Birth of the iPod

b00le writes "There's a little story over at Wired about the genesis of the iPod from the point of view of Ben Knauss, a former senior manager at PortalPlayer, the company Apple Computer approached to help develop its player. There's some nice gossip about The Steve's involvement in the project, the extreme secrecy and so on, but for me, the kicker comes at the end: 'Knauss stayed on until near the end of the iPod's development, but quit shortly before it was released because he had no confidence it would be a success. "It was probably a mistake, but then you have to go with what you think at the time," he said.' "

Comments

And the winner ...

[Alranor]

of the understatement of the year contest goes to:

"It was probably a mistake,"

The Pete Best of the iPod

[Silver Sloth]

And now he's with M$

Whoops!

[holzp]

Knauss stayed on until near the end of the iPod's development, but quit shortly before it was released because he had no confidence it would be a success.

The article should be titled 'IClod'.

Love this part on Jobs' influence

[Anonymous Coward]

Knauss said Jobs' influence was sometimes idiosyncratic. For example, the iPod is louder than most MP3 players because Jobs is partly deaf, he said. "They drove the sound up so he could hear it," Knauss said

That's why the iPod goes to 11!

Re:Hindsight 20/20

[Hungus]

Yeah this is one of my favourite comments from that article's posting:

Re:I'm buying one purely for the tiny firewire hd (Score:1)
by Lars T. (470328) on Tuesday October 23, @05:48PM (#2469232)

The iMac will never sell.
Okay, I was wrong, but the iBook will never sell.
Okay, I was wrong about the iBook too, but the iPod will never sell.
--

Lars T.

I certainly hope he was trying to be funny. Otherwise, how did that crow taste Lars?

Re:Tee Hee

[Anonymous Coward]

Ipods are still lame. 1GB minidiscs will kick their ass

Slashdot Reader

[awhelan]

Knauss stayed on until near the end of the iPod's development, but quit shortly before it was released because he had no confidence it would be a success.

He must have read all the slashdot comments saying it would fail.
Yet another way slashdot can ruin your career.

Re:Hindsight 20/20

[goMac2500]

Wow. From day one of the iPods introduction, there were posts complaining about lack of ogg support.

I agree with Taco

[tunabomber]

I mean just think of what the iPod COULD have been. Along with the lack of wireless, I was also pissed that Apple left out the following features:

-The ability to create a Beowulf cluster of multiple iPods. Just imagine- a render farm on the go!
-AltiVec Velocity Engine
-Videoconferencing
-floppy drive
-alpha-channel transparency (c'mon this is APPLE we're talking about here!)
-"eject" button- in the current iPod, you would have to drag the disk to the trash in order to eject it!
-The ability to interface with ANY Swedish vibrator.
-Support for Ogg Vorbis AND Ogg Theora.
-Drivers for Linux/BSD/Hurd.
-Gyroscopically-controlled 3D pointing device.
-The ability to modulate subliminal messages into the music that will make me stop being so damn fat.
-Support for both the NX (no-execute) AND Evil bits.

WTF? Is that too much to ask!

Re:I agree with Taco

[g0at]

You forgot about a right mouse button.

-b

Re:I agree with Taco

[McAddress]

You forgot about a right mouse button.

I would like to use this opportunity to correct a mistaken belief of many windows users. Macs have a right mouse button. They are actually missing the left mouse button. However on a Mac, the right mouse button has the same functionality as the left mouse button on a PC.

rumor has it that His Steveness's parents forced him to be a lefty, and he has been bitter ever since.

Re:The Hand of Jobs

[NoData]

Yup, nothing like a good Hand-of-Jobs to ensure to a successful release.

Oh, I'm bad...

Re:Hindsight 20/20

[Lars T.]

Actually yes, that was irony.