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

Tee Hee

[USAPatriot]

...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.' "

No kidding, he's not alone.

Here's what our very own illustrious CmdrTaco said at the time, " No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

Hindsight 20/20

[sebi]

"It was probably a mistake, but then you have to go with what you think at the time," he said.

I guess it would be easy to make fun of him now. Let us however not forget that one first reaction to the unveiling of the iPod read "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

The Hand of Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised the iPod team actually produced a finished product based upon how difficult Steve Jobs is reported to get along with.

I would have been interested as an aside in seeing pictures of some of the earlier prototypes as the iPod made it's way from an initial design to the finished product.

Re:The Hand of Jobs

[jcostantino]

Jobs is supposed to be very conservative when it comes to electronic devices with too many features. He hates PDA's as an example but that's more likely because he'd rather push laptops with a higher margin.

I think the reason that the iPod has succeeded so well is due to the fact that any bonehead can pick one up and play music. It's about as intuitive as it can be.

I also would have liked to see their prototypes - I'm always interested in taking a look at a particular product's development. A company I used to work for had a relationship with one of the design offices at Motorola and they had some weird bits there from aborted projects or concepts.

It was interesting to note...

[CrackedButter]

...that IBM had an idea which incorporated bluetooth headphones, makes me wonder why Apple didn't do it, and that was in 2001! But don't get on at me for how it would effect the ipod's battery life, the ipod *could* be a little bigger to take a bigger battery and then we could all be happy.

Honest Question

[NYTrojan]

This is not meant to offend, I am really curious..

Obviously the iPod is very popular, but for the life of me I don't see what makes it different from other mp3 players. For those of you who shelled out the big cash for this thing, what makes it so special? Why sets the iPod apart aside from slick marketing?

Re:Honest Question

[TheRaven64]

For me:

1. Size. It is small enough that I can clip it to my belt and forget it's there (until I sit on it). It's also small enough to comfortably fit in trouser pockets when it's raining.
2. UI. It is very easy to navigate to a particular song / album / genre / artist and tell it to play all of them. You can also play pre-selected playlists in a very small number of clicks.
3. Integration. iTunes is a superb piece of software, and it makes managing large collections of music very easy. iTMS is also very nice, but wasn't available here (UK) when I bought my iPod. The iPod integrates very nicely with it - music and playlists are transferred in the background, and play counts and ratings are synchronised.
4. FireWire. USB2 seriously loads the CPU, which is not something I want, especially when using my iPod as an external hard drive (I often use it as a backup device).
5. The dock. The iPod dock has a line out port, and is connected to my stereo. When I get home, I drop my iPod in the dock and remove the headphones. When I do this, there is no interruption to my music (and it's charging while it's in the dock).
6. AAC support. I prefer AAC the sound of AAC audio to any other lossy compression scheme (and I was using it with FAAD in WinAmp/XMMS before I became a Mac / iPod user)

There are also a few other quite nice things, such as the fact that it stores a copy of my calendar and address book (although not a very up-to-date one, since I don't bother syncing it that often).

Re:Honest Question

[falcon5768]

well for me at the time (I have a 1st gen) it was a number of factors...

There where very few hard drive based MP3 players out there... I had a RIO, but honestly they barely fit a CD at decent encoding... I liked the idea of carrying more than that since I used to put two of three albums onto a long play cassette.

The design was very tight... the buttons made a LOT more sense than the RIO's, the menu and playlist system was much better (hell it HAD a playlist system... the Rios didnt unless you spent 300 dollars for the upscale ones) and the battery life while maybe on par with the RIO had one thing over it.... it could be recharged and thus I wasnt spending 4 bucks on a pack of AA's every so often. Plus I could recharge it via my laptop, another cool feature.

It worked with iTunes, which a few players did atthe time, but not many of them, and vs. other players it was the one that was most seemless in its working.

It wasnt expensive.... remeber the players that where HD based where big.... while they where cheaper, you couldnt carry them. The ones that where on par with the iPod though where actually more expensive at the time. People think (and still do) the iPod is expensive....but cost per feature wise, its actually kinda cheap. The HD's alone are not much cheaper than the players.

It was a HD.... you could mount it and save your files on it which for a long time I did.... my 5 gig still doubles as a HD sometimes.... I erase it if I need to because the files are over 1 gig, load the files I need to onto it, and then just reload it.... doesnt take long at all... and no other player was firewire based, they where either USB (no USB2 yet) or worse....serial!

It was cool, no doubt about it. even if you hated it, you talked about it, and just about everyone wanted one.

Re:Honest Question

[nine-times]

You hit a lot of the big points, but I'd like to add something small that I find pretty nice: On a mac, you can use iSync to get your calandar and address book on to the iPod. It may not sound like much, but iSync can keep multiple Macs, your .Mac account (webmail address book), your iPod, your PDA, and if you have a phone that connects, your cell-phone, all up-to-date with the same info. OK, I only use it to keep my Mac, my web-mail, and my iPod with the same contact list, but it's nice to have...

And I find the dock particularly useful... I have no stereo, just the dock plugged into some speakers.

But in general, I'd wrap up everything you said and everything I've said into this: The thing is well thought out, well engineered, and well put together. Most of the MP3 players I've found have been just difficult enough in their setup, just crappy enough in their design, and just bulky enough to carry around (for the amount of space provided), that they seemed like more trouble than they're worth. I'm someone who likes to play with technology for the sake of playing with it, but I won't continue to use something on a daily basis until it's reached a certain level of maturity. PDAs, for example, I find to be more trouble than they're worth. Most MP3 players, I find to be "not quite there, yet" and more trouble than they're worth. The iPod was the first one who hit "ready for prime-time" status, in my mind.

Sucess in marketing.

[H8X55]

A lot of techs i know have blown off the iPod and are currently using another device to provide portable storage and audio playback. The iRivers are incredibly popular amoung 'i.t. people'. I know a lot of folks rave on about Creative's products as well. I personally like the Neuros.

From a tech standpoint the iPod lacks some functionality, or has too high a price point for many of us. But from marketing, fashion, and the MTV crowd it is the "it" thing to own. No one can predict these things though. "It" just happens. Like a $45 trucker hat.

Not just the iPod...

[ugauaauag]

This guy also had the iTunes Music Store thought up as well.

"Tony's idea was to take an MP3 player, build a Napster music sale service to complement it, and build a company around it," Knauss said.

Re:Why oh why

[kelnos]

while you're making some gross oversimplifications and this is an obvious troll, i can't help but partially agree. i despise the stupid wheel, the non-responsive buttons (when i push a button, i like to feel it depressing), and the lack of an off button (no, holding down "stop" until i _think_ it's turned off is _not_ an off button). the on-screen UI is pretty well laid-out, but it feels more like a "ok, we have a limited number of buttons, let's see what we can design to fit into that restriction", rather than something designed in a less-restrictive manner. but hey, what do i know - it's wildly successful.

as for the fanaticism surrounding it, it's just your typical "in-crowd" fad. except that the in-crowd is a bit more geeky than usual. will something better come along? probably. but i don't really care. i'm just waiting until i can afford one of these.

whatever happaned to persistence?

[insomnyuk]

So much for the adage 'slow and steady wins the race.' I wonder how much money this guy lost in bonuses and stock options by giving up early.

I found this particularly interesting:

Knauss said at one of the first meetings with PortalPlayer, Fadell said, "This is the project that's going to remold Apple and 10 years from now, it's going to be a music business, not a computer business."

Apple becoming a music company

[Anonymous Coward]

Choice quotes:

"This is the project that's going to remold Apple and 10 years from now, it's going to be a music business, not a computer business."

"Tony had an idea for a business process and Apple is transforming itself on his whim..."

These statements bother me bigtime. I know the quote is from the guy who originated the iPod idea, but the fact Steve devoted so much time to the project, and that apple has a division devoted solely to the iPod, leads me to believe that they might really think this is where their company is going. If that's the case, then I morn for apple. Here's a company who is on the cusp of everything revolutionary (with OS X), yet they're going to bail out because the very first product they sold to windows users is successful. Talk about company execs being blindsighted by a single successful product.

Apple has WAY more to offer the world then just the iPod, I just wish apple themselves would see that.

Re:Apple becoming a music company

[OmniVector]

i disagree. there's a difference between a system's capability to do something, and a system's potential to do something better.

as an OPERATING system, i.e., not the 3rd party games/software, mac os is more advanced. this is impossible to contest. quartz extreme, UNIX underpinnings, aqua, usability studies, and prepackaged, more featureful, bundled software (iLife, Mail, Safari) don't lie.

windows just like many other oses can get you from point a to point b, and if your application happens to be a game you're pretty much going to need windows. but does that mean windows has some inherent superior game development apis? not really. coreaudio, openal, opengl and many other libraries on the mac are equivalent to directx. that's a product of market share and mind share, not of a system's potential.

here's another analogy that might clear things up: at the end of the day, if you could run all your windows software on mac os x, on your x86 box, would you honestly actually use windows over os x considering all the advantages the base system has? i'm willing to bet the vast majority would switch if the barrier to entry were 0. of course that's not the case, so for now we have the market friction inbetween the two OSes like a wedge carving out the "audio/video/style" people who cherish the platform (for different reasons) and the necessity folk who just want something that runs word and their games.

Its "The Innovator's Dilemma"

[crovira]

As an organization get larger, (enough to afford a $3 million conference room) the costs of promoting any ideology or technology get larger until they become insurmountable.

That's when some fool with more brains that money eats the lunch of some bigger fool with more money than brains.

Innovations come from without, not from within.

damned number of trolls on today

[falcon5768]

but my favorite point in the peice..... that originally DRM was never thought of for the iPod and iTunes Music Store, and that Apple felt it would damaged the sales.

Seems the RIAA decided to change Apples mind about it.... who wants to guess they would have refused to do the iTunes Music Store without it having DRM and probably wanted something stronger than what Apple gave them.

The scroll wheel invented here?...

[Wonderkid]

I lived in California between 1991 and 2000 and frequently showed my friends (some who worked for Apple and others who were well connected patent attorneys) drawings of conceptual hardware devices my company was (is) planning. Plus, a drawing of a computer of the future I designed and won and award for in 1982 (yes, '82). My 'scroll wheel' was identical to the iPods, button in the middle etc. I refer to the first generation iPod scroll wheel, not the excellent new clickable one in the 4G ipod and iPod mini. I have no proof my idea was stolen, but am fairly sure it was as the few people I showed it to reacted in that way that says "Hmmm..." But you know what, congrats to Apple for actually making the thing. For that is what counts.

OK. Where's the real dirt?

[pdp0x14]

There was some gossip in the article, but not enough. I'm sure there was more to his leaving than just not thinking the product would be successful.

It's excruciatingly unpleasant to work with Jobs; that's widely known.

One of endless examples:

By Andy Hertzfeld, on how he was inducted into the original Macintosh team:

... [Jobs] walked over to my desk, found the power cord to my Apple II, and gave it a sharp tug, pulling it out of the socket, causing my machine to lose power and the code I was working on to vanish. He unplugged my monitor and put it on top of the computer, and then picked both of them up and started walking away. "Come with me. I'm going to take you to your new desk."

I'd like to know much more about the iPod story.

The truth behind Portal Player

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people who have worked directly with Portal Player. They apparently developed the "OS" inside the iPod, which is married to their hardware platform. Rather than use a more robust, preexisting product, they built their own OS. It is not a good one, or at least it wasn't at first. From what I understand, morale was pretty low at the company. My friends, who were working with people from Portal Player, were extremely frustrated working with them. Portal Player blamed everyone else except themselves for the constant problems with their OS. While my friends were not involved with Portal Player's iPod project, the OS problems they saw would probably carry over to the iPod since it's presumably the same OS.

Having used the iPod a lot, I can tell you its problems weren't all solved. It's a quirkly little beast. For all of the iPod's vaunted coolness, compared to the reliability (and the UI) of other digital audio players, it's clear that the iPod is 90% hype. It looks cool and holds 40GB, but other many other players are, quite simply, better. For example, I have my iPod set up to always have the backlighting turned on. Often times, when I turn it off, the backlighting stays on. Little weirdnesses like that are commonplace. There are many more, such as how it sometimes refuses to play certain MP3s, skipping over them in the playlist; you have to force the iPod to go back and try again, and (usually) eventually it will play. And I can't forget to mention how horrible the responsiveness is when it's playing music. Hit a button to skip forward/backward a song or two or three, and you're lucky if it obeys. Try skating through the menus while it's playing, and you often get treated to erratic, herky-jerky reactions.

Those are just the bugs. Then there's the UI. Oh, the annoying UI... That scroll wheel is kind of cool, but precise scrolling through the menus can be a challenge, especially when you're moving. If you're jogging, you *have* to stop. If you're driving you can get away with it, but it's hit or miss, depending on your shocks and the quality of the road. But the thing that bugs me the most is the fact that when it's done playing an entire album, or if you stop it in the middle and turn it off for a long while, you lose your place. When you restart the iPod and press play, it starts playing *all* of your songs, starting with the A's. Whoever thought *that* was a good idea?

There are many more issues, but I won't belabor further. Anyone who's used the iPod a fair amount knows what I'm talking about. I have no trouble understanding why this guy left Portal Player. I would have run for the hills too. But as I always seem to forget, and he apparently did too, it's rarely the best technology that wins. It's the best-marketed technology that often comes out on top. Just like the iPod.

Re:The truth behind Portal Player

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo... I worked there for a couple of years from small start up burning through money like crazy to a middle size company that continued to burn through money like crazy. The problem was that our sales force could NOT close a deal and Sanjy Kumar the VP of Technolgy had to always go to customers and close the sale.

So you had a sales force heading all over the world meeting with companies but could not sell a single chip, of they would come back with new requirements that meant a change to the firmware and chip design thus forcing us to delay a release. this went on for two years.

The main problem was that firmware/software development was being done in Kirkland and the chip was being designed in San Jose... plus we had a small office in Charlotte SC and offices in India. so not only do you have 4 offices in different locations but also in different time zone and date zones. Communication was a HUGE problem... or lack of communication.

We had a all indian development team that just worked on the codec's... headed by a complete moron. For a whole year we would have dev meetings and each week the problems with the codec were always two weeks away from being fixed.... a whole year of this and this guy would have the same excuses. And if a bug was found it was always someone elses fault... the sound test file is incorrect, the scope was off or some other lame execuse.

The developers in India would find a problem but would not attempt to fix it on their own or even report it since it "wasn't their code". If they came upon a problem that blocked them from continuing their development of the code they would just stop and freeze like a deer caught in a cars headlight. We would finaly find out the problem when we asked them at the weekly meeting where they are in their development.

I finally quit because the total mis-management of the product. The managers in Kirkland were VERY paranoid and god forbid you sent an e-mail stating a problem... they excepted a face to face meeting when it came to problems (can you say cover your ass) so that blame can be laid... and not to try to fix the problem.

The UI on the iPod was not developed by PortalPlayer they just used some of the base firmware code, codec and the ARM7 chip. We had a few really good developers but not enough to over come the majority of incompetent ones.

At least, for the iPod, nobody died!

[callipygian-showsyst]

During the Apple Newton development, one programmer was so stressed, that he shot himself!

Ben was fired from PPI. He did not quite!

[OldManCoyote]

Ben was fired from PPI, he did not quite. I was where for over 2 years, know the inside on what really happened. Two main reasons why he was fired: * Incompetence: He didn't know how to run a development team and people who where on the firmware team at PPI didn't trust him * Apple (what we called by the code name 'BandPass' at the time) did not trust him and could not work with him. He really angered a lot of people at Apple and almost cost PPI chances at building the iPod for them. He was mainly fired from PPI for this reason alone, since BandPass was are best (and only) customer who would ship at the time.

Portal Player

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people who have worked directly with Portal Player. They apparently developed the "OS" inside the iPod, which is married to their hardware platform. Rather than use a more robust, preexisting product, they built their own OS. It is not a good one, or at least it wasn't at first. From what I understand, morale was pretty low at the company. My friends, who were working with people from Portal Player, were extremely frustrated working with them. Portal Player blamed everyone else except themselves for the constant problems with their OS. While my friends were not involved with Portal Player's iPod project, the OS problems they saw would probably carry over to the iPod since it's presumably the same OS.

Having used the iPod a lot, I can tell you its problems weren't all solved. It's a quirkly little beast. For all of the iPod's vaunted coolness, compared to the reliability (and the UI) of other digital audio players, it's clear that the iPod is 90% hype. It looks cool and holds 40GB, but other many other players are, quite simply, better. For example, I have my iPod set up to always have the backlighting turned on. Often times, when I turn it off, the backlighting stays on. Little weirdnesses like that are commonplace. There are many more, such as how it sometimes refuses to play certain MP3s, skipping over them in the playlist; you have to force the iPod to go back and try again, and (usually) eventually it will play. And I can't forget to mention how horrible the responsiveness is when it's playing music. Hit a button to skip forward/backward a song or two or three, and you're lucky if it obeys. Try skating through the menus while it's playing, and you often get treated to erratic, herky-jerky reactions.

Those are just the bugs. Then there's the UI. Oh, the annoying UI... That scroll wheel is kind of cool, but precise scrolling through the menus can be a challenge, especially when you're moving. If you're jogging, you *have* to stop. If you're driving you can get away with it, but it's hit or miss, depending on your shocks and the quality of the road. But the thing that bugs me the most is the fact that when it's done playing an entire album, or if you stop it in the middle and turn it off for a long while, you lose your place. When you restart the iPod and press play, it starts playing *all* of your songs, starting with the A's. Whoever thought *that* was a good idea?

There are many more issues, but I won't belabor further. Anyone who's used the iPod a fair amount knows what I'm talking about. I have no trouble understanding why this guy left Portal Player. I would have run for the hills too. But as I always seem to forget, and he apparently did too, it's rarely the best technology that wins. It's the best-marketed technology that often comes out on top. Just like the iPod.

Reposted due to earlier mad moderation

Re:Sure he left before launch, but he went to M$..

[Moofie]

You left out the part where Steve Jobs refined the physical design, and Apple designed the user interface, which are the parts of the equation that nobody else in the industry has gotten right.

If it were Microsoft, they'd have listened to the guy's pitch, thrown him out on his ear without a nickel, and then organized a tiger team to re-implement what they thought the guy was trying to do. And they'd implement it poorly.