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When I was in college (over a decade ago) I worked in an Apple Store and one of my most memorable stories was trying to help somebody understand that an iPod (C
by cianmm 3y ago
When I was in college (over a decade ago) I worked in an Apple Store and one of my most memorable stories was trying to help somebody understand that an iPod (Classic I believe) wouldn't get heavier the more albums they stored on it. The customer was clearly not super computer literate, and kept comparing storing albums on an iPod like carrying around tapes or CDs on their Walkman.
They were amazed and delighted when I compared the weight of my iPhone to the weight of one of the store iPods and showed them how much more music was on my iPhone compared to the store iPod.
Teaching people about how technology can improve their lives can really be rewarding.
Of course once they were gone the staff ended up in a debate about the actual technical scientific answer. I don't think we ever came to an agreement on it.
- TremendousJudge 3y agoI guess the actual analogy to tapes or CDs would be carrying around a pile of blank tapes vs tapes with recordings on them -- same weight, different amount of music
- Ekaros 3y agoActually CDs are bit funny. Wouldn't the weight ever so marginally depend on the record? And actually compared to blanks it would have different weight. At least for commercially pressed ones. As there would be pits in the disc. I'm not sure if you account for all components that is acrylic, aluminium and polycarbonate.
- retrac 3y ago> Wouldn't the weight ever so marginally depend on the record? This raises an interesting point. It's very undesirable to have long sequences of all 0 or 1 in a digital stream that is being read subject to a lot of analog effects. You want the line to return to a known state. This is why simple serial communication protocol like RS-232 uses a mark bit, to synchronize the clock repeatedly to protect against drift. It's possible -- and usually preferable -- to implement a digital coding in a way such that the average signal intensity is 50% and there are an approximately equal number of 0s and 1s physically speaking, with frequent crossings, regardless of the actual signal contents. Unsurprisingly, CDs do this on several levels, first permutating the stream into blocks with error correction, and then into a line coding that has regular transitions even if the stream is all 0/1. Though they're not guaranteed to literally have the exact same number of 0 and 1 bits across any content.
- capableweb 3y agoFor vinyl there would absolutely be a small weight difference, as there is actual physical grooves that gets cut in order for the record player to reproduce the sound you "entered" (more accurately, took away) into the groove.
- everfree 3y agoImagine a bound notebook, like a student would use in school. At the end of the semester the book is full of writing, but in practical terms it doesn't weigh more than it did when it was blank. The iPod has a tiny notebook inside that it uses to remember your songs.
- karaterobot 3y agoThe analogy that came to my mind was that if you take a deck of playing cards and lay all the cards out on a table, face down, the table weighs a certain amount (the table's weight, plus weight of the cards). Then, if you flip over five cards at random, you have created enough new information to make a poker hand. But, the weight of the table did not change when you created that information.