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The Secret Behind the iPod Scroll Wheel
Grump sent in a story saying "Ask any iPod user what they like the most about their device, and most will probably mention the scrollwheel. Here is the story behind the company that makes it (hint: it's not Apple). Great not just for the history, but insight as to both how Apple's design process works, and how the scroll wheel itself works."
Do they mean the clickwheel? Or is this actually about the previous generations with the scrollwheel?
As a 48 yo grandmother and feminist I am offended that the article says:
"Even my grandmother could use it."
[/joke]
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Honer's graduate of the George W. Bush school for speling and grammer.
That makes your sig especially funny.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
The power-switch on the iMac. How great it is and how you can find it.
Rub them in circles and you'll get louder, softer, or a range somewhere in between...
also works best when you have a good grip and use your thumb!
And, to bring scolling to the audio world, I have a very old (15 years) Sony Tuner that has a scroll wheel for choosing between the preset stations (up to 30). And it does the cute trick of the faster you spin the faster the choices go by. I don't think this was particularly innovative then either, but I think it's the oldest device I have with such an interface.
Thank you for revealing the secret!
I'm wondering if there isn't a secret behind other things too, like my TV's remote control. It works alright, but it's tough to push the little buttons on the TV with it sometimes.
The scrollwheel is made out of PEOPLE! PEEEOPPPLEEEEEE!!!
The true story behind the the Ipod's headphone jack.
And I had a telephone, that had a scroll wheel to dial numbers. There were 10 holes in the wheel with digits printed underneath. There was even a mechanism to rotate the wheel back into its rest position, after you moved it.
ATARI PONG scroll wheel changed my life..I now live in a basement and I'm still a virgin.
I'm still acutely without iPod, but a friend let me take hers to the gym recently. I now consider the coolest feature being able to use the scroll wheel through fabric. I'm sure it wouldn't work with denim, but through typical cotton gym shorts, I could just reach down and draw circles on my thigh. Totally surreal. Between that and some fleshtone headphones, I could further reduce unnecessary interaction with humanity by a factor of 10!
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
True story
My grandfather worked for the telephone company 45 years. For a long time, his job involved dealing with customers who came in off the street.
In the days of rotary phones, the dialed number was detected by the amount of time it took the dial to return to the resting position. (Number of pulses sent as it made the trip, actually, I believe.)
So one day this woman comes in complaining that every time she dials a number which she knows is the right number, (in her words) "Some hussy comes on there and tells me there's no such number!" This woman was seriously offended by the (recorded, I think, and probably new in those days) suggestion that she was getting the wrong number, when she simply knew it had to be right.
So my grandfather handed her a phone and offered to let her make the call there in the office. The woman snatches the phone and angrily starts dialing her number -- but she's in such a big snit that every time she turns the dial around, she doesn't wait for it to finish; she grabs the dial and forces it back around to the resting position so she can get on with dialing the next number. I'm sure this technique resulted in an enormous time savings to her, probably adding a full five seconds of free time to her life if she did it for every call she made in forty years, but of course it prevented the phone from properly dialing the number since everything was based on the timing for that dial.
My grandfather started to explain this to the woman, but she was enraged and said, "Are you trying to tell me how to dial a phone?" Well, er, yes, ma'am, amazingly phone company employees probably knew a little bit more than you about how to dial a telephone. Not much more, but enough to know that what you were doing would never work. I think the woman finally got fed up and stormed out.
People are amazing.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
So, in all reality, it did not change your life, but prevented further change.
± 29 dB