[HN Gopher] A Prototype Original iPod
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A Prototype Original iPod
Author : samps
Score : 229 points
Date : 2021-10-23 16:07 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (panic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (panic.com)
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I'd like to know more about when Apple started working on the
| iPod. Especially given how crude this prototype was and the
| obvious amount of room for design revisions until the 2001
| release.
| macNchz wrote:
| Hard to believe it has been 20 years. When talking about the
| impact of the original iPod on the last two decades of Apple's
| extraordinary success, I like to jump back to this forum thread
| from October 23rd 2001 (it is always easy to find because it is
| thread number 500!) and see the reactions from the time:
| https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5...
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| My favorite remains Slashdot's Editor-in-Chief CmdrTaco's "No
| wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
|
| (shared with <3, it really shows how us geeks had/have no sense
| of the popularity of a tech product)
| eli wrote:
| It was an expensive accessory that only worked with (at the
| time) a recent computer running a niche OS.
|
| It succeeded because it evolved quite a bit from launch
| nsxwolf wrote:
| There's a post from me out there somewhere complaining about
| how the iPhone was a non-starter because it wasn't going to
| have MS Exchange support at launch, and I wasn't going to
| carry two devices around.
|
| I stood in line to buy it at launch anyway, and carried two
| devices around.
| handrous wrote:
| That's a reasonable criticism _if_ one sees 90+% of
| somewhat-capable portable Internet devices in the hands of
| business users who will all want /need exchange support,
| and assumes that's the market for such devices.
|
| If, on the other hand, it creates a _new_ market for such
| devices among people who couldn 't tell you what MS
| Exchange is....
| macNchz wrote:
| I always felt it was a good demonstration of staying
| disciplined and focusing on making a great consumer
| product first-looking too closely at the competition and
| building in a bunch of enterprise-friendly features from
| the start could have been a big distraction and resulted
| in a mediocre product in other ways.
| crate_barre wrote:
| Apple takes the Nintendo approach. Myamota/Iwata
| mentioned that they always try to imagine what it's like
| for a non-gamer to play the game. The way they simulated
| that in their testing was by playing their games with
| their non-dominant hand (left handed). That's what it
| feels like to a casual user or non-gamer. They optimize
| for that.
|
| The guy that _needs_ MS Exchange is actually a niche
| market (hard to believe). It's that click wheel that
| brought in everybody in the world. Your mother isn't
| going to figure out those Creative /Rio MP3 players from
| the early 2000s.
|
| This honestly takes incredible faith in what you think is
| cool. I'm not good at because I usually go 'eh, this is
| my thing that I'm into, and you won't get it'. But these
| people don't think like that, they go out of their way to
| show you why it's cool, in whatever way possible. They
| are literally trying to reach people.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I hate this "your mother can't..." ageist and sexist
| bullshit. Maybe _your_ mother can 't. Nobody tells _my_
| mother (who is now also a grandmother) what she can and
| can 't do.
|
| Honestly, lots of people _were_ able to figure those
| devices out. People aren 't really as stupid as
| programmers make them out to be. But coddle them and keep
| beating them over the head with this and they likely just
| give up from being treated like shit.
| crate_barre wrote:
| It's a manner of speaking, don't get so woke on me now.
| _Many_ people can't figure out tech. Here comes another
| cliche, have you ever been the IT guy for everyone around
| you? Why was that? We really didn't take User Experience
| seriously until about the iPhone /Apps age. That's when
| people didn't need handholding, the apps were designed
| well.
| moron4hire wrote:
| At best, this is ignorance. At worst, it's willful
| revisionism. It was the iPhone apps that _drove_ setting
| HCI back almost 2 decades. Hiding functionality behind
| skeumorphisms, coupling file access to apps, tiny
| screens, reinventing the accessibility wheel. Both Apple
| and Microsoft had very well-regarded UI design guidelines
| that, if followed, made apps that afforded the same
| metaphors as all the other apps on the system. Then one
| day the tech industry decided to throw it all away in the
| name of _graphic_ design and branding, not usability.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| When I got the first phone I saw it as the way forward
| for a phone UI, and I loved the iPod app. But the thing
| was mostly a tech demo. It was far less useful than every
| other smart phone on the market at the time. Slow
| Internet, bare bones maps, no MMS. Way too slow of a CPU
| for what it was trying to do.
|
| All worked out fairly quickly once the 3GS came around.
| Marazan wrote:
| The firewire connection was lame.
|
| And everyone agreed. If you look at the sales graph for the
| ipod it is basically a trickle until it suddenly explodes
| upwards.
|
| Why the explosion? USB adaptor connection allowong it to be
| used on normal Windows machines.
| ArteEtMarte wrote:
| I don't think it was Firewire that kept it as a niche
| product. It was that iTunes wasn't initially available on
| Windows machines, and Macs were still quite rare.
|
| I had a G3 iMac (Graphite) at the time the iPod came out.
| So I got one. Actually, I got three: the first died after a
| day, the second was DOA, but the third kept chugging away
| for about 3 years until the battery died and it was only
| usable when plugged in.
|
| It's funny to remember how unusual the iPod was. People on
| the tube in London, which isn't known for conversation
| amongst strangers, would ask me what it was. Tiny, about
| the size of a cassette case, with that that amazing white
| face and silver case. It was like something from the
| future.
| LawnGnome wrote:
| They were linked, though: it was unusual to have Firewire
| on a PC, so even if iTunes had had Windows support at the
| time I don't know that it would have made much
| difference. It was the combination of USB and Windows
| support that made the difference.
| macNchz wrote:
| I think Firewire was a smart choice when launching to Mac
| users first, since USB1 was so slow, USB2 was still very
| new, and all new Macs had Firewire ports. That said,
| opening the door to Windows later on was absolutely the key
| to the popularity explosion, but by that time many more
| Windows machines also had USB2 ports for fast syncing.
| rjsw wrote:
| I have an ASUS WindowsXP laptop with firewire, it worked
| well with an iPod.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| There were a number of 'media' laptops that had "i.Link"
| ports (advertised that way by Sony), but you still had to
| buy adapter cables for it. It was a little bit of a mess
| but you could make it work.
| rjsw wrote:
| I didn't have to buy anything extra, the iPod came with a
| 4-connector to 6-connector adapter.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think his take was right. The iPod was good, but iTunes was
| great.
|
| The ecosystem made the iPod.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| See also HN's reaction to Dropbox:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
| 0des wrote:
| Poor fella's never going to recover from this, is he?
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Could be worse. Could be u/sanj who tried shutting up
| u/cperciva with a Putnam reference:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
|
| (they've both been gracious about it since)
| Nition wrote:
| This was quoted and linked in Panic's article, for what it's
| worth.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Derp! By the end of the article, I had forgotten that intro
| >_<
| dylan604 wrote:
| The one thing I had always wanted my ipod to do was stream,
| so I def agree with the lack of wireless being lame. Just
| because the greater majority of users felt it was okay and
| made it the most popular music device doesn't mean it wasn't
| lame to not have it.
| handrous wrote:
| Wifi's still pretty bad, but it was _really_ bad then.
| Especially on consumer wifi routers, but most business set-
| ups sucked then, too. Dropped packets galore, signal-loss
| hiccups, and not enough bandwidth to make up for that by
| transferring large buffers really fast. Terrible for
| streaming. Probably way more battery-draining then than
| now, as well, since that kind of hardware has generally
| gotten a lot more efficient. Wouldn 't be surprised if that
| efficiency has outpaced increasingly demanding standards.
|
| [EDIT] I don't mean to be dismissive of a feature you'd
| have liked, I just think that, given the context of the
| time, I can totally understand why they'd not include that.
| lostgame wrote:
| From that thread: 'I'd call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell,
| and be killed off in a short time...and it's not really
| functional.'
|
| Hilarious.
| em500 wrote:
| During the heydays of the iPod craze, around 2005-2008, I was
| convinced that product line would be short lived. It was
| apparent that music playing was a trivial application of mobile
| phones, which were already becoming ubiquitous. In those days,
| Nokia was a far bigger cultural phenomenon outside of North
| America (where Nokia never gained much of a foothold). And it
| was truly global, not just European: even tiny villages in
| rural Asia, Africa and South America had Nokia vendors.
|
| So in my straightforward projection, it was only a matter of
| time before the iPod would be crushed by the likes of Nokia,
| Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, LG, etc. Never did I imagine that Apple
| would turn the tables on the phone manufacturers so
| dramatically after 2008...
| MBCook wrote:
| It became so popular, especially after it was officially
| available on Windows in 2003. And it remained THE thing until
| the iPhone really exploded when unleashed from AT&T around
| 2011.
|
| It's heyday was only about 8 years but it had such a MASSIVE
| effect on the technology and music industries.
|
| Has any other product been so important but only been around
| for a relatively short amount of time?
| tantalor wrote:
| Daguerreotypes were only used for a brief period in 1840s and
| 1850s but had huge impact on development of photography.
|
| Edit: check out the video!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbbH77rYaa8
| MBCook wrote:
| That's a great example.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _the iPhone really exploded when unleashed from AT &T around
| 2011._
|
| Cingular.
| xxpor wrote:
| Cingular was renamed to AT&T in 2006.
| macNchz wrote:
| Replying to myself as I reread the thread: I found a comment a
| few pages in about Apple's stock being down $1 on the day. So
| what if you'd skipped the iPod and just bought $399 worth of
| AAPL? According to this site which seems to use real data, it'd
| be worth... $211k today.
| http://stockchoker.com/?s=AAPL&d=20011023&a=399
| mywittyname wrote:
| I always find it fun to think about what the biggest
| companies in the world will be in 10, 20, 30 years. There's a
| good chance that some haven't actually been founded yet, but
| I'm sure others are household names even now. FWIW, I think
| media will displace tech on the top spot and Disney will lead
| the pack in 2040.
|
| It's also fun to do with future presidents.
| selectodude wrote:
| But if everybody did that, Apple would be bankrupt because
| nobody was buying their products ;)
| khazhoux wrote:
| Ha!
|
| "The Reality Distiortion Field is starting to warp Steve's mind
| if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off"
| bryans wrote:
| To me, this makes it so much more obvious that the only
| innovation they were even aiming for was a scroll wheel.
| Everything else is just a Diamond Rio with a hard drive attached.
| That's not to diminish the effectiveness or novelty of the scroll
| wheel, but the larger capacity seems to be the only thing that
| actually mattered here.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Syncing music with iTunes was so much easier than the junk sync
| apps that other players had.
| bryans wrote:
| You mean copying and pasting files that already contain
| metadeta? That was difficult? Because I'm pretty sure
| everyone universally hated the formats and auto-renamed files
| that iTunes forced.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Imagine the battery life if you filled that case with battery.
| fudgy wrote:
| Loved the original iPod so much that I've re-created it as an app
| once the iPhone came out: https://github.com/j-lechner/RetroPod
|
| Not sure if it still builds, but it was amazing to study and re-
| build all those little UX details like accelerating scrolling and
| timeline scrubbing.
| cushychicken wrote:
| OMG is there a way to make this some kind of skin for Spotify?
|
| I, too, loved the iPod UI, and would love to have something
| like this again.
| Scottopherson wrote:
| https://tannerv.com/ipod/
|
| ^ Fun website that implements a video ipod UI in the browser.
| The app integrates with Spotify and Apple Music.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Ok, who's going to get one of these and stuff a raspberry pi
| inside?
| bityard wrote:
| That would be fun to watch. Whoever does that would rustle _so
| many_ jimmies.
| wiremine wrote:
| Although it doesn't cover the iPod, the book "Creative Selection"
| is a great window into Apple's process (at least at the time)
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/37638098-creative-sel...
|
| It's an easy read and the reads a bit like a technology-focused
| biography, not a "how to."
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| Was this used to effectively silo developers from each other? Ie,
| don't let the hardware team see the real software UI, and don't
| let the software team see the real hardware UI.
|
| It looks too ridiculous to be real, I suspect it was ugly by
| design.
|
| Apple did this on the iPhone design, the ugly software UI was
| called "skankphone".
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| It's so cool to see these pictures. It does seem to match David
| Shayer's description: So they make what Apple
| calls a stealth case, which is just a big plastic box. So our
| stealth case was so ugly. It looked like they went into an old
| Russian medical equipment leftover warehouse and just took some
| plastic boxes, and stuck it in. It was horrible. They said
| basically, " You're writing the file system for this thing. You
| don't need to know what's on the disc. Just make it work."
|
| They weren't supposed to know what they were working on. To the
| extent that that was possible.
|
| https://corecursive.com/063-apple-2001/#the-first-day
| robocat wrote:
| Later down the article is another story:
|
| David: So, my guess is they were making some sort of secret
| Geiger counter and they wanted to be able to take it around
| and look for, I don't know, people making dirty bombs maybe?
| But not have it looked like a Geiger counter.
|
| David: if you wanted to go and check if there's any signs of
| radiation in some place where you're not officially supposed
| to be checking, you're on a tourist visa in Tehran or
| something, this would be a very useful device. If you're
| arrested with a Geiger counter you're in trouble, but if
| someone looks at your iPod and the iPod works and it plays
| music and it's totally normal, you'd be much safer, right?
|
| Adam:Yeah, totally. So, they built this and then?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I wonder if they thought it was a boombox or a personal
| stereo?
| jetrink wrote:
| My guess is that they used that case from early on in the
| project and then just stuck with it even as the electronics
| inside shrunk. It's not like the software people would be
| fooled by the enormous size; they knew they were making a
| pocketable music player.
|
| Interestingly, the holes for the screen and the buttons look
| like they were molded, but the holes for the jacks and wheel
| look like they were milled. I wonder if the boxes were custom-
| made or something off-the-shelf that happened to have the right
| screen size and number of buttons.
| samwillis wrote:
| It looks like a SLA 3d print to me. They go that distinctive
| yellow over time.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| In 2001?
| samwillis wrote:
| Absolutely, was already quite common back then. It was
| invented in the 80s after all.
| monocasa wrote:
| Yeah, SLA printing was totes used in prototyping back
| then. It was just really expensive because the patents
| hadn't expired yet. I'd expect that Apple's R&D lab would
| have had access to them.
| siva7 wrote:
| But why? Why silo
| marcellus23 wrote:
| So the hardware guys can't leak the software, and the
| software guys can't leak the hardware.
| amelius wrote:
| Funny thing is, Apple claims that they need to integrate
| everything from hardware to software in order to obtain the
| best possible user experience.
|
| This shows that this is complete nonsense.
|
| We could break up Apple into a hardware and software
| company and little would change in this respect.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Giving out information on a need to know basis does not
| mean integration is impossible. It just means people that
| don't need to don't get to see the full picture.
|
| Keep in mind that this kind of decide would be under
| development for many years, if you can keep the idea a
| secret until launch you'll be years ahead of your
| competitors. But if it leaks your advantage is gone.
| [deleted]
| marcellus23 wrote:
| > This shows that this is complete nonsense.
|
| Uh, what? This makes no sense. It's not like the entire
| hardware and software teams were totally firewalled.
| Obviously higher ups and managers were in both circles
| and coordinated the development of both.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, so if Apple were divided into separate hardware and
| software companies, then a third company X could order
| both these companies to come up with hardware and
| software solutions, and reach the same result. In this
| case, what you call management would be performed by the
| third company.
|
| This is imho a better way of building things than having
| everything completely integrated in a single company. A
| fourth company could do the same thing as X and build an
| alternative iPod. And so could a fifth, etc.
| _jal wrote:
| > This is imho a better way of building things than
| having everything completely integrated in a single
| company.
|
| Sounds like you should run your firm that way, then.
| amelius wrote:
| How would you feel if (hypothetically speaking) Samsung
| bought TSMC and thereby pushed Apple and other
| smartphone/laptop vendors out of the market?
|
| Wouldn't you agree that it is better if _all_ companies
| have equal access to TSMC 's services?
| jolux wrote:
| > Wouldn't you agree that it is better if all companies
| have equal access to TSMC's services?
|
| It's certainly debatable, which is why we have antitrust
| regulations.
|
| In the specific case you suggest of separate software and
| hardware companies, the reason that Apple has succeeded
| where others have failed (in large part) is because of
| their vertical integration. To wit: the equivalent of
| Apple (ignoring communication overhead, which is also
| huge) would be software and hardware companies that Apple
| has an exclusive contract with, who spend all of their
| time working on what Apple asks them to.
|
| When they start serving other customers, their
| operational overhead increases, because they have to
| figure out how to schedule production schedules fairly
| across multiple contracts, and probably start to divide
| up their production functions by product area and
| customer.
|
| They also typically end up having to make concessions to
| multiple customers, and risk ending up at a lowest-
| common-denominator product that fits the limitations of
| other customers more than it fits Apple's specific set of
| capabilities and limitations. This is the market effect
| that drives standardization: agreeing on the lowest-
| common-denominator for everyone _before_ production and
| product development starts.
|
| In sum: they become less good at delivering specifically
| what Apple needs, whenever Apple needs it.
| _jal wrote:
| Why don't we remove all firm advantages completely and
| have a fully open playing field? Ban companies entirely,
| everyone is a free agent! Everything shall be an arms-
| length transaction with lawyers at every step.
| jolux wrote:
| > This shows that this is complete nonsense.
|
| That is...not at all what this shows. Just because
| software engineers writing a file system don't know what
| the final industrial design is going to be like doesn't
| mean there aren't people fully responsible for end user
| experience.
| clint wrote:
| No leaks
| leecarraher wrote:
| Is the original poster sure the extra size wasn't to accommodate
| a 2.5" or 3.5" for testing purposes. There doesn't appear to be a
| physical HDD. In the 2nd prototype picture (not much for scale)
| it looks like a board with control logic, and maybe the decoder
| IC, and MCU, then a connection to a battery and lcd screen with
| it's controller circuit. I don't see an HDD, and solid state
| drives with capacity corresponding to the original ipod weren't
| on the market yet.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >As you can see, it's... quite large!
|
| In fact, I can not! The photo in question has no reference
| objects. (scroll down to see photos that actually demonstrate its
| size)
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Based on the size of the barcodes, screen, various ports, the
| scrolling control + buttons (presumably sized for human
| fingers) I think it's pretty obvious it's rather large.
| llimos wrote:
| I thought the same, until I twigged that the screen is an
| actual size iPod screen.
| electroly wrote:
| Two references in all of the photos are the JTAG connector on
| the side (a standard pin header with 0.1" spacing) and the
| standard headphone jack.
| [deleted]
| tantalor wrote:
| Those are poor/obscure references.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Yes, but that's not useful if you don't know that one is a
| headphone jack (from the side), or that the other is a JTAG
| connector, or you do know but don't know what sizes JTAG
| connectors come in. And even allowing for all that, visual
| size analogies provide very poor information when the common
| element is relatively small in both cases.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| One of the photos literally shows an actual 1st-gen iPod on top
| of it.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Did you read my entire comment?
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Yes.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Your comment (especially the colloquial use of the word
| "literally" as emphasis) implies that I didn't address
| the existence of that photo, but I did when I said
| "scroll down to see photos that actually demonstrate its
| size". Your comment and subsequent lack of clarification
| ("Yes.") is confusing and has the appearance of rudeness,
| but I can't guess why you would want to use that tone (if
| it's on purpose).
| ubermonkey wrote:
| K.
| chucky wrote:
| Ah yes. I'll just pull out my 1st gen iPod from my pocket for
| reference then!
| HelixEndeavor wrote:
| You've seen enough pictures of people holding them to get a
| good reference for the size.
| MikusR wrote:
| I am not a rich american, so I have not.
| LammyL wrote:
| The iPod was about the size of a deck of cards but 50%
| thicker.
| bob-4 wrote:
| Since when could only rich Americans use image searches?
| Or are you just being facetious?
|
| Let me Google that for you:
| https://images.app.goo.gl/hW7G3NaixUd4sNUc7
| chucky wrote:
| I've owned one. But that was a million years ago. It's
| somewhere between the size of a box of matches and my
| current phone, but that's a pretty big range.
|
| Edit: OK so maybe the reference of a gen 1 ipod is
| actually quite useful to me. But it's a 20 year old
| reference to use. Surely there are plenty of things
| around that are more useful as a reference point if you
| need one (or just provide measurements).
| broabprobe wrote:
| love https://xn--n3h.net/ though AFAIK
| https://unicodesnowmanforyou.com/ predates it
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(page generated 2021-10-25 23:00 UTC)