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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

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)

Marazan 5y ago
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.
- rjsw 5y ago
  I have an ASUS WindowsXP laptop with firewire, it worked well with an iPod.
  - geerlingguy 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      I didn't have to buy anything extra, the iPod came with a 4-connector to 6-connector adapter.
- ArteEtMarte 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
    - creinhardt 5y ago
      Said elsewhere in this thread, but firewire/IEEE1394 wasn't hard to find in a PC/laptop, it was Windows support at all for the iPod that changed things. Once Apple shipped the Windows version of iTunes they were off and running.
      - llampx 5y ago
        I remember at the time many of laptops that had a IEEEE1394 port had the small size one, not the full-size one that the iPod cable used. Also most desktops didn't have it onboard due to royalty fees so you needed to buy a PCI card. Not an insurmountable obstacle, but enough that you had to really want one to look past that.
  - salamandersauce 5y ago
    When iTunes for Windows became available they had already launched the 3rd generation iPod which allowed for syncing over USB unlike the prior two generations. Firewire was pretty rare on PCs in those days too. Had they stuck with firewire only I don't think it would have taken off. Would people have bought and installed a firewire card for it?
- macNchz 5y ago
  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.
nsxwolf 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
    - nsxwolf 5y ago
      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.
    - crate_barre 5y ago
      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.
Nition 5y ago
This was quoted and linked in Panic's article, for what it's worth.
- AceJohnny2 5y ago
  Derp! By the end of the article, I had forgotten that intro >_<
dylan604 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    As soon as I got an iPhone, I remember pointing Safari at an M3U link and was so happy to have streaming on a hand held device. It took many years, but it was finally doable. I was pleasantly surprised when the stream continued flowing even once the screen locked. That was still years before music apps became a thing, but I was snug as a bug listening to my website streams on mobile.
    - toast0 5y ago
      I did a little bit of streaming on a Nokia 3650, had to go down to 40kbps if i recall correctly, but the battery life would be minutes. Then my free data loophole ended and my dream of music streaming was postponed.
      - kalleboo 5y ago
        I did a lot of streaming on my Sony Ericsson K800i (2006). The local public broadcaster had a deal with the mobile operators to zero-rate their streams from data plans. Using 3G UMTS you actually got better reception inside buildings/basements/on trains etc than with FM radio which would fade in and out.
ceejayoz 5y ago
See also HN's reaction to Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- 0des 5y ago
  Poor fella's never going to recover from this, is he?
  - AceJohnny2 5y ago
    Could be worse. Could be u/sanj who tried shutting up u/cperciva with a Putnam reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 (they've both been gracious about it since)
Spooky23 5y ago
I think his take was right. The iPod was good, but iTunes was great. The ecosystem made the iPod.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Fnoord 5y ago
Terrible amount of storage indeed, so I did not bother with it. I went with a 40 GB iRiver H340 instead. By the time the battery was dying (2009?) I went with an iPod Touch and an iPod Classic with ~200 GB storage. I could not get used to the wheel for scrolling. Why not? Simply because I cannot aim with it, and it does (perhaps therefore?) not feel intuitive either. iPod Touch however was my first capacitive touch UI and I was sold (though again it had not much storage, hence I bought the Classic). I very much liked how Nokia was investing in Maemo (mobile touch UI Linux, largely but not completely FOSS), had various of their devices, but I knew at that point resistive touch UI would end up as a niche. They figured that out, too, with Qt and N9 but burning platform memo killed it.

Marazan 5y ago

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.

rjsw 5y ago
I have an ASUS WindowsXP laptop with firewire, it worked well with an iPod.
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    I didn't have to buy anything extra, the iPod came with a 4-connector to 6-connector adapter.
ArteEtMarte 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - creinhardt 5y ago
    Said elsewhere in this thread, but firewire/IEEE1394 wasn't hard to find in a PC/laptop, it was Windows support at all for the iPod that changed things. Once Apple shipped the Windows version of iTunes they were off and running.
    - llampx 5y ago
      I remember at the time many of laptops that had a IEEEE1394 port had the small size one, not the full-size one that the iPod cable used. Also most desktops didn't have it onboard due to royalty fees so you needed to buy a PCI card. Not an insurmountable obstacle, but enough that you had to really want one to look past that.
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  When iTunes for Windows became available they had already launched the 3rd generation iPod which allowed for syncing over USB unlike the prior two generations. Firewire was pretty rare on PCs in those days too. Had they stuck with firewire only I don't think it would have taken off. Would people have bought and installed a firewire card for it?
macNchz 5y ago
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.

nsxwolf 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - nsxwolf 5y ago
    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.
  - crate_barre 5y ago
    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.

Nition 5y ago

This was quoted and linked in Panic's article, for what it's worth.

AceJohnny2 5y ago
Derp! By the end of the article, I had forgotten that intro >_<

dylan604 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
- dylan604 5y ago
  As soon as I got an iPhone, I remember pointing Safari at an M3U link and was so happy to have streaming on a hand held device. It took many years, but it was finally doable. I was pleasantly surprised when the stream continued flowing even once the screen locked. That was still years before music apps became a thing, but I was snug as a bug listening to my website streams on mobile.
  - toast0 5y ago
    I did a little bit of streaming on a Nokia 3650, had to go down to 40kbps if i recall correctly, but the battery life would be minutes. Then my free data loophole ended and my dream of music streaming was postponed.
    - kalleboo 5y ago
      I did a lot of streaming on my Sony Ericsson K800i (2006). The local public broadcaster had a deal with the mobile operators to zero-rate their streams from data plans. Using 3G UMTS you actually got better reception inside buildings/basements/on trains etc than with FM radio which would fade in and out.

ceejayoz 5y ago

See also HN's reaction to Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

0des 5y ago
Poor fella's never going to recover from this, is he?
- AceJohnny2 5y ago
  Could be worse. Could be u/sanj who tried shutting up u/cperciva with a Putnam reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 (they've both been gracious about it since)

Spooky23 5y ago

I think his take was right. The iPod was good, but iTunes was great. The ecosystem made the iPod.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Fnoord 5y ago

Terrible amount of storage indeed, so I did not bother with it. I went with a 40 GB iRiver H340 instead. By the time the battery was dying (2009?) I went with an iPod Touch and an iPod Classic with ~200 GB storage. I could not get used to the wheel for scrolling. Why not? Simply because I cannot aim with it, and it does (perhaps therefore?) not feel intuitive either. iPod Touch however was my first capacitive touch UI and I was sold (though again it had not much storage, hence I bought the Classic). I very much liked how Nokia was investing in Maemo (mobile touch UI Linux, largely but not completely FOSS), had various of their devices, but I knew at that point resistive touch UI would end up as a niche. They figured that out, too, with Qt and N9 but burning platform memo killed it.