I can't believe people really don't know this? iPods do not play (pseudo)randomly.
They have a hard disk and a memory cache. Each time they have to spin the disk to read songs not in the cache, lots of power is consumed. To increase the battery time, the iPod will always prefer to play whatever's already in the cache.
I'm sure they meant well when they did this, but the result is truly devastating for many use cases, because it will cause the iPod to always prefer what you have heard recently over anything else when you switch back and forth between different random selections. It is especially bad that this optimization is also in play when the iPod is running on net power. There should at least be an option to switch to true (pseudo)randomness, right now the only workaround I know is to blow the cache by letting it play random songs from the entire library over a very long period.
To verify that this is true, try the following experiment: Play one song from an album you haven't listened to for a while, then choose to play all the songs from that album in random order. Guess which one comes first.
This changes nothing for the enterprise segment. Enterprises deploys Java client apps using WebStart, where you specify which vm version to use. If the machine does not have the vm it is automatically downloaded, you can have many versions at the same time you know.
For internet use, it will mean that some percentage of users won't have to download a vm before running your app.
No big deal, but absolutely not a bad thing.
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I can't believe people really don't know this? iPods do not play (pseudo)randomly.
They have a hard disk and a memory cache. Each time they have to spin the disk to read songs not in the cache, lots of power is consumed. To increase the battery time, the iPod will always prefer to play whatever's already in the cache.
I'm sure they meant well when they did this, but the result is truly devastating for many use cases, because it will cause the iPod to always prefer what you have heard recently over anything else when you switch back and forth between different random selections. It is especially bad that this optimization is also in play when the iPod is running on net power. There should at least be an option to switch to true (pseudo)randomness, right now the only workaround I know is to blow the cache by letting it play random songs from the entire library over a very long period.
To verify that this is true, try the following experiment: Play one song from an album you haven't listened to for a while, then choose to play all the songs from that album in random order. Guess which one comes first.
This changes nothing for the enterprise segment. Enterprises deploys Java client apps using WebStart, where you specify which vm version to use. If the machine does not have the vm it is automatically downloaded, you can have many versions at the same time you know. For internet use, it will mean that some percentage of users won't have to download a vm before running your app. No big deal, but absolutely not a bad thing.