4 ms·

I sometimes wonder if the name "ogg vorbis" hampered its uptake. MP3 is admittedly a pretty jargony name too but isn't otherwise "weird", compared to Ogg Vorbis

I sometimes wonder if the name "ogg vorbis" hampered its uptake. MP3 is admittedly a pretty jargony name too but isn't otherwise "weird", compared to Ogg Vorbis is just Klingon-esque.

aeonik 2y ago
The name didn't help, but the biggest issue was when I first encountered the format it was very difficult for me to find software that could play it. It's been a while, but IIRC Windows Media player and Realplayer didn't like it, I can't remember if WinAmp the time supported it either, I think it may have gotten it eventually?
- theandrewbailey 2y ago
  Winamp supported it by around 2004.
- progmetaldev 2y ago
  Adoption on Windows was definitely an issue for that time frame. Even as someone that was willing to adopt strange software, or compile it on Windows, it just wasn't worth it for the cross-platform use (mostly for mobile devices at the time, including generic players, and iPods). I started using RockBox around 2005/2006, but it still wasn't worth converting my entire music collection to Ogg Vorbis from MP3. Right around that time, my vehicle stereo could suddenly support MP3/WMA files, and I could burn multiple albums to a CD for my truck stereo. MP3 had the broadest support across devices, and basically become an industry standard, even with the licensing.
  - m-p-3 2y ago
    Another thing to consider, and especially on a mobile device with a limited battery is hardware decoding. MP3 was popular enough that most mobile devices were able to decode them via hardware, while OGG and FLAC where playable though software decoding but at the cost of using more battery.
- Clamchop 2y ago
  Installing a codec pack was one of my first tasks when setting up a new Windows installation in that era. K-Lite was a popular choice. Then WMP would play ogg, though you'd probably have switched to MPC and Winamp.
variaga 2y ago
>Klingon-esque The "Og" in Ogg was a reference to "Orion ship G" in the game Netrek (https://www.netrek.org/ https://www.netrek.org/) so definitely not Klingon :) (Nettrek was a star trek themed online space combat game featuring Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Orion as the playable factions)
- giantrobot 2y ago
  IIRC "ogging" in NetTrek was carrier killing suicide run.
- gruturo 2y ago
  Uh? Isn't that a reference to Nanny Ogg of Terry Pratchett's Discworld fame? Just like Vorbis is a head inquisitor (Exquisitor actually, of the Quisition IIRC) in Terry Pratchett's Small Gods (Also part of Discworld) ?
colanderman 2y ago
Colloquially they were always just referred to as Oggs, which wasn't too weird to my ears. To my recollection what hampered uptake was simply that most software and especially most hardware did not support Oggs. So no-one encoding for distribution (i.e., P2P filesharing) used it. And once commercial streaming services came into being, they all used proprietary DRM-backed formats (WMA, and whatever iTunes used at the time, AAC?). By the time digital music services gave up on DRM, MP3 patents were coming up on expiry, and MP3 encoder technology had advanced closing most of the gap between it and Ogg, especially when run at higher bitrates which cheaper storage and bandwidth made acceptable to use. But now with many streaming services using Opus, all is right in the world again.
- wink 2y ago
  Never heard "Oggs" so ymmv. Fully agreed on the hw support though. I had an mp3 player discman knock off, later cheap mp3 players and none of them played Ogg Vorbis, I want to say one of my Nokia dumbphones in the mid 00s could do mp3 but not Ogg Vorbis as well.
  - userbinator 2y ago
    A lot of the widely popular s1mp3s could play Ogg, FLAC, APE, WMA, and a few other obscure formats (as well as plain uncompressed WAV) but I think the real reason was a lack of availability - except for the anti-patent/FOSS purists, and some MS fans using WMA, everyone else was using MP3.
chefandy 2y ago
As a long time creative worker in addition to my technical work, I’ve tried in vain to explain to the FOSS crowd that names, UIs, user flows, etc a) really matter if they want anyone outside of the technical world to use their tools, and b) what other software developers think of them isn’t a good measure of those things. What Mastodon would need to have done to be a Twitter replacement for general audiences was my most recent losing battle. Lots of haughty, dismissive “federation is not that complicated” and “I think toots is a cute analog to tweet and the people who don’t like it just need to get over it.” Well, the nearly immediate mass exodus after the incredibly energetic mass adoption says everything we need to know about that. “Well I don’t think it’s too complicated,” doesn’t really say much from someone whose profession is wrangling that complexity. “Well I don’t think it’s unappealing,” doesn’t say much from someone that has no experience wrangling the different nuanced ways different things can be appealing to different people in different contexts and how that affects the way people approach and interact with stuff. Interface design, copywriting, branding— these are all communication mediums that deal with the emotional intangibles, instincts, and irrational tendencies we all have even when we don’t see them. It’s not about taste and aesthetic preference, they’re tools to solve communication problems. Developers on a whole have a hard enough time dealing with communication in technical documentation for software they wrote, let alone effective visual communication. I’m seeing some progress in developers realizing how much more impact software can have as a problem solving tool when designers are involved… but a whole lot still think designers just add frivolous fluff and that their quirky interfaces more informed by the API implementation than how users solve problems isn’t the problem — users failing to read their wall-o-text documentation is.
- muppetman 2y ago
  I agree it's always amazing that FOSS can be so smart, but so dumb as to not understand basic marketing.
  - chefandy 2y ago
    I wouldn’t even expect them to understand basic marketing themselves: there’s a lot more to it than many assume. I would hope they could understand the value of someone that does. There’s this kind of “well if I don’t understand it then it’s probably not worth understanding” cockiness in software that I was definitely guilty of in my twenties at the very least. Someone thinking they can dismiss expert knowledge or even entire fields out-of-hand based on a few a priori thought experiments says a lot more about that person than the fields they denigrate.
generationP 2y ago
mp3 doesn't exactly fly off the tongue either. But maybe you've found the reason why bz2 never took off..

I sometimes wonder if the name "ogg vorbis" hampered its uptake. MP3 is admittedly a pretty jargony name too but isn't otherwise "weird", compared to Ogg Vorbis is just Klingon-esque.

aeonik 2y ago

The name didn't help, but the biggest issue was when I first encountered the format it was very difficult for me to find software that could play it. It's been a while, but IIRC Windows Media player and Realplayer didn't like it, I can't remember if WinAmp the time supported it either, I think it may have gotten it eventually?

theandrewbailey 2y ago
Winamp supported it by around 2004.
progmetaldev 2y ago
Adoption on Windows was definitely an issue for that time frame. Even as someone that was willing to adopt strange software, or compile it on Windows, it just wasn't worth it for the cross-platform use (mostly for mobile devices at the time, including generic players, and iPods). I started using RockBox around 2005/2006, but it still wasn't worth converting my entire music collection to Ogg Vorbis from MP3. Right around that time, my vehicle stereo could suddenly support MP3/WMA files, and I could burn multiple albums to a CD for my truck stereo. MP3 had the broadest support across devices, and basically become an industry standard, even with the licensing.
- m-p-3 2y ago
  Another thing to consider, and especially on a mobile device with a limited battery is hardware decoding. MP3 was popular enough that most mobile devices were able to decode them via hardware, while OGG and FLAC where playable though software decoding but at the cost of using more battery.
Clamchop 2y ago
Installing a codec pack was one of my first tasks when setting up a new Windows installation in that era. K-Lite was a popular choice. Then WMP would play ogg, though you'd probably have switched to MPC and Winamp.

variaga 2y ago

>Klingon-esque The "Og" in Ogg was a reference to "Orion ship G" in the game Netrek (https://www.netrek.org/ https://www.netrek.org/) so definitely not Klingon :) (Nettrek was a star trek themed online space combat game featuring Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Orion as the playable factions)

giantrobot 2y ago
IIRC "ogging" in NetTrek was carrier killing suicide run.
gruturo 2y ago
Uh? Isn't that a reference to Nanny Ogg of Terry Pratchett's Discworld fame? Just like Vorbis is a head inquisitor (Exquisitor actually, of the Quisition IIRC) in Terry Pratchett's Small Gods (Also part of Discworld) ?

colanderman 2y ago

Colloquially they were always just referred to as Oggs, which wasn't too weird to my ears. To my recollection what hampered uptake was simply that most software and especially most hardware did not support Oggs. So no-one encoding for distribution (i.e., P2P filesharing) used it. And once commercial streaming services came into being, they all used proprietary DRM-backed formats (WMA, and whatever iTunes used at the time, AAC?). By the time digital music services gave up on DRM, MP3 patents were coming up on expiry, and MP3 encoder technology had advanced closing most of the gap between it and Ogg, especially when run at higher bitrates which cheaper storage and bandwidth made acceptable to use. But now with many streaming services using Opus, all is right in the world again.

wink 2y ago
Never heard "Oggs" so ymmv. Fully agreed on the hw support though. I had an mp3 player discman knock off, later cheap mp3 players and none of them played Ogg Vorbis, I want to say one of my Nokia dumbphones in the mid 00s could do mp3 but not Ogg Vorbis as well.
- userbinator 2y ago
  A lot of the widely popular s1mp3s could play Ogg, FLAC, APE, WMA, and a few other obscure formats (as well as plain uncompressed WAV) but I think the real reason was a lack of availability - except for the anti-patent/FOSS purists, and some MS fans using WMA, everyone else was using MP3.

chefandy 2y ago

As a long time creative worker in addition to my technical work, I’ve tried in vain to explain to the FOSS crowd that names, UIs, user flows, etc a) really matter if they want anyone outside of the technical world to use their tools, and b) what other software developers think of them isn’t a good measure of those things. What Mastodon would need to have done to be a Twitter replacement for general audiences was my most recent losing battle. Lots of haughty, dismissive “federation is not that complicated” and “I think toots is a cute analog to tweet and the people who don’t like it just need to get over it.” Well, the nearly immediate mass exodus after the incredibly energetic mass adoption says everything we need to know about that. “Well I don’t think it’s too complicated,” doesn’t really say much from someone whose profession is wrangling that complexity. “Well I don’t think it’s unappealing,” doesn’t say much from someone that has no experience wrangling the different nuanced ways different things can be appealing to different people in different contexts and how that affects the way people approach and interact with stuff. Interface design, copywriting, branding— these are all communication mediums that deal with the emotional intangibles, instincts, and irrational tendencies we all have even when we don’t see them. It’s not about taste and aesthetic preference, they’re tools to solve communication problems. Developers on a whole have a hard enough time dealing with communication in technical documentation for software they wrote, let alone effective visual communication. I’m seeing some progress in developers realizing how much more impact software can have as a problem solving tool when designers are involved… but a whole lot still think designers just add frivolous fluff and that their quirky interfaces more informed by the API implementation than how users solve problems isn’t the problem — users failing to read their wall-o-text documentation is.

muppetman 2y ago
I agree it's always amazing that FOSS can be so smart, but so dumb as to not understand basic marketing.
- chefandy 2y ago
  I wouldn’t even expect them to understand basic marketing themselves: there’s a lot more to it than many assume. I would hope they could understand the value of someone that does. There’s this kind of “well if I don’t understand it then it’s probably not worth understanding” cockiness in software that I was definitely guilty of in my twenties at the very least. Someone thinking they can dismiss expert knowledge or even entire fields out-of-hand based on a few a priori thought experiments says a lot more about that person than the fields they denigrate.

generationP 2y ago

mp3 doesn't exactly fly off the tongue either. But maybe you've found the reason why bz2 never took off..