Posts Tagged: ipod

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11
Sep 08

The iPod can’t scale

Dave Gustafson pointed to a great Gizmodo post that looks at the absurd place the clickwheel iPod has gone over the years with all the functionality that slowly got added to something that originally was designed only to play music.

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“To put this eyeball cacophony into perspective, the new menu system has over 60 places to click—nearly triple that of the original iPod version (and that’s not including Nike+ integration on nanos). Plus, the new system has five screens just for settings, all of which are unrelated to the main “Settings” menu. How did things become so complicated? The iPod went from doing one thing really well to doing a bunch of things pretty well. But the UI was never redesigned to accommodate the functionality…Right now Apple’s sending city traffic down a one-lane, unpaved road.”

Link: A Sad Fact: The iPod’s Clickwheel Must Die (gizmodo.com, via)

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10
Jan 07

Apple Finally Gets a Phone

Apple finally got their phone. I had two immediate reactions. It’s fantastic that a company has released a touch-screen phone that’s hitting the mass market. I hope this is a wake up call to other manufacturers: touch-screen devices are not just for the high end PDA market. Second, I’m very interested to experience text entry on the device. One of the most difficult things to do on a touch-screen is text entry (text entry while in motion can be exceptionally difficult, and is almost impossible one-handed). While the iPhone solution looks interesting, it’s not clear that the solution is completely baked.

Link: Apple – iPhone (apple.com)
Link: The Apple iPhone runs OS X – Engadget (engadget.com)

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21
Dec 06

Creating the iPod

Stephen Levy writes about the creation of the iPod.

“There was another surprise to come. Schiller asked, “Can I bring out my thing now?” He left the room and came back with a number of different-size models of a playback device – big ones, tiny ones, in all sorts of shapes. They had one thing in common: a wheel-shaped contraption on the front. The idea, Schiller explained, was that by using a single finger, tracing the circular pathway on the wheel, you could easily scroll through lists – of songs, of artists, of albums. To select something, you’d press the bull’s-eye in the center of the wheel. What’s more, as your finger moved around, the scrolling speed actually accelerated, so you could go through long lists at a fairly brisk pace.”

Link: The Perfect Thing (wired.com)

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31
Oct 06

Creating the iPod

Henning Fischer writes about the process of creating the iPod.

“It’s a given that the digital music player market wasn’t exactly saturated in 2001, but Jobs’ back of the napkin analysis of the opportunity space was clever in its adherence to simplicity. He compared traditional CD players, Flash-based units, Mp3 CD units and hard drive jukeboxes on a simple price per song basis. Again, a basic analysis but one that illuminates the choices available to Apple. More importantly, Jobs was clear about what Apple wasn’t going to do.”

Link: The Future Was Staring Us in the Face (adaptivepath.com)

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10
Dec 05

Forrester on mobile device trends

Forrester says: focus on the important stuff, resist feature creep.

“Don’t obfuscate the core function of the device. Learn from the mistakes of the iPod photo—focus on your device’s primary function and market additional capabilities to consumers who are already sold on the core purpose. Although the iPod retained its photo-viewing capability, the return to the simpler iPod name restores the device to its true intention: music…

“Only add functions that don’t detract from the core application. Although they don’t detract from voice functions, camera phones—with their low resolution, hard-to-focus lenses, and small screens—won’t replace consumers’ standalone digital cameras. But there are distinct times when consumers will opt for their camera phone: when they want to quickly share a photo with friends (26%) or when it’s the only camera they have with them (37%).”

Link: Where Have All The Single-Function Devices Gone? (forrester.com)

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21
May 05

Things to do with an iPod

It’s not just about playing the music.

“DJ at a club. No need for turntables at some clubs these days. Some DJs just play from their iPods and some clubs even invite patrons to plug-in and play something from their own personal iPods.”

“Find good NYC pizza. The piPod software will guide you and your musical friend to some of the best pizza places in New York City.”

Link: 50 fun things to do with your iPod