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A Brief History of the iPod
antdude writes "MacSlash mentioned MLAgazine's article on a brief history of the iPod. It all started on October 23, 2001 with the release of one of the most important products from Apple in its history."
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I also talked with a Mac-enthusiatic buddy of mine, and he hated it. I don't know why, but he thought it would bring down Apple another notch on the finance scale. Guess he was wrong. Along with some that said "no wireless. Lame."
I find it the most indispensable tool in my life. Backup, file transport, music and calendar. With a huge harddrive.
... sometimes I fly with the white swan to my Liffey home.
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Since its inception, Apple has always been willing to gamble more with new products than most other companies
Granted, they flopped with the Newton... but they came out with the mac, the powerbook, peer2peer file sharing out of the box, the trackpad, the powerbook duo, speech recognition integrated on the OS on the 90's, quicktime, and the list goes on... (I would like to give them the mouse and the interface, but as with everything they also have a dark side)
It is good to see they are ripping the benefits of believing in something completely new... ( As they believed in a portable media player by some bogus guy who was rejected by other companies)
Kudos to Apple
Guaranteed: At least a dozen times prior to Apple releasing the iPod, large technology company middle managers refused to approve designs for competing devices, claiming with absolute certainty that no market existed for portable digital music players.
As those ass-molded-to-chair managers know, it's always easier to be a skeptic. The numbers of jobs and revenue lost to those WRONG decisions must be staggering.
Here's a brief history of the iPod:
First, Apple designed the iPod. One day an engineer came in succinctly blitzed and designed the horrible "I-ain't-seen-this-shit-since-Intellivision" circle navigation wheel thingy. The hippie fruits at Apple all applauded.
Then they bought usage rights to some second-rate cheap ass songs that never got played on the radio anyway, and used them to promote the thing. Said no-name bands became more famous because of the constant never-ending barrage of commercials. "Honey, if I do say so myself, this Black Eyed Peas song is rather good! I absolutely hated it the first 48,000 times I heard it but now it's starting to grow on me!"
Then Apple deployed their proven strategy of making the device look better than it actually performs, thereby luring thoughtless dimwits and college freshmen with enormous piles of high interest credit cards that they somehow "needed" one for Christmas.
Then when people realized that the music they were downloading for free was somehow supporting terrorism, and they were probably going to be castrated in town square, they needed another method to fill up the bottomless hole that is the iPod (seriously, who the hell needs to have that many gigs of mp3s with them at all times?). But wait, Apple was here with a solution! You can download the songs for a low low price, and it's legal! Oh...and the artists still get fucked! Yay! The RIAA can rest easy. iTunes is here.
And a legend was born.
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
I know this is off topic, but I see they call the iPod one of the most important products in Apple history. How does one value their individual products, and how would a list of importantness lokk like? Like this?
1. Apple I for starting the whole thing?
2. Apple II for making Apple a business?
3. Macintosh for paving the way to the future?
4. iMac for saving the company?
5. iPod for attracting buyers outside of the crowd of believers?
Can Steve Jobs be called a "product" these days, and thus earn a place on the top 5?
I didn't know a lot about the history of the iPod, so this was quite interesting to me. I really only started paying attention to the iPod when it was compatible with the PC.
But it would be more interesting to me to see an entire history of the Mp3 player...starting with the first little 32MB ones or whatever came out first, and going right up to the 80GB+ ones we have today. I remember being so excited when I got my first Rio Mp3 flash player. It had 64mb built in, and this was just amazing to me. I loved that thing to death. Now I look back and wonder how it was ever ok to only be able to carry a single album encoded at 128kbps around with me.
Anyone have any links to articles that might have a more broad history of the MP3 player in general?
Agreed, the iPod worship around here is quite thick.
didn't see any Rios or Dell laptops, though--go figure;>
I find it interesting that every "iPod killer" attempts to add more features and make it cheaper. Unfortunately this has the side effect of it having a horrible design or uses cheap materials which makes it feel horrible to handle.
Personally I believe that if something looks and feels good, then people will buy it. As soon as a company accepts that there are people who are perfectly happy to pay more for something that looks and feels good, then they might spend a little more on the hardware and less on trying to get it's sales price as low as possible.
I fear that at the moment the only real competitor to Apple was Sony, but then they dropped the ball with a limited hard drive (no 40 gig option?) and the stupid requirement to convert to ATRAC. Creative have never produced a product that remotely looks like it's worth the money that was paid for it and iRiver (whilst being technically very good) needs to seriously review some of their design choices (ruggidised black and a stubbly joypad doesn't appeal to many and definately not to women).
Of course, everyones opinion is different. I know people who think the Creative one is beautiful and the Apple one horrible. But the market has clearly shown that they are in the minority.
More style, more class, less about the price point and someone could actually make it vaiguley close to having an "iPod killer" on their hands.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
"It all started on October 23, 2001 with the release of one of the most important products from Apple in its history."
Uh, no. It started when Tony Fadell had the idea of creating a digital music player and tying it to an online music store a few years before the iPod came out. Inside Look at Birth of the iPod on Wired News covers the stuff that happened before the iPod came out.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
A x86 computer that runs OS X natively? Sign me up.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
yeah, 'cos that saying hasnt been said by ANYONE else before. fucks sake.
Slashdot has never been revolutionary. It's never really on the cutting edge of anything. Most of the editor's comments end up being incendiary or show that they are profoundly out of touch with reality.
I think, therefore I am an Atheist.
An x86 computer that runs Linux/X natively, which is the same thing except no Aqua.
Maybe they don't lose money, but the iPod is certainly a bigger cashcow, so why not pour R&D into that instead?
interesting how many ipod-clones are coming out
Sorry, it not imitation but, form being dictated by function. All hard drive based portable music players use similar hard drives.
When other companies paint theirs white and put U2 in their commercials, then its imitation.
Yes, I know. I'm splitting hairs.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
If you were just talking desktops, I kinda agree. Laptops on the other hand, I feel there are simply no x86 based laptops that can compete with the powerbook line on price, performance, features, etc. I have noticed the powerbooks line (and to a much lesser extent, the ibook line) making a massive comeback in higher education.
Whereas I would used to go to various conferences and see over 90% thinkpads and some dells, now is seems well over half the people attending have powerbooks, and that number just keeps growing.
Granted higher ed is a small subset of the population, but I have been noticing more apple laptops in other groups as well.
Finkployd
That's why we'll never see OSX on the x86-based computers.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
iPod is not based on a new concept. Companies before Apple released hard drive based music players, but none had the charm and elegance in the Apple implementation. Unlike the competitors, the iPod used a high speed FireWire interface to transfer files on and off of it, and it used a tiny hard drive, that made the device a quarter of the size of comparable products. Besides the specifications, the iPod offered an intuitive interface and a beautiful enclosure. Even the ear buds were different and unique. Almost all audio equipment was black, but Apple created a set of ear buds that were glistening white. Everything in the design was there to make the user experience a better one.
The iPod was almost not released by Apple. The products creator, Tony Fadell, had shopped the idea to Phillips and RealNetworks before proposing the idea to Apple. Fadell found a welcoming enviroment at Apple, who agreed almost immediately to produce and market the device.
The iPod was so small that it can slip into a shirt pocket with ease, and with a Sony battery that lasts for ten hours on a charge. On the inside, the device had a tiny 1.8 in. Toshiba hard drive, weighing around fifty grams, far smaller than even notebook hard drives. Apple did not develop the operating system or MP3 player software. The operating system is from Pixio, a company staffed by many former Apple employees, and an MP3 player from PortalPlayer. Pixio's operating system has been implemented in many portable telephones allows for fast develpment on limitted deviced, taking up 155 kb. Since the original iPod, Pixio was acquired by Sun, who is happy to be selling its software on every iPod produced.
There was only one serious flaw with the iPod, and that was the price, The machine cost $400, making far from accessible to many consumers. Some lamented the lack of PC support, though Jobs promised a PC version very soon after the lauch. In fact, weeks after the lauch, third party utilities cropped up that enable iPod users to sync with their PC.
Several limitations were present in the first version. There was no remote control,despite a connector designed for such a puropse, there are no games, except for the breakout game included as an easter egg, the dial was subject to problems, and the software implemented limitting anti-piracy policies.
One month after the domestic launch of the iPod, it was launched in Europe, accompanied by new peripherals. Several companies were selling charging adapters, FM broadcasters and a plethora of cases. By the end of 2001, Apple had already sold 125,000 new iPods.
Like all Apple products, a major update was released several months later. In March of 2002, a 10 GB version of the iPod was released. Along with the new iPod, came a software update that included several bug fixes, and a new equalizer....
Hardly four months later, in July, a new 20 GB version was released, with a major price cut for the 5 and 10 GB versions. The new iPods are also PC compatible, using MusicMatch to sync with the player. A new calendar and artists search was included into the software that shipped on the new players. Unlike the earlier versions, the new iPods came with a remote control attached to the ear buds, which Apple soon released to existing iPod users as an add on. The most obvious physical change in the iPod comes in the scroll wheel. No longer is it a physical wheel, instead it is a touch sensitive wheel similar in function to a touchpad.
To many's surprise, Apple abruptly discontinued the
What about Apple's famous 1984 commercial? That was pretty important...
Video here for those who don't remember...
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
Precisely how mad is "barking mad?" Is that the point at which you express your displeasure by standing in front of stores that sell Ipods and unleashing your canine fury?
iPod and iPod photo: 1.8 inch hard disks
iPod mini: 1.0 inch hard disks
Notebooks: 2.5 inch hard disks
Thought you were right on? Think again.
And no easy way to have an encrypted home directory, or make encrypted disk images (oh I know how to do it with a loopback file system, but most people don't)
:)
And much less application support (don't show me 500 aim clones that Linux has, OS X can run those through X11 and fink anways, show me the Office or Photoshop or Quicken apps)
And a nighmare getting periferals configured and working
Oh and generally really crappy battery life, with (as much as I like Linux) the worlds worst power management features and tools.
Look, I love using Linux and it is the only OS on my desktops (except for one headless windows box for the sporatic DLL or ISAPI I have to write). However, after owning a few top of the line Dell notebooks and Thinkpads, I will never go back to x86 based laptops now that I have a powerbook. Having everything from power management, wireless, long battery life, and application compatibility just working is such a nice way to live
Finkployd
Apple was not the first to make a hard disk portable player. They were the first to ship one with a 1.8" hard disk, which hardly makes everything else a clone - they just got there second. Nobody was really taken by surprise, and the major MP3 companies were already well into designing their own.
Apple was also not the first to make a mini hard disk portable. They were the first to ship a 4GB 1" hard disk player, and then only just. They were beaten by many companies to ship a 1" 1.5GB HD player (including where I work) - but they had a supply of 4GB drives before everyone else. In fact, Rio even managed to announce and demonstrate their own 4GB player hours before Job's keynote speech. Spot how he deliberately missed the comparison of the Mini iPod to the Rio Nitrus (a 1" HD player), and instead picked a Rio 256MB flash player as a convenient strawman.
It's slightly irritating that Apple's reality distortion field now makes it possible for everyone to claim that all other players are "clones".
cos that saying hasnt been said by ANYONE else before.
Some people are just new around here; and I don't mean at Slashdot.
KFG
I got my 20% off my 12" Powerbook, which meant I could throw in an iPod too. Apple know how to look after their customers. I don't think I'll be turning back to x86 laptops for a long time.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Apropos, take a look at this. It even has a PortalPlayer DSP (just like the iPod). 20GB, SD/MMC-slot, and it's black without any U2 songs on it.
199 Euros.
Already sold out (according to the article).
"Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-my-own-Grandpa." - Dr Hubert Farnsworth
Agreed. For a tech-oriented site, slashdot is very quick to decry most techonological advances.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Some how, Apple's made their products of late fashionable. An ipod looks cool apparantly, so it's a must have product.
Apple also offers deep discounts to learning institutions. Schools have always been good business for apple for as long as I can remember. I can see why powerbooks are getting more popular; they look great, and are probably just as affordable when you add in the academic discounts.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Oh, wait...
You must think in Russian.
I'm the webmaster there. Does anyone have a mirror site that we can host the images off? My server is my home machine, a PII 266.
I'm not sure on what basis you said this on. Maybe if your iPod was 18 months or older, but to just come out and say it is pointless. My 3G 10GB iPod still has great battery life (got it last Christmas) and occasionally I get over 8 hours of battery life. The thing can also take a beating. I've dropped it multiple times on hard surfaces and it just runs and runs.
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I really hate to having to guess (from the url) the year of an old post. Please, show the year in the post date. It's just 4 chars, man! Am I missing something ?
It's been a long, long time since I've been enticed by any piece of consumer electronics.
I'm not a gadget freak anymore, really.
But dammit! Apple have created an object of sheer desirability in the iPod - and especially in the iPod mini.
Despite my (iBod) nickname, It's been many years since I've owned an Apple product (the last was the ill-fated Newton).
I think Apple really understand which buttons to press to get hip, design-aware customers longing for their products (not that I include myself in that demograph). When they've got the trendsetters, the rest will follow.
Credit and kudos where it's due. Apple have a killer product that is even making iPod buyers switch from PCs to Macs, allegedly.
IMHO there will be no 'iPod killer' because nobody understands the intended market for these devices better than Apple.
No self-respecting kid will thank you for getting him/her a 'no-name' MP3 player this Christmas instead of an iPod.
Yes. Cocoa is an implementation of what used to be the OPENSTEP specification. The GNUStep project also has an implementation of most of this specification, and a large number of the Apple/Cocoa specific extensions. This makes it relatively easy to port Apple apps to *NIX (and recently Windows), assuming that they only depend on Cocoa/POSIX.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
...sounds like a scottish pyschopath!
:-]
Jaj
... has anyone else noticed that Slashdot is just overflowing with worshipful fluff articles about Apple products recently (like the last year or two?) I can't help but think that Apple has paid Taco's Corporate Masters for the "inline advertising" that Slashdot used to decry as unethical. Microsoft has banner ads at the top, Apple gets a positive spin story or two a day.
*** Posting anonymously because whenever I say something negative about Apple when I'm logged in, the mods go straight to my account and mod down every other post I've made in the last few days as revenge.
That's really frickin' sad when a person needs a product like a music player to announce to the world about themselves, their values and their aspirations. Ahh but what the hell; people have been doing that for decades with cars.
I still can't get the screen shots of Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple IIe out of my head.
It's not like they were even thinking about making an mp3 player until someone pitched the idea to them.
Apple have no vision beyond making already established ideas better. They're no better than Microsoft in terms of innovation. Microsoft tends to let other people release products, analyse why they suceed/fail and then improve them in some way.
Apple do the same, but tend to focus on simplicity and the visual design. They like the "cool" factor that makes their products appeal to designers and the in-crowd.
In fact, OSX follows this concept. They've taken already written software (kernel, X windows etc), improved it and grafted a slick interface on the front.
What is the most important: Features or looks?
If features the iPod is the wrong choice!
If looks, I suggest you to take a picture of it and use it as backgroundpicture, or buy a defect iPod which you can get much cheaper.
Think about it. If the design is so important that the eletronics or features isn't the most important, you will get the biggest "bang for your bugs" with a defect iPod or a picture.
I'll better not try and convince them otherwise =)
And don't forget that Apple's machines are almost dead silent. The fans on my inspiron could have matched wits with a 747. I was sitting in class the other day with my iBook and the room was so silent I was afraid that the clicking of a hard drive or the hum of a fan might disturb someone, but there was not a sound from my beloved (geek metaphor). The hardware is just better.
You're obviously not into graphic design, animation, photography, etc etc etc.
Err.... I own an iPod, I think it's great, and I realise that it's made Apple a lot of money, but is sticking a nice GUI and interface on a mini HDD and packaging it nicely really anywhere close to as "important" as, say, the first personal computer? No? What about the first GUI for a consumer OS? No again? Or, if we're going to talk in terms of cash cows, how about the iMac, which actually saved Apple? If the company was on its last financial legs before the iPod's debut, I could see calling it one of their most important releases, but making a profitable company more profitable by taking exiting ideas and technology and simply doing them better than anyone else, while significant, can't be compared to innovations that changed the world forever à la MacOS or Apple I.
In conclusion, profitable =/= important
and the TFA is a POS.
Actually you can get an x86 that runs Darwin/X which is the same thing as OSX "except no aqua"... ...which is a bit like the same thing as Dolly Parton - just without the chest...
In 20 years time, I'll bet people will be saying 'iPod' when they mean generic personal, life-style-enhancing, thingummy.
mod parent up.
i know they dont own an ipod.
the grandparent sounds like a terrible person who bought an ipod to be cool.
im sure they carry it around awkwardly so people can see it.
i hope they get mugged.
i mean that 'i know the they dont own an ipod but...'
I also think I can hear a bunch of trolls running around preparing for a flamewar...
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
I'm the webmaster there. Does anyone have a mirror site that we can host the images off? My server is my home machine, a PII 266.
I wouldn't mind hosting your images on my machine, but it's not the most impressive of beasts, running on my old P2-400 on my 10mbit-line to my apartment...
I very muchly doubt it'd withstand a slashdotting very long.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
I can easy follow your idea, and I think you got my point too=)
People with iPod's indicate, that they are 100% for design, and not features or eletronics and sound quality. The PCM2705 from TI that is in the iPod is a NOT a high end DAC! In fact, a low cost DAC =(
I already uploaded the images to my personal webspace at Comcast. The traffic threw out our cable connection, and crashed my server (I use it for the images and as my personal machines). Thankyou, though.
...album after five years in the business*, then why not have a story on the history of the iPod, which is bound to be more interesting?
* The all-time record for "most pointless 'greatest hits' album" goes to early-90s dance music purveyors TKA, whose third (yes, THIRD) album was "Greatest Hits."
I'm sorry, were you talking about Slashdot, or Fox News?
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
You're obviously not into graphic design, animation, photography, etc etc etc.
How strange, another myopic statement in a Mac zealot frenzy of posts.
Graphic design is surging to the Windows/PC at an alarming rate for Apple.
With the Adobe memos stating PCs are faster for their products, to the number of Publishers and Editors that are retiring Macs. (PS. One of my company's clients is one of the largest syndication and publishers in the US.) We deal with Mac migration at what would be alarming rates if Apple truly cared about the industry it once thrived in.
Next, factor in the Hollywood market, again the surge has been to Windows and *nix based systems for rendering farms.
And if you belive getting photos off a camera or flash drive on a Mac is easier than doing so on a WindowsXP based PC, you apparently haven't compared the two.
If you so truly believe the Mac is a better Graphic Design platform, you either have found a feature that the majority of the market hasn't or just like believing your own hyperboles.
What manufacturer would that be?
I've had this sig for three days.
Please. Apple has never been the platform of choice for rendering farms. They may be in the future, but they're going up from zero.
Mod point free since 2001
Caution: Linky NSFW.
Dr. Freud
Technology meets Transportation.
Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...
...
...
...
:-D
Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port
Raise your hand if you have both
Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device
There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod.
~LoudMusic
October 23rd, 2001. Priceless.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
First there was the guitar or maybe the ukelele, so many vowels - so few strings. Actually in some places there was also the banjo. OK, so first there were instruments and you'd strum a little song and be all up-ons with the ladies.
This was superseded by the record player. Not so good - how to get the ladies to visit, doesn't work by the campfire without a long extension lead. Then the jukebox - brilliant, put the record player where the ladies is.
Then the Walkman, no ladies, the smaller Walkman, still no ladies, CD Walkman, ladies? Creative portable hard-drive thingo, ditto, iPod, iPods with progressively larger drives, mini iPod because, as the ladies say, size isn't important, and finally the iPod Photo with the tunes and the pictures, of the ladies, from the Internet.
Hello the ladies of the Internet. Wanna see my iPod?
Now wash your hands.
The article says that Fadell shopped his idea around before settling on Apple. As this is the history of the *iPod*, who came up with the ideas of hard drive players or music stores is not relevant. Save your complaining for a history of mp3 players in general.
+5 Needless Nitpicking
http://www.rockbox.org/playerhistory/
It may surprise some people to see that the iPod was announced a full two years after the first harddisk-based mp3 player.
iPod has been a savior of Apple. The hardware has actually been driving sales of downloaded music and this fact has not been unnoticed by the business world. Hence the term, *iPod killer*.
Users typically spend a bity of time creating, transferring their music titles to the pod. But what happens at the end of the hard drive life? I wonder what steps a typical user has taken to backup their 40/80 Gb of music?
Will they be tempted to save their 40Gb to hard drive before any hardware problems occur? What is the MTBF of the iPod? [www.ipodhacks.com, iPod Boot Disk Burnout, 20,000 hrs]
Will the cost offset the user disatisfaction? Or will enough users purchased the next version with suitable upgrade of their music lists?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
That's because the Slashdot crowd seems to be fairly pragmatic.
/. crowd mostly thinks in terms of "what can you do for me NOW," and as a result, you get a lot of people saying "Gee, [innovation] won't lead to anything useful with the next year or two, so it's not important to me." The sad part is, they're right most of the time. Don't believe me? Go grab an issue of Popular Science or Popular Mechanics from the mid-1980s.
Most technological advances that make the news here are in-development technologies that may or may not bear fruit in five to ten years. And if anything, the experience of the last 50 years should have taught us that no matter how many times flying cars and nuclear fusion are predicted to be 10 years off, they seem to be perpetually 10 years off.
I think the
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
I've had mine for about 15 months now, with very heavy use. Still works fine.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
IBM Thinkpad T40 and X40 series kick Apple's ass in terms of battery life, expandability, number of IBM-supplied peripherals, legacy compatibility, size, noise level, CPU performance, video performance, and durability, primarily thanks to the Pentium M CPU and the 9.5mm drive bay.
Unfortunately, there's still no way of installing OS X on them.
Yes, I do own one. And while it's true that a lot of people at my university have bought powerbooks and ibooks fairly recently, I also see a ton of T40s.
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You just have to know what to look for. The significant article would be the one covering the Compaq Personal DJ (Something like the PDJ-100; can't find any references anymore). It showed the future.
Although people here will continually obsess about things like Ogg support, sometimes their whining has value. If you have something that works technically, and has enough marketing muscle behind it, you have a winner.
Oddly, some of the best "tips" I've gotten have come from Slashdot. Both short term positions and long-term strategies. The complaints Taco made about the iPod give a useful insight into all the iPod killer reviews today, and the future direction... just know what to look for!
That may be, I gave up on Thinkpads after the T23.
I should look at the T40 sometime.
I think Apple is already trying to leverage the iPod popularity ... The new iMac G5 looking rather like a huge, docked iPod is no accident. (Look at the advertising they've done where you see the two side-by-side, if you don't think it's intentional!)
The stock analysts are expecting an increase in Mac sales too, based on strong iPod sales. They know the iPod is acting as a "bridge" of sorts, getting folks to consider Apple as a solid brand making quality products.
IMHO, Apple's biggest dilemma is software availability. When you buy your iPod, you can find just about any music you like and it can play it. When you buy your first iMac or iBook though - you CAN'T yet find quite a few programs (especially games, but apps too like AutoCAD, or a current version of Street Atlas USA... and the "promise" I once heard of Microsoft making Mac versions of all their apps is far from reality too). Don't get me wrong; there's a LOT of good stuff to run on a Mac. I own 3 Macs over here right now! But it's gonna dampen some people's experiences when they go to buy, say, Half Life 2, and find out "Oh, no Mac version is even so much as *planned* to ever come out?"
As the AC pointed out, yes the GUI was invented before Apple came along (and XEROX as well), but Apple were the first to take this proof-of-concept and make it usable.
regard to the IPod being not an inovation. MP3 players have been around for ages.
Invention is not required for innovation. Yes there were small players before the iPod, and larger capacity players before the iPod, but there weren't any other players that had a large capacity in a compact form factor. There was nothing else like the iPod at the time of its introduction. Nothing. That, and the industry has followed Apple in making small size-high capacity players, most with hard drives. How is that *not* the definition of innovation?
Apple just have great marketing. That's all there is to it.
Snob. The iPod is a phenomenon because Apple made a product with the best combination of features and it took a very long time before anyone could touch them. And its *still* arguably a superior product because of its interface and software integration. Apple's compeditors seem to think they'll have an "iPod killer" on their hands if they take a billeted list its features and one up them. But just because your player has a couple more hours of batter life and costs $40 less doesn't automatically mean you have a better product on your hands. The iPod succeeded because it had a great mix of features, and to beat it your player will have to do the same.
Spot how he deliberately missed the comparison of the Mini iPod to the Rio Nitrus (a 1" HD player), and instead picked a Rio 256MB flash player as a convenient strawman.
/sarcasm
Oh, of course he should have compared it to other people's vaporware.
Agree again. The only real problem for me right now is AutoCAD. Almost everything else can be solved, but I can't ditch the work Dell for a mac until Autodesk gets on board.
The real problem for Apple, though, is not software but hardware supply issues. Software is the difference between a 10% and a 25% market share; hardware is the difference between 6% and 10%. Have to get over the first hurdle before you worry about the second!
Whats some good software to use with a 4th generation iPod? I've heard theres 3rd party software out there that allows you to use it more like a portable HD? Any good free software?
I don't get why you pc guys liking OS X doesn't use WindowMaker or Afterstep as your windowmanager than.
Believe me, its really similar desktop approach, they are openstep stuff which is derived from NexTStep.
It was funny that I installed windowmaker with Fink to OS X and asked myself "wtf I just did?"
There are several notebooks and even subnotebooks with 1.8 drives that have been around for quite a while, are you serious?
We have two laptops that are 1.8 drive based, the one I was specifically referring to was the Toshiba Protege.
When did Slashdot go from being the cutting tech edge/Open Source news site to the newbie and Apple (Closed Hardware/Software) fan site?
Did I miss the memo?
I see more informed responses on newbie newsgroups than I see here anymore, sad, very sad.
Please. Apple has never been the platform of choice for rendering farms. They may be in the future, but they're going up from zero.
Actually you are pretty much correct, but there was a surge of Mac rendering farms, mainly from the custom design software of the time around 2000, when MacOSX was merely a Server OS.
However, you would have thought with MacOX becoming the System software of Apple it would have continued to climb, instead Linix and WindowsXP/2000/2003 systems are both the growing trend for best design and rendering bang for the buck.
Anyone have any links to articles that might have a more broad history of the MP3 player in general?
Try this:
http://www.rockbox.org/playerhistory/
Da Blog
Ipod can use open source too....
They do pour a disproportionate amount of R&D into the iPod. But remember that if you take a great product that posts a profit and throw millions of R&D at it it might really eat into that profitability. There's VERY little Apple can get from R&D on an iPod, the whole thing is made up of commodity parts. The only thing Apple does is provide an OS for the embedded ARM chip and put all the pieces together inside a nice pretty case (yes, they design the board in there too).
Why destroy a profit-center by spending excessively on it? Especially when you're not gonna get much out of it.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
The images are served on a Windows 2000 box running Sambar. The OS X server was fine and speedy, the Win2000 box crashed and burned.
This has always been a problem with mp3, there was the gapless plugin for winamp, itunes attempts it with 'crossfade' except with a zero value crossfade there is still a wierd little skip or gap between tracks. I have seen the rip groups using one big mp3 and a cue file, but as far as I know no mp3 portable supports them, and itunes certainly does not, not sure what windows app does but obviously there is one. Surely this is one thing the mp3 scene has not dealt with. I don't mind ripping mixes as one joined track, since the ipod's scrubbing is excellent, and it is easy to skip forward _and_ backward through a mix using scrub.
I have found that most people that I talk to and people that I sell custom mixes to prefer tracked cd's though.
music lover since 1969
People don't carry their desktops with them when they jog. Seriously... it's like a cell phone or PDA more than it is a computer. At least in that regard. iPods take a lot of abuse. A lot more than your PC ever will.