted, I don't use it anymore now that streaming services are so awesome. But I miss it like I miss the feeling of buying a CD and listening to it on the way home.)

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#136

Post by gwbas1c »

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.

I plugged in my iPod to my computer and it just worked: New music was copied, and any cleanup that I made to metadata was applied automatically. The formats that iTunes used were some of the highest quality audio available at a bit rate that would fit onto my giant iPod.

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.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#137

Post by Phrodo_00 »

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.

> Anyone with a moderately sized music collection depended entirely on iTunes to manage their library

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).

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#138

Post by InitialLastName »

mywittyname wrote: post #131
InitialLastName wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presidents are tricky because (recent circumstances excluded) US voters don't tend to reward people who have been in the public eye for a long time with the presidency. Looking at recent presidents, almost none were in nationally visible political offices 20+ years before their elections (though a number were famous outside of politics). The 20th/21st century presidents, and their situation 20 years before election (…

If you look at the set of VPs, Governors, notable Senators, and people who've previously run for president, you get a pretty good list of candidates. Sure, you'll miss odd-balls like Obama, but he was still a Senator; he just got lucky with timing and probably expected his bid for presidency to occur in like 2020-2024. Future presidents might be someone like, Paul Ryan, AOC, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Christie, Antony B…

I want to add:

10 years out, that selection criteria (VP's, governors, senators, former presidential candidates) would (as far as I can tell) have missed Trump, Obama, W. Bush, Clinton (narrowly), H.W. Bush, Carter, Ford, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, F.D. Roosevelt, Hoover, Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, Taft, and T. Roosevelt, so 17/21 of the people who actually became president.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#139

Post by adolph »

InitialLastName wrote: post #100
mywittyname wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it fun to think about what the biggest companies in the world will be in 10, 20, 30 years. There's a good chance that some haven't actually been founded yet, but I'm sure others are household names even now. FWIW, I think media will displace tech on the top spot and Disney will lead the pack in 2040. It's also fun to do with future presidents.

Presidents are tricky because (recent circumstances excluded) US voters don't tend to reward people who have been in the public eye for a long time with the presidency. Looking at recent presidents, almost none were in nationally visible political offices 20+ years before their elections (though a number were famous outside of politics). The 20th/21st century presidents, and their situation 20 years before election (…

To be fair to Carter, he was also a US Navy Officer in 1956 with a more distinguished career than Kennedy at 1941.

President James Earl "Jimmy" Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946 with distinction, after which he was assigned to USS Wyoming (E-AG 17) as an ensign. After completing two years of surface ship duty, Carter applied for submarine duty. He served as executive officer, engineering officer, and electronics repair officer on the submarine SSK-1. When Admiral Hyman G. Rickover (then a captain) started his program to create nuclear-powered submarines, Carter wanted to join the program and was interviewed and selected by Rickover. Carter was promoted to lieutenant and from 3 November 1952 to 1 March 1953, he served on temporary duty with the Naval Reactors Branch, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Washington, D.C., to assist "in the design and development of nuclear propulsion plants for naval vessels."

From 1 March to 8 October 1953, Carter was preparing to become the engineering officer for USS Seawolf (SSN-575), one of the first submarines to operate on atomic power. However, when his father died in July 1953 Carter resigned from the Navy and returned to Georgia to manage his family interests. Carter was honorably discharged on 9 October 1953 and transferred to the retired reserve at his request with the rank of lieutenant.

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/people/presiden...

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#140

Post by InitialLastName »

adolph wrote: post #139
InitialLastName wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presidents are tricky because (recent circumstances excluded) US voters don't tend to reward people who have been in the public eye for a long time with the presidency. Looking at recent presidents, almost none were in nationally visible political offices 20+ years before their elections (though a number were famous outside of politics). The 20th/21st century presidents, and their situation 20 years before election (…

To be fair to Carter, he was also a US Navy Officer in 1956 with a more distinguished career than Kennedy at 1941. President James Earl "Jimmy" Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946 with distinction, after which he was assigned to USS Wyoming (E-AG 17) as an ensign. After completing two years of surface ship duty, Carter applied for submarine duty. He served as executive officer, engineering officer, and el…

Agreed, it perhaps doesn't represent his career up to that point. I ran into a few issues like this; his career was distinguished but he had left active duty by the time of the snapshot I was taking (I also didn't see any evidence that it had made him visible to anyone as a potential presidential candidate, which was the thesis of the comment).

I also omitted that Teddy Roosevelt was about to publish a book on the War of 1812, and that Hoover had published a widely-used textbook on mining engineering.

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