A Recap of the iPod's Life

BDPrime writes "Here's a good look at the iPod's five-year existence and how, it can be argued, the device saved Apple from rotting away. From the story: 'It's hard to overstate the impact of the iPod on the computer, consumer electronics and music industries since it was introduced in 2001. The iPod, arguably, is the first crossover product from a computer company that genuinely caught on with music and video buffs. It's shown how a computer can be an integral part of a home entertainment system, and it's led pop stars from U2's Bono to Madonna to trade quips with Apple's own rock star, CEO Steve Jobs.'" Just to give a little bit of the other side of the story, not everyone loves the iPod. An anonymous reader wrote in with a link to research on unhealthy iPod listening levels at New Scientist. Additionally, Achromatic1978 writes to mention that the iPod has won a Shonky award from the Australians. I don't know what Shonky means, but I think that's bad.

Comments

Re:Slashdot: Apple releases iPod

[knightmad]

The pertinent article, for those who are not here that much time.

Re:I like em, but room for improvement

[shaneh0]

The Key Bank Promo was UNBELIEVABLE.

Deposit $50 into a new checking account, get a 2GB 2nd Gen Nano, keep $50 in account for 6 months, withdraw $51.15 and close account.

(It's possible--even likely--that other banks have a similar offer, but Key is the largest one i've seen do it)

iPod's major influence on our world.

[MtViewGuy]

I think the iPod has impacted our world in the following ways:

1) It has pretty much consigned the old "boomboxes" to near-complete obsolescene (thank G** for that!). People now listen to their own music with generally not disturbing others in a package far more convenient than even the old cassette player Walkmans.

2) It has changed the way we buy music, by legitimizing music downloads.

3) It has actually made radio talk shows more popular, as many on-air talk shows are now available for subscription-based download (ESPN Radio's Radio Insider and Premiere Radio Networks' Streamlink programs for example). We are seeing rapid growth of specialized downloadable talk shows (This Week in Technology (TWiT) being one of the best examples of this).

4) It has made it far more practical to not have to carry around your Compact Discs when listening to music in the car. Thanks to increased storage capacity on today's players you can "rip" your CD collection at higher sample rates and still put quite a lot of music on a single player for car playback. Also, many cars now offer standard auxiliary 1/8" jack input for all portable music players and some even offer special connectors to connect your newer-generation iPod so you can control the iPod from the car stereo controls and/or recharge the iPod's battery at the same time.

Re:I like em, but room for improvement

[xenolon]

I guess my question to you is: if itunes is difficult to use and a stinker, what legit alternative have you used that's better? i'd like to give it a try.

A few responses:

1. yes, wireless could be a useful and interesting. but there are a lot of drawbacks: battery life, security, legal complications, and ease of use are all to be considered.

2. drm? (i'm assuming you're talking about the itunes store here, not the app.) yeah, drm sucks. simple as that. but we need to keep reminding each other that drm is imposed by the owners of the content, not the distributors. the record companies and movie studios, in this case, would not have signed on to the itunes store if there was no way to lock down the content. they're old school, they don't see new business models.

3. the owners of the content are also to blame for the inability to pull songs of the device easily. they want their content protected. you're only supposed (according to them) to own one copy of each album or song you own, if you have a portable music player, you inherently own two. the record companies originally wanted to DELETE songs from your computer when they were transferred to an ipod. (i'd like to cite that, but don't have the time)
you're right about the re-naming of files within the structure of the ipods software, it sucks if you pull them out raw. however, there are programs that allow you to suck songs off an ipod with ease. they're not legal, technically, but they're out there. ;)

as for your wish to be able to set a photo as a wallpaper, i don't quite understand the function of such a feature. when you're not using the screen to navigate through the UI, how much time do you spend looking at it? when i'm not choosing songs, the screen to my nano is in my pocket.

Some Things I learned in Sound Class

[iluvcapra]

I am a professional, but a lot of the people I work with have gone stone deaf working the way we do, so maybe I have everything backwards, but here's what I was taught (from the mouth of Tom Holman himself.

• Hearing damage is like radiation: it's cumulative over your entire life.
• I'm not sure anyone has done any conclusive studies on earbuds versus headphones, but both are equally effective in causing damage if you listen at a bad level.
• Your eardrum is sensitive, but relatively robust compared to the Organ of Corti, which lives in your chochlea and actually tranducts the sound into the nerve; it gets damaged at the high end of your listening response and the damage travels down the spectrum as it accumulates. You won't generally notice cumulative hearing loss at first because it occurs at the top end of the spectrum, away from speech.
• Your response to sound level is logarithmic, and also relative. If you're in a loud car, or driving with the window down, you may be applying 90-100 dB SPL to your ears from all the energy from wind and engine, but it will seem quiet compared to a loud stereo which you crank to 11 to put it over the din, thus you can trick yourself into listening to things much louder than you could otherwise tolerate.
• Your acoustic reflex protects you from loud sounds by involuntarily contracting muscle in your middle ear to pull your eardrum tight, thus reducing your eardrums displacement and the amount of energy it passes to the inner ear. The muscle in your ear has tone like any other muscle, however, and will being to release your eardrum after 2-3 hours of continuous loud noise. It does this gradually, however, and you won't notice the effect, but your eardrum will register the strain and pass it along to your cochlea.
• Sudden dynamic (loudness) changes can be more damaging than dynamic changes that you acclimate yourself into. If you listen to your music at a comfortable level and turn it up over 10 minutes or so your acoustic reflex will protect your eardrum from immediate stress.