Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Prototype Original iPod

panic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 140 posts

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#61

Post by ArteEtMarte »

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 don't think it was Firewire that kept it as a niche product. It was that iTunes wasn't initially available on Windows machines, and Macs were still quite rare.

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.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#62

Post by 0des »

ceejayoz wrote: post #59
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)

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

Poor fella's never going to recover from this, is he?

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#63

Post by macNchz »

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 think Firewire was a smart choice when launching to Mac users first, since USB1 was so slow, USB2 was still very new, and all new Macs had Firewire ports. That said, opening the door to Windows later on was absolutely the key to the popularity explosion, but by that time many more Windows machines also had USB2 ports for fast syncing.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#64

Post by Scottopherson »

cushychicken wrote: post #39
fudgy wrote: post #31

Loved the original iPod so much that I‘ve re-created it as an app once the iPhone came out: https://github.com/j-lechner/RetroPod 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.

OMG is there a way to make this some kind of skin for Spotify? I, too, loved the iPod UI, and would love to have something like this again.

https://tannerv.com/ipod/

^ Fun website that implements a video ipod UI in the browser. The app integrates with Spotify and Apple Music.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#66

Post by LawnGnome »

ArteEtMarte wrote: post #61
Marazan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't think it was Firewire that kept it as a niche product. It was that iTunes wasn't initially available on Windows machines, and Macs were still quite rare. 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. I…

They were linked, though: it was unusual to have Firewire on a PC, so even if iTunes had had Windows support at the time I don't know that it would have made much difference. It was the combination of USB and Windows support that made the difference.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#67

Post by macNchz »

handrous wrote: post #54
nsxwolf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

I always felt it was a good demonstration of staying disciplined and focusing on making a great consumer product first–looking too closely at the competition and building in a bunch of enterprise-friendly features from the start could have been a big distraction and resulted in a mediocre product in other ways.

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#68

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#69

Post by happytoexplain »

ubermonkey wrote: post #49
happytoexplain wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read my entire comment?

Yes.

Your comment (especially the colloquial use of the word "literally" as emphasis) implies that I didn't address the existence of that photo, but I did when I said "scroll down to see photos that actually demonstrate its size". Your comment and subsequent lack of clarification ("Yes.") is confusing and has the appearance of rudeness, but I can't guess why you would want to use that tone (if it's on purpose).

Re: A Prototype Original iPod

#70

Post by geerlingguy »

rjsw wrote: post #60
Marazan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There were a number of 'media' laptops that had "i.Link" ports (advertised that way by Sony), but you still had to buy adapter cables for it. It was a little bit of a mess but you could make it work.
Post reply on HN