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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.'
"
of the understatement of the year contest goes to:
"It was probably a mistake,"
And now he's with M$
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
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."
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
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.
Hank! White!
"It was probably a mistake, but then you have to go with what you think at the time," he said.' "
This is a dilemma all entrepreneurs (and software developers) face - if you wait until a product is absolutely perfected before taking it to market, you will likely lose your opportunity. At some point, you have to get it out there and gauge public opinion (which should help guide further development), lest you burn all your resources in R&D.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Apple has a design philosophy lacking in many un-user friendly electronics products. I do hope they succeed in the market, with items such as Apple TV's and DVD's and car stereos and such.
Although he is kicking himself right now, you can't really blame the guy. Even the most successfull people in our society do things that they regret in hindsight. Warren Beatty, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, etc...
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'.
It's strange that after so many years of making great computer hardware Apple's niche is almost redefined for them via a glorified walkman. No, that's not flamebait, but merely an oversimplification. Still, this is part of Steve's overall 'digital hub' theory, so the Macs still fit in, it just feels like they're getting a bit more out of focus compared to the extranious hardware.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
...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.
Jonathanjk.com
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!
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?
would you want Bluetooth headphones? So your music is compressed further to the point where it sounds like it's filtered through a waterfall? There are other kinds of wireless headphones out there that work better than Bluetooth. They aren't included with the iPod because they're expensive enough to cut into the profit margin.
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.
This reminds me of when the cheif designer for Banyan-Vine's streettalk went to Microsoft - viola, Active Directory, which very closely resembes Streettalk!
Same-old microsoft play. Take the idea someone else creates and call it innovation when you include it in the OS that 95% of PCs use.
Although Jobs' influence seems to have helped the iPod become the force it is, I find it odd that he would be so influential on the sonic quality - being that he is partially deaf. I am partially fat (oh, who am I kidding - "totally fat"), so I should not be a contact for bicycle seat design.
Business is relentlessly cynical. I would guess that the iPod was constantly ridiculed during development, and that there were numerous attempts (all driven by office politics, no doubt) to cancel the project.
Nothing will work. Nothing will make money. Nobody wants to buy it. Nobody cares. Everything sucks. It's so hard to make money (announced in a $3 million conference room) It'll never work. What makes you think people will buy it? What makes you think you're qualified to work here? Blah blah blah.
It's so predictable any more it's almost comedy. It is truly amazing that anything new is developed at all. Try taking a new product to a bank for a loan to manufacture it. I can hear the whining already. Every single word is predictable. After a while it becomes truly redundant and very difficult to listen to.
Oh, what wonders have been lost to society for office politics and lack of capital.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
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.
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."
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.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
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.
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.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Jacked the price up tenfold? I see why you'd assume that, but HD MP3 players are actually quite comparable in pricing. I've actually been shopping for an MP3 player lately, and the iPod has been a strong contender, even though I'd prefer iRiver's 20 gig player for the ability to mount it as a drive. With the recent price drop, the 20 gig iPod is actually significantly (c$70) cheaper than iRiver's product, and even before the price drop, the price was within $40 or $50.
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!
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
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.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
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.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Yup, nothing like a good Hand-of-Jobs to ensure to a successful release.
Oh, I'm bad...
I think you're missing a third reason why some of us happen to use macs:
They're better. style? yeah it's nice, but i don't *need* a pretty computer. Necessity? I could code on linux/windows just as easily as the mac. No, i use it because it's a better operating system. It gets out of my way. I know some people don't like to admit it, but every market has a high and low end. BMWs and Toyotas aren't really in the same class of vehicle. Think of it like this: The person who has the means to purchase a BMW never really considers purchasing the Toyota. Likewise the opposite, the Toyota buyer never really considers the BMW as it's too far out of a comfortable price range.
basically what i'm trying to say is apple's niche is perfectly fine -- high end quality computers. Sure there is a market for the low end. a rather large (95%) market, but that's not apple's target. It would be silly for BMW to market towards the toyota buyers. i think that's why apple's switch compain wasn't very successful
apple's profits are still vastly in desktop/laptop sales. so your "focus on the music products" as a longevity argument wouldn't really hold much water. If apple lost 50% of it's desktop/laptop sales in the next few years, it would really hurt their profits. they can't self sustain themselves on a low return item like the ipod, at least not at the moment. (low return in the sense that you might profit $50 off an ipod and $500 off a powermac).
at any rate, as i said before. apple's doing just fine. sales are way up, and the highest in 8 years as the last quarterly report says. we might have the ipod to thank for increased media exposure/switchers, but by no means is it the company's saving grace at the moment as a cash cow.
- tristan
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:
I'd like to know much more about the iPod story.
The new 4G iPod has buttons that depress when pushed (the new click wheel). Personally, I think a dedicated off button is a bad idea. I wouldn't want to accidentally turn off my iPod.
"Dave, I stand still--the conclusions jump to me!" - Bill McNeal, NewsRadio
You can mount the iPod as a drive - and through FireWire it's a nippy little thing too.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
During the Apple Newton development, one programmer was so stressed, that he shot himself!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Partly the blind spot comes from critics being a)reactive and b)assigned to review individual products alone.
With the iMac, Apple was aiming to put out a sweet little appliance home computer, with all those ease of UI advantages, designed for internet-able homes. The idea was that swapping files by floppy would be obsolete because they'd be too small for modern files and everyone would be networked to everyone else. (Look up. We live there.) Critics reacted by saying iMacs wouldn't fit the old model, in which computers were isolated islands (or island chains, in LANs) and you had to carry those life rafts from one slot to another.
iPods were definitely an extension of the whole "digital hub" idea. They weren't bigger, badder mp3 players, because Apple wanted to sell them as a complete system built into the whole "hub" idea. Critics saw the price and compared them to other mp3 players. They didn't see how Apple was positioning the product.
In both cases, Apple was thinking about -- cue usually bogus businesspeak -- new paradigms, and the critics were reviewing just the individual product, without appreciating how it'd fit the bigger picture.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
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.
You make some valid points that I failed to consider. Namely, that maybe Apple does rely a lot more upon desktop sales than I had original assumed. I stand corrected.
...and then I lead into my final point, which is my criticism of your claim that Apples are "better". This, my friend, is a completely opinionated statement. They might be better, for you. My personal computer is used in majority for gaming, and I think you'd be hard pressed to convince me that gaming support on an Apple is the same as it's going to be on a Windows machine.
However, I have to say outright that I think you're reasoning behind Apple as a "niche" market is completely flawed. You use an example of a high-end/low-end market, but the fact is you are comparing apples (no pun intended) and oranges. The example you use of a BMW vs. Toyota might work if we lived in a world with 2 different types of roads, say "performance" and "economical". The performance-minded buyers would be the ones with a large amount of income to spend on a luxury car, while the economical drivers would purchase whatever gets them form point A to point B and be satisfied, and both buyers would drive on their corresponding roads. However, the fact is that we live in a world with one type of road, and you buy what you can afford and what you need to get the job done.
This isn't meant to be an attack on your character or personal philosophies, but something I think you need to analyze is the reality that not all people use computers for the same thing. You may use computers to a degree that, for you, they all are capable of the same task. However, some people, such as myself, use computers for reasons that are a little less balanced, and thus have to make choices within a certain set of criteria.
For example, my brother is an aspiring sound engineer/music producer, so when my parents suggested they buy him a laptop for Christmas to assist in his endeavors, they asked for my input. My answer, without hesitation, was to buy him a Powerbook. The software and toolset for recording and audio production are unmatched on an Apple, so I went and ordered the thing myself. He's had it now for six months. He's been completely satisfied, and therefore so am I.
Don't get me wrong, you make some very valid points, but in the end your argument boils down to simply a matter of preference. I know this is slashdot, and I shouldn't care, but I'm actually rather offended that my initial post gets modded "Troll" while a rebuttal that boils down simply to "they're better because I like them" gets modded up as insightful. I have no problem that people enjoy using an Apple because it suits their needs; I'm glad you've found something that gets the job done. But please, spare us the whole "quality" spiel.
--
Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
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.
- tristan
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.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!