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Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

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Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#51

Post by tpmx »

joe_bleau wrote: post #16

[no time for video, so if these are answered let me know...] Two things I never got about the iPod: Why not add a second headphone jack so two people could listen and share the experience? Why didn't Apple preload some music (maybe classical stuff in the public domain, performed by affordable Eastern European orchestras) for a better out of the box experience? Think about kids getting an iPod at Christmas; until it w…

The first Walkman had two headphone jacks:

http://www.walkman-archive.com/gadgets/walkman_sony_01_tps-l...

And this feature:

> the TPS-L2 had a "hotline" button which activated a small built-in microphone, partially overriding the sound from the cassette, and allowing one user to talk to the other over the music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkman_effect

> Sony Chairman Akio Morita added these features to the design for fear the technology would be isolating. Though he "thought it would be considered rude for one person to be listening to his music in isolation"), people bought their own units rather than share and these features were removed for later models.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#52

Post by rjsw »

selectodude wrote: post #39
terracatta wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At no point in the ipod's history was it particularly innovative with its hardware in comparison to competing devices When the iPod came out I remember the main competitor was the Creative Nomad Jukebox. It was bulky (it was the around the same size as a Sony discman), the screen was small, and it had like 11 weirdly shaped buttons, and I think had recharable AA batteries (that took like 12 hours to charge). It was…

Having FireWire onboard allowing you to transfer songs in seconds instead of minutes was no less a gamechanger than anything else. The Nomad Jukebox was USB 1.1 and filling up a 6GB hard drive took hours.

I have an ASUS laptop with FireWire, it was able to copy to an iPod quickly too.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#53

Post by yardie »

bluedino wrote: post #43
yardie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPod wasn't that type of device. It was an addition to iTunes. It did have a folder structure but the music files were 4 letter codes. As soon as iTunes associated a new iPod it wiped the hard drive and loaded it's own configurations and files. iTunes on the otherhand, early on, did come with a small music selection. This would be OS9 era bands and musicians who were just famous enough to be featured but not famo…

And when Apple started automatically adding U2 to everyone's library, it wasn't wanted.

Yeah, I think Steve was a little bit too enthusiastic about U2. He liked it, he figured everyone else would like it too.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#54

Post by lukifer »

blaird wrote: post #20
Causality1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "a joke". There were quite a few flash-based players that predate the ipod and a couple of hard drive based ones. Heck, Rio was three generations into their mp3 players when the ipod was released. Apple fixed the experience for non-nerd. Instead of having to go online and find music files yourself you could just go buy them.

I had the Rio 600 before the iPod ( https://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/rio600/ ) . It was definitely a joke, 32MB could barely fit a single CD and that was only after degrading the bitrate of the rip to a degree that it was really scratchy.

As a counterpoint, I had an MP3 discman from Rio [0], and the thing was magic. Each disc could hold 10-15 full albums, and I also made shuffle playlist CDs of 180ish tracks each. While it's obviously not pocketable, it was great for car audio, I stuck with it for a long while into the iPod era, since it had functionally infinite storage.

[0] https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/D1afoHzHkMS...

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#55

Post by stallmanite »

lukifer wrote: post #54
blaird wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the Rio 600 before the iPod ( https://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/rio600/ ) . It was definitely a joke, 32MB could barely fit a single CD and that was only after degrading the bitrate of the rip to a degree that it was really scratchy.

As a counterpoint, I had an MP3 discman from Rio [0], and the thing was magic. Each disc could hold 10-15 full albums, and I also made shuffle playlist CDs of 180ish tracks each. While it's obviously not pocketable, it was great for car audio, I stuck with it for a long while into the iPod era, since it had functionally infinite storage. [0] https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/D1afoHzHkMS...

MP3 CD players like that don’t/didn’t get enough love. So much capacity for next to no cost and the units I had were robust to disc abuse which surprised me.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#56

Post by handedness »

warpdrive wrote: post #49
TimSchumann wrote: post #41

I've been reading/watching a lot about Apple history lately. The two or three threads by Chris MacAskill on Cake that have been linked here recently, some audiobooks, podcasts and the documentary 'General Magic'. It's interesting how much of these personal accounts directly contradict each other. I don't think much, if any, of the contradictions are in bad faith... just an interesting window into the collective human…

May be Steve Jobs is the guy took inputs from multiple people and made the final call and developed products which made everyone who gave inputs think that the product is because of their idea.

By all accounts that's what happened. And the best part is, Steve also thought everyone else's good ideas were his own.

A system that worked very well in that situation, but one that would be very difficult to replicate.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#57

Post by enjoy-your-stay »

benbenolson wrote: post #47

Even today, the iPod hardware is excellent and long-lasting; if you ever need a portable music player with a long battery life and that's great for hacking, try getting a 5th-generation iPod Video and upgrading it. It's fantastic: in a matter of weeks (shipping takes time), I made a 256GB iPod Video that could play nearly any format (Ogg, FLAC, WAV, MP3, etc.) and that has an over-24h (I've not been able to run its b…

That's good to know, 'cos my poor old iPod nano (circa 2007 I think) that I love definitely is in need of a new battery.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#58

Post by cardiffspaceman »

yardie wrote: post #53
bluedino wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when Apple started automatically adding U2 to everyone's library, it wasn't wanted.

Yeah, I think Steve was a little bit too enthusiastic about U2. He liked it, he figured everyone else would like it too.

I clicked on whatever affordance I had to click that allowed that album to be installed, and I enjoyed the music. I felt like a weirdo for not being annoyed and wondered what I had randomly configured that made the album's presence optional for me.

It seems like everyone else's experience was that the album took up precious space and was not removable.

Re: Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video]

#60

Post by lukifer »

stallmanite wrote: post #55
lukifer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I had an MP3 discman from Rio [0], and the thing was magic. Each disc could hold 10-15 full albums, and I also made shuffle playlist CDs of 180ish tracks each. While it's obviously not pocketable, it was great for car audio, I stuck with it for a long while into the iPod era, since it had functionally infinite storage. [0] https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/D1afoHzHkMS...

MP3 CD players like that don’t/didn’t get enough love. So much capacity for next to no cost and the units I had were robust to disc abuse which surprised me.

Yeah, I was always impressed at how resilient those cheap MP3 CD-Rs were in practice. And compared to old-school DiscMans with "20 second skip protection", it was very cool that it could just buffer the entire track in memory, make bumpy roads a non-issue. IIRC it was smart enough to do that well before the track began, so it instantly started playing when you skipped forward.
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