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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."
25 years ago, Tektronix graphic terminals had scroll-wheels for cursor movement (this was before mice became widespread). And Hewlett-Packard had an innovative scrollwheel that was usable in both directions (in conjunction with the cursor keys) on the 9836 series desktop computers.
The scroll wheel is just a round touchpad and is based on the same technology Synapsis has patents on. It even feels the same as the touchpad on my PowerBook.
Touchpads are the best thing that ever happened to this company. They're getting licensing fees and royalties on almost every notebook sold, or they make money directly as the component vendor for the touch pads.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
The company that designed the scroll wheel is Synaptics. They have another product called the Fingerprint TouchPad that is basically a tiny fingerprint scanner/authentication device. I've always thought that this kind of device would be great if it was integrated into something I have hold to use, such as my cell phone or mouse. Biometric security isn't absolute security, but it can be one level of security that is nearly invisible if implemented correctly. Neat stuff.
[/joke]
Cool little article, although, I have heard of synaptics before - actually L-O-N-G before. Anyone who installed Linux on an old HP laptop can tell you that!
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
This "article" just shows some pictures of what I can only assume is the touch sensitive plates under the wheels. It doesn't explain anything about them and how they work, nor does it really talk about the "design process."
but insight as to both how Apple's design process works, and how the scroll wheel itself works.
The article doesn't say how the scroll wheel works. It also doesn't mention anything about Apple's design process...
It is a touchpas, and Synaptics makes practically all the touchpads for Laptops, PDAs and mice. I don't think a lot of people thought that Apple made the touchpad itself. AFAIK, most people know that the Apple genius behind the iPod is quality bought components from companies that make them better than you (Synaptics, PortablePlayer, Sony) combined with Apple design and user friendliness.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
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!
...capacitive. It must be, or something fairly similar.
It explains why the human finger can operate the wheel, but drag a BIC biro round the wheel and nothing happens.
Obviously you don't RTFA too often - I'd say about half of the stories on Slashdot use text directly lifted from the article in the summary.
I don't see what the problem with this is. Why should someone bother writing a summary for a story submission, when there's a perfectly good one available in the article itself?
I suppose it technically is plagiarism, but considering that the story submitter doesn't really stand to benefit from it I don't see how it matters. Have you ever heard yourself say "Damn, that was a kickass summary. That story submitter must be a freaking genius!"?
No? Didn't think so.
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It amazes me why they haven't considered making a mouse with this straightened-out version.
You mean like this perhaps?
- sig? who is this sig of which you speak?
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.
I read a couple articles elsewhere proclaiming "APPLE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR TOUCHWHEEL!!!@" only to find that Apple is responsible for it.
They conceived it, they narrowly specified its behavior, they brought it to market. Just because a contractor was involved that means Apple's "not responsible" for its creation? Apple's responsible more than ever: the corralled the capabilities and efforts necessary to make it a reality.
You can get more information on the geeky side from http://www.synaptics.com/technology/cps.cfm
iPod's ridiculously simple and intuitive, and that's what's making it superior to other products such as the iRiver and the Sonys (haha, the Sony issue still makes me laugh).
That's not a clickwheel, it's a thumbwheel. Sony actually has a patent on clicking thumbwheels in Japan. But anyway, the problem with thumbwheels is the same as mouse wheels, you have to "pedal" the thing to go through long lists. That is, you have to remove your thumb from the wheel when you've scroll all the way one direction, then put your thumb back on at the other end and scroll again.
It works, but in very long lists it is noticeably inferior to a circular wheel you can stay on. Try scrolling through your list of all songs on your Rio. It doesn't work well, and this is proably why the Rio has you select the first letter of the song first and then go to the list (at least the Karma does).
I love the ipod, but hate the scroll wheel. I use my ipod in my car frequently. sometimes scrolling through that thing is worse then driving and talking on a cell phone. i look down, i'm one 'click' above the artist/song that i want, look at road, look down, scroll ever so slightly, end up one notch past what i want, look at road, look down, scroll ever so slightly, one notch past again, and so on.
the new click wheel looks a lot nicer and would probably solve that problem, but i have the old one.
Cheers! Yes, that is pretty much how I was thinking it worked.
Aside: I remember having an old Sony Trinitron 14" TV once, and it had a similar system for changing channel. It was very annoying if a fly decided to walk across the buttons, because the channels would change as the fly walked across!
I have an original 5Gig iPod. No touch sensitivity here, the scroll-wheel is mechanical. So the wheel was done for design reasonss, not purely for touch sensitivity.
Also, look at the very latest iPods - I allowed myself a wry smile here, as I'd always mainted that capacity disregarded, the original iPods are better designed than all but the newest ones because they don't depend on a row of buttons at the top. Apple clearly agreed, the buttons have disappeared and the pure scroll-wheel interface has returned.
So there's two strikes regarding the wheel being chosen for design, as opposed to cost features.
Cheers,
Ian
The power-switch on the iMac. How great it is and how you can find it.
With an indepth article regarding Apple's design process, and the exciting decision whether to make the power switch click or not.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Circular controllers:
- can control an unbounded parameter (just continue turning)
- can control a bounded parameter with arbitrary precision, e.g. one turn of the wheel doesn't have to go through to whole scale (ie. radio station tuning)
- set the parameter relative to it's last value
Up-down controllers:- can not control unbounded parameters at all
- offer a precision limited by their size
- offer reference on where you are on an absolute scale (and thus a specific position always correlates to a specific value)
That said, up-down controllers can be made to emulate the behaviour of circular ones. You can make an up-down controller simulate relative behaviour by automatically returning the "knob" to the neutral position after the user is done. That way, the up-down controller can be used to set the current value +/- a certain range, and with enough phases the user can control an arbitrary range.Obviously this is very easy on the computer, and fairly difficult with real devices. I've seen it done a couple of days ago in ChaosPro, a fractal generator. It's not the way you'd expect a scroll bar in a computer to work, though, but it's a lot better than the various virtual circular controllers some applications insist on using - circular controller really don't lend themselves well in computer GUIs, I think.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Electronics Design Chain
They think Apple invented the GUI, 64 bit computing, Unix and portable digital music.
While I understand your need to troll, sir - I'd like to point you to two famous inventors: Thomas Newcomen and James Watt. The latter is much more famous, as he is often identified (incorrectly) as the inventor of steam engine. In fact, the first practical steam engine was built by Newcomen, but it was Watt who has improved it to the point of triggering industrial revolution. I think Apple is a bit like James Watt in history of personal computing. They didn't invent GUI, but they improved it to the point of triggering revolution in UI concepts. They didn't invent UNIX, but they improved it to the point that even Joe Sixpack can use. They didn't invent portable digital music, but they improved it to trigger a revolution in how we purchase and listen to our music.
The scroll wheel is a clever big of engineering alright, and it's a good way to quickly navigate medium sized lists -- maybe three or four screenfuls of choices.
... would be quicker and easier than ...
However, the iPod UI designers seemed to take this as an excuse to present you with enormous lists to scroll through with the wheel. My MP3 collection is modest by the standards of most iPod owners (I've not filled 20GB yet) -- but "browse by artist" gives me a list of 209. Scrolling to somewhere near the beginning is OK. Scrolling to somewhere near the end is OK (because you can scroll right to the end, then back). Scrolling to somewhere around the middle of the alphabet is a real pain.
All they needed to do was make it heirarchical --
"Artists -> (easy scroll) -> S -> (easy scroll) -> Smiths"
"Artists -> (difficult scroll) -> Smiths
Bang and Olufsen used the exact same wheel on one of their telephones several years before Apple. While Synaptics might make the technology, and would have had to re-engineer aspects to suit Apple, the design itself is pre-Apple in almost every way. This would be like saying that Apple invented the mouse--they just poularized it.
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?
Their design team came up with a great concept, found people who could put it together relatively inexpensively (and in an extraordinarily quick amount of time). They have managed this project superbly. Everybody else (both in the MP3 player market and in computer field in general) had access to all of the elements that Apple did. None of them came close to putting together anyting remotely as functional, stylish, easy (and they still haven't)
I'd like to know how many Apple employees actually use the one-button mouse. After all, OS X takes advantage of a two-button scroll wheel mouse; Safari even opens links in a new tab if you middle-click. And using X11 programs with a one button mouse is just pathetic.
English is easier said than done.