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A Prototype Original iPod

panic.com

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Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#51

Post by MBCook »

tantalor wrote: post #44
MBCook wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It became so popular, especially after it was officially available on Windows in 2003. And it remained THE thing until the iPhone really exploded when unleashed from AT&T around 2011. 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?

Daguerreotypes were only used for a brief period in 1840s and 1850s but had huge impact on development of photography. Edit: check out the video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbbH77rYaa8

That’s a great example.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#52

Post by gwbas1c »

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 wonder if they thought it was a boombox or a personal stereo?

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#53

Post by gwbas1c »

bryans wrote: post #29

To me, this makes it so much more obvious that the only innovation they were even aiming for was a scroll wheel. Everything else is just a Diamond Rio with a hard drive attached. That's not to diminish the effectiveness or novelty of the scroll wheel, but the larger capacity seems to be the only thing that actually mattered here.

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

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#54

Post by handrous »

nsxwolf wrote: post #37
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite remains Slashdot's Editor-in-Chief CmdrTaco's "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." (shared with <3, it really shows how us geeks had/have no sense of the popularity of a tech product)

There's a post from me out there somewhere complaining about how the iPhone was a non-starter because it wasn't going to have MS Exchange support at launch, and I wasn't going to carry two devices around. I stood in line to buy it at launch anyway, and carried two devices around.

That's a reasonable criticism if one sees 90+% of somewhat-capable portable Internet devices in the hands of business users who will all want/need exchange support, and assumes that's the market for such devices.

If, on the other hand, it creates a new market for such devices among people who couldn't tell you what MS Exchange is....

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#55

Post by tinus_hn »

amelius wrote: post #42
marcellus23 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the hardware guys can't leak the software, and the software guys can't leak the hardware.

Funny thing is, Apple claims that they need to integrate everything from hardware to software in order to obtain the best possible user experience. 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.

Giving out information on a need to know basis does not mean integration is impossible. It just means people that don’t need to don’t get to see the full picture.

Keep in mind that this kind of decide would be under development for many years, if you can keep the idea a secret until launch you’ll be years ahead of your competitors. But if it leaks your advantage is gone.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#57

Post by AceJohnny2 »

Nition wrote: post #46
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite remains Slashdot's Editor-in-Chief CmdrTaco's "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." (shared with <3, it really shows how us geeks had/have no sense of the popularity of a tech product)

This was quoted and linked in Panic's article, for what it's worth.

Derp! By the end of the article, I had forgotten that intro >_<

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#58

Post by handrous »

dylan604 wrote: post #47
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite remains Slashdot's Editor-in-Chief CmdrTaco's "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." (shared with <3, it really shows how us geeks had/have no sense of the popularity of a tech product)

The one thing I had always wanted my ipod to do was stream, so I def agree with the lack of wireless being lame. Just because the greater majority of users felt it was okay and made it the most popular music device doesn't mean it wasn't lame to not have it.

Wifi's still pretty bad, but it was really bad then. Especially on consumer wifi routers, but most business set-ups sucked then, too. Dropped packets galore, signal-loss hiccups, and not enough bandwidth to make up for that by transferring large buffers really fast. Terrible for streaming. Probably way more battery-draining then than now, as well, since that kind of hardware has generally gotten a lot more efficient. Wouldn't be surprised if that efficiency has outpaced increasingly demanding standards.

[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.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#59

Post by ceejayoz »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #24
macNchz wrote: post #17

Hard to believe it has been 20 years. When talking about the impact of the original iPod on the last two decades of Apple's extraordinary success, I like to jump back to this forum thread from October 23rd 2001 (it is always easy to find because it is thread number 500!) and see the reactions from the time: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5...

My favorite remains Slashdot's Editor-in-Chief CmdrTaco's "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." (shared with <3, it really shows how us geeks had/have no sense of the popularity of a tech product)

See also HN's reaction to Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#60

Post by rjsw »

Marazan wrote: post #43
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite remains Slashdot's Editor-in-Chief CmdrTaco's "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." (shared with <3, it really shows how us geeks had/have no sense of the popularity of a tech product)

The firewire connection was lame. 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 have an ASUS WindowsXP laptop with firewire, it worked well with an iPod.
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