8 ms·

CD's left cassette player people behind. I think many folks forget how ridiculously expensive CD players were for home stereos (or computers) when they came ou

by count 13y ago

CD's left cassette player people behind. I think many folks forget how ridiculously expensive CD players were for home stereos (or computers) when they came out. Vinyl got left behind by cassettes (for some people at least). Everything is 'left behind' by whatever replaces it.

arkonaut 13y ago
This point isn't very relevant though, because the artist wasn't releasing different media for different devices. The cd release still came with a cassette release, etc.
- count 13y ago
  That's not always been true - lots of 'bonus tracks' and the like. Lots of content was only released for a single media type.
Kapura 13y ago
Right, I get that. But the whole app ecosystem is very different than that. If you own a turntable, it'll play records. If you own a CD player, it'll play CDs. If you own a tape deck, it'll play tapes. If you own an iPod, it'll play mp3s (and it's relatively trivial to convert digital music files an iPod can't play into music an iPod can play). But when you own a smartphone, you don't necessarily know if it'll play apps. When I bought my phone, it was the current android release and it had everything I wanted in a phone. Now, it still has everything I want in a phone, but they aren't updating the OS. I could mod it to support android 4.x, but i'll lose some of the functionality of the device. This is not so uncommon, and it's not likely to stop happening any time soon. The solution I tend to get is that I just have to deal with it or buy a new phone. That seems silly to me, but perhaps I seem silly to you.
- vehementi 13y ago
  Yeah, it's almost like they moved from vinyl to tapes to "Creative SoundBlaster compatible CD"
  - jarek 13y ago
    Yeah, it's almost like most people replace their standalone music player every 2-3 years.
- count 13y ago
  I think I understand what you're saying - I don't think it sounds silly, really, I just slightly disagree. I think it's about abstractions and where you draw the line of 'different thing' - I see 'If you own an iPhone 4s it will play the apps for it until it dies' and 'If you own an Android phone with 4.x on it, it will play the apps for it until it dies' as being equivalent with 'If you own a cd player it will continue to play CDs'. You're blurring the lines between CDs, Vinyl, Cassette, Hi-CD, SACD, DVD, HD-DVD, and BluRay audio as being all entirely unique 'universes', while smooshing all of the smartphone world into one 'universe'. I see the difference between an iPhone 4s and an iPhone 5 as more like CD->DVD: similar, but distinctly different. Sure, lots of content works on both, but then, lots of content doesn't. It's just now, with software-based (primarily) differences, that people even THINK about backwards compatibility/etc. as a feature to offer. CD players didn't offer backwards compat. with vinyl albums, for example (although, this argument might be flawed in that most future optical-disc drives did compat. back to CD). With software, we CAN provide backwards compatibility, and you're argument (if I do understand properly) is that because we can, we probably should. I am torn by that, and can see strong arguments on both sides of the fence.
BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
CDs are a standard storage medium containing audio encoded in a standard way. There are a multitude of ways to get that content (the audio) off of the CD and playable in a multitude of ways, because the music is in its pure digital form. An iOS or Android app, on the other hand, is architecture-or-platform-specific code, depending on a particular OS-sized API and all its UI libraries, all of which are expected to become obsolete and unusable in a relatively short time.

by count 13y ago

arkonaut 13y ago

This point isn't very relevant though, because the artist wasn't releasing different media for different devices. The cd release still came with a cassette release, etc.

count 13y ago
That's not always been true - lots of 'bonus tracks' and the like. Lots of content was only released for a single media type.

Kapura 13y ago

Right, I get that. But the whole app ecosystem is very different than that. If you own a turntable, it'll play records. If you own a CD player, it'll play CDs. If you own a tape deck, it'll play tapes. If you own an iPod, it'll play mp3s (and it's relatively trivial to convert digital music files an iPod can't play into music an iPod can play). But when you own a smartphone, you don't necessarily know if it'll play apps. When I bought my phone, it was the current android release and it had everything I wanted in a phone. Now, it still has everything I want in a phone, but they aren't updating the OS. I could mod it to support android 4.x, but i'll lose some of the functionality of the device. This is not so uncommon, and it's not likely to stop happening any time soon. The solution I tend to get is that I just have to deal with it or buy a new phone. That seems silly to me, but perhaps I seem silly to you.

vehementi 13y ago
Yeah, it's almost like they moved from vinyl to tapes to "Creative SoundBlaster compatible CD"
- jarek 13y ago
  Yeah, it's almost like most people replace their standalone music player every 2-3 years.
count 13y ago
I think I understand what you're saying - I don't think it sounds silly, really, I just slightly disagree. I think it's about abstractions and where you draw the line of 'different thing' - I see 'If you own an iPhone 4s it will play the apps for it until it dies' and 'If you own an Android phone with 4.x on it, it will play the apps for it until it dies' as being equivalent with 'If you own a cd player it will continue to play CDs'. You're blurring the lines between CDs, Vinyl, Cassette, Hi-CD, SACD, DVD, HD-DVD, and BluRay audio as being all entirely unique 'universes', while smooshing all of the smartphone world into one 'universe'. I see the difference between an iPhone 4s and an iPhone 5 as more like CD->DVD: similar, but distinctly different. Sure, lots of content works on both, but then, lots of content doesn't. It's just now, with software-based (primarily) differences, that people even THINK about backwards compatibility/etc. as a feature to offer. CD players didn't offer backwards compat. with vinyl albums, for example (although, this argument might be flawed in that most future optical-disc drives did compat. back to CD). With software, we CAN provide backwards compatibility, and you're argument (if I do understand properly) is that because we can, we probably should. I am torn by that, and can see strong arguments on both sides of the fence.

BHSPitMonkey 13y ago

CDs are a standard storage medium containing audio encoded in a standard way. There are a multitude of ways to get that content (the audio) off of the CD and playable in a multitude of ways, because the music is in its pure digital form. An iOS or Android app, on the other hand, is architecture-or-platform-specific code, depending on a particular OS-sized API and all its UI libraries, all of which are expected to become obsolete and unusable in a relatively short time.