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)
Comments 2
Hi Gabriel, Great to meet you through the “meme” and thanks for the link! You offer some great tips on things I need to know more about in this blog.
Somehow I haven’t yet dared to buy an Ipod because every time I’ve bought a new piece of technology there’s a hundred instructions to go with it. Case in hand, I have an external hard drive sitting in my closet because it was too hard from which to retrieve the data!
Is the Ipod really easy to install and get going? Maybe I’ll take the plunge since my CD player seems to fog up frequently to make songs go berserk and the “cleaners” don’t seem to work well to repair the problem.
Posted 21 Dec 2006 at 6:40 pm ¶Robyn. The iPods themselves are relatively easy to use, and Apple has done a better job than most integrating the desktop software with the portable player. But it’s not 100% straightforward to get it to work, so I’d be prepared for a little bit of mucking around. But it’s so great to be able to have so much music in your pocket!
Posted 21 Dec 2006 at 7:12 pm ¶Post a Comment