The responses to this make me feel old.

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/116079430711748391

The responses to this make me feel old.

For those who answered ‘no’ and didn’t look it up, this was the Slashdot review of the original iPod, which subsequently became an enormously successful consumer electronics product. It became a meme for geeks not understanding the things that make people actually like a product (which seems relevant with respect to Discord at the moment).

The Nomad (from Creative Labs, the maker of SoundBlaster and related lawsuits) had a terrible UI and exposed itself as a mass-storage device. You just had to copy your files across. The iPod required you to use iTunes (the next version that worked with Windows also allowed an alternative music player).

iTunes was also unpopular with the Slashdot set because they had folder hierarchies for organising music and didn’t want something else in the way of their organisation. Only 10-20% of the population thinks of hierarchies as the structure for organisation and music is a great example of their limitations. If you do band/album/track, how do you find all of the track by a particular artist on compilations (you’ll end up with a big ‘Various Artists’ folder)? If you want a playlist that is ‘all music from the ‘60s that isn’t classical or by The Beatles’ (an actual playlist I had in iTunes), the hierarchical view doesn’t help, but iTunes model of a soup of tracks filtered by metadata did. Gmail also leaned into this model, with tags and searches rather than traditional mail folders.

The iPod itself had 5 GB of space on a micro drive (1.8” hard disk). That was enough for 40-50 CDs at 128 Kb/s, which was more music than a lot of people owned, so just plug it in and it syncs all of your music was a much better interface than copying files in a file manager. I think my hard disk, when the iPod came out, was 20 GB, and I didn’t want to use 1/4 for music! You put a CD in your computer, iTunes ripped it automatically and then the next time you plugged in the iPod it was sync’s (and play counts for the tracks were sync’s back. These also were usable in smart playlists. I had one for ‘underplayed good songs’ which found things with a rating of 4-5 stars with a low play count). If you had more music than would fit, you could select playlists to sync and it would copy those. This included smart playlists, so you could create simple saved metadata searches and sync all the tracks they found, even if you never played them as a playlist.

You had less control in this model than with the Nomad, but it didn’t matter because the thing that most people wanted to do almost all of the time was very easy, whereas the Nomad made it harder.

As Jef Raskin argued, making difficult things possible shouldn’t come at the expense of making simple things easy.

@david_chisnall

> It became a meme for geeks not understanding the things that make people actually like a product

Or not everyone valuing the same things?

@david_chisnall

> It became a meme for geeks not understanding the things that make people actually like a product

Or not everyone valuing the same things?

@david_chisnall To be clear, Itunes *really* sucked in those days unless you were on a high-end Mac. Indexing was painfully slow on HDDs, etc.

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/116079430711748391

The responses to this make me feel old.

For those who answered ‘no’ and didn’t look it up, this was the Slashdot review of the original iPod, which subsequently became an enormously successful consumer electronics product. It became a meme for geeks not understanding the things that make people actually like a product (which seems relevant with respect to Discord at the moment).

The Nomad (from Creative Labs, the maker of SoundBlaster and related lawsuits) had a terrible UI and exposed itself as a mass-storage device. You just had to copy your files across. The iPod required you to use iTunes (the next version that worked with Windows also allowed an alternative music player).

iTunes was also unpopular with the Slashdot set because they had folder hierarchies for organising music and didn’t want something else in the way of their organisation. Only 10-20% of the population thinks of hierarchies as the structure for organisation and music is a great example of their limitations. If you do band/album/track, how do you find all of the track by a particular artist on compilations (you’ll end up with a big ‘Various Artists’ folder)? If you want a playlist that is ‘all music from the ‘60s that isn’t classical or by The Beatles’ (an actual playlist I had in iTunes), the hierarchical view doesn’t help, but iTunes model of a soup of tracks filtered by metadata did. Gmail also leaned into this model, with tags and searches rather than traditional mail folders.

The iPod itself had 5 GB of space on a micro drive (1.8” hard disk). That was enough for 40-50 CDs at 128 Kb/s, which was more music than a lot of people owned, so just plug it in and it syncs all of your music was a much better interface than copying files in a file manager. I think my hard disk, when the iPod came out, was 20 GB, and I didn’t want to use 1/4 for music! You put a CD in your computer, iTunes ripped it automatically and then the next time you plugged in the iPod it was sync’s (and play counts for the tracks were sync’s back. These also were usable in smart playlists. I had one for ‘underplayed good songs’ which found things with a rating of 4-5 stars with a low play count). If you had more music than would fit, you could select playlists to sync and it would copy those. This included smart playlists, so you could create simple saved metadata searches and sync all the tracks they found, even if you never played them as a playlist.

You had less control in this model than with the Nomad, but it didn’t matter because the thing that most people wanted to do almost all of the time was very easy, whereas the Nomad made it harder.

As Jef Raskin argued, making difficult things possible shouldn’t come at the expense of making simple things easy.

@neil

But then wouldn't the review have been more like "this will probably be popular, because ABC, only not necessarily with people like us, because XYZ"...?

@david_chisnall

@unchartedworlds @david_chisnall

I don't recall it being more than the three sentences, but perhaps there was a full review that I am not remembering?

(As an aside, if I'm commenting on something from my perspective - such as a review of piece of tech - my focus is on how it makes *me* feel / how it works for *me*, rather than trying to provide some kind of objective overview!)

@neil @unchartedworlds

As I recall, this was the editor’s commentary on a link to the release announcement.

@unchartedworlds @david_chisnall

I don't recall it being more than the three sentences, but perhaps there was a full review that I am not remembering?

(As an aside, if I'm commenting on something from my perspective - such as a review of piece of tech - my focus is on how it makes *me* feel / how it works for *me*, rather than trying to provide some kind of objective overview!)

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/116079430711748391

The responses to this make me feel old.

For those who answered ‘no’ and didn’t look it up, this was the Slashdot review of the original iPod, which subsequently became an enormously successful consumer electronics product. It became a meme for geeks not understanding the things that make people actually like a product (which seems relevant with respect to Discord at the moment).

The Nomad (from Creative Labs, the maker of SoundBlaster and related lawsuits) had a terrible UI and exposed itself as a mass-storage device. You just had to copy your files across. The iPod required you to use iTunes (the next version that worked with Windows also allowed an alternative music player).

iTunes was also unpopular with the Slashdot set because they had folder hierarchies for organising music and didn’t want something else in the way of their organisation. Only 10-20% of the population thinks of hierarchies as the structure for organisation and music is a great example of their limitations. If you do band/album/track, how do you find all of the track by a particular artist on compilations (you’ll end up with a big ‘Various Artists’ folder)? If you want a playlist that is ‘all music from the ‘60s that isn’t classical or by The Beatles’ (an actual playlist I had in iTunes), the hierarchical view doesn’t help, but iTunes model of a soup of tracks filtered by metadata did. Gmail also leaned into this model, with tags and searches rather than traditional mail folders.

The iPod itself had 5 GB of space on a micro drive (1.8” hard disk). That was enough for 40-50 CDs at 128 Kb/s, which was more music than a lot of people owned, so just plug it in and it syncs all of your music was a much better interface than copying files in a file manager. I think my hard disk, when the iPod came out, was 20 GB, and I didn’t want to use 1/4 for music! You put a CD in your computer, iTunes ripped it automatically and then the next time you plugged in the iPod it was sync’s (and play counts for the tracks were sync’s back. These also were usable in smart playlists. I had one for ‘underplayed good songs’ which found things with a rating of 4-5 stars with a low play count). If you had more music than would fit, you could select playlists to sync and it would copy those. This included smart playlists, so you could create simple saved metadata searches and sync all the tracks they found, even if you never played them as a playlist.

You had less control in this model than with the Nomad, but it didn’t matter because the thing that most people wanted to do almost all of the time was very easy, whereas the Nomad made it harder.

As Jef Raskin argued, making difficult things possible shouldn’t come at the expense of making simple things easy.

@david_chisnall @unchartedworlds

Yes, that is my recollection too (albeit accepting that the passage of many years may have dulled this!)

Their, personal, view of what was announced, rather than a commentary on whether it would be a global success or not.

@neil @david_chisnall

Aaah that makes sense.

(I _am_ old but obviously wasn't paying attention in that direction at the time )

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/116079430711748391

The responses to this make me feel old.

For those who answered ‘no’ and didn’t look it up, this was the Slashdot review of the original iPod, which subsequently became an enormously successful consumer electronics product. It became a meme for geeks not understanding the things that make people actually like a product (which seems relevant with respect to Discord at the moment).

The Nomad (from Creative Labs, the maker of SoundBlaster and related lawsuits) had a terrible UI and exposed itself as a mass-storage device. You just had to copy your files across. The iPod required you to use iTunes (the next version that worked with Windows also allowed an alternative music player).

iTunes was also unpopular with the Slashdot set because they had folder hierarchies for organising music and didn’t want something else in the way of their organisation. Only 10-20% of the population thinks of hierarchies as the structure for organisation and music is a great example of their limitations. If you do band/album/track, how do you find all of the track by a particular artist on compilations (you’ll end up with a big ‘Various Artists’ folder)? If you want a playlist that is ‘all music from the ‘60s that isn’t classical or by The Beatles’ (an actual playlist I had in iTunes), the hierarchical view doesn’t help, but iTunes model of a soup of tracks filtered by metadata did. Gmail also leaned into this model, with tags and searches rather than traditional mail folders.

The iPod itself had 5 GB of space on a micro drive (1.8” hard disk). That was enough for 40-50 CDs at 128 Kb/s, which was more music than a lot of people owned, so just plug it in and it syncs all of your music was a much better interface than copying files in a file manager. I think my hard disk, when the iPod came out, was 20 GB, and I didn’t want to use 1/4 for music! You put a CD in your computer, iTunes ripped it automatically and then the next time you plugged in the iPod it was sync’s (and play counts for the tracks were sync’s back. These also were usable in smart playlists. I had one for ‘underplayed good songs’ which found things with a rating of 4-5 stars with a low play count). If you had more music than would fit, you could select playlists to sync and it would copy those. This included smart playlists, so you could create simple saved metadata searches and sync all the tracks they found, even if you never played them as a playlist.

You had less control in this model than with the Nomad, but it didn’t matter because the thing that most people wanted to do almost all of the time was very easy, whereas the Nomad made it harder.

As Jef Raskin argued, making difficult things possible shouldn’t come at the expense of making simple things easy.

@david_chisnall

iTunes was also unpopular with the Slashdot set because they had folder hierarchies for organising music and didn’t want something else in the way of their organisation.

As I recall it, my gripe with iTunes at the time wasn't that it would allow for metadata filtered playlists -- I thought this was great -- but that it would physically change the folder hierarchy of the underlying music libray to better fit its own data model.
I had my own music library organized as one album per folder, and only ~70-80% of it was properly tagged (which back in 2002, was actually pretty good for a collection of self ripped CDs going back 5 years or so). With no warning, iTunes decided to rearrange it into an artist/album hierarchy, which rendered the whole thing unusable with other software and HW players lacking sophisticated metadata support.
And you can imagine the havoc this wreaked among the part of library that was not tagged...

Now, this happened to me specifically with the first version of iTunes that Apple ported to Windows, back in ~2002, I believe; I'm pretty sure later versions fixed that. But that certainly gave me cold feet about ever wanting to try it again.

@unchartedworlds @david_chisnall Perhaps you were too busy listening to your Nomad

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/116079430711748391

The responses to this make me feel old.

For those who answered ‘no’ and didn’t look it up, this was the Slashdot review of the original iPod, which subsequently became an enormously successful consumer electronics product. It became a meme for geeks not understanding the things that make people actually like a product (which seems relevant with respect to Discord at the moment).

The Nomad (from Creative Labs, the maker of SoundBlaster and related lawsuits) had a terrible UI and exposed itself as a mass-storage device. You just had to copy your files across. The iPod required you to use iTunes (the next version that worked with Windows also allowed an alternative music player).

iTunes was also unpopular with the Slashdot set because they had folder hierarchies for organising music and didn’t want something else in the way of their organisation. Only 10-20% of the population thinks of hierarchies as the structure for organisation and music is a great example of their limitations. If you do band/album/track, how do you find all of the track by a particular artist on compilations (you’ll end up with a big ‘Various Artists’ folder)? If you want a playlist that is ‘all music from the ‘60s that isn’t classical or by The Beatles’ (an actual playlist I had in iTunes), the hierarchical view doesn’t help, but iTunes model of a soup of tracks filtered by metadata did. Gmail also leaned into this model, with tags and searches rather than traditional mail folders.

The iPod itself had 5 GB of space on a micro drive (1.8” hard disk). That was enough for 40-50 CDs at 128 Kb/s, which was more music than a lot of people owned, so just plug it in and it syncs all of your music was a much better interface than copying files in a file manager. I think my hard disk, when the iPod came out, was 20 GB, and I didn’t want to use 1/4 for music! You put a CD in your computer, iTunes ripped it automatically and then the next time you plugged in the iPod it was sync’s (and play counts for the tracks were sync’s back. These also were usable in smart playlists. I had one for ‘underplayed good songs’ which found things with a rating of 4-5 stars with a low play count). If you had more music than would fit, you could select playlists to sync and it would copy those. This included smart playlists, so you could create simple saved metadata searches and sync all the tracks they found, even if you never played them as a playlist.

You had less control in this model than with the Nomad, but it didn’t matter because the thing that most people wanted to do almost all of the time was very easy, whereas the Nomad made it harder.

As Jef Raskin argued, making difficult things possible shouldn’t come at the expense of making simple things easy.

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/116079430711748391

The responses to this make me feel old.

For those who answered ‘no’ and didn’t look it up, this was the Slashdot review of the original iPod, which subsequently became an enormously successful consumer electronics product. It became a meme for geeks not understanding the things that make people actually like a product (which seems relevant with respect to Discord at the moment).

The Nomad (from Creative Labs, the maker of SoundBlaster and related lawsuits) had a terrible UI and exposed itself as a mass-storage device. You just had to copy your files across. The iPod required you to use iTunes (the next version that worked with Windows also allowed an alternative music player).

iTunes was also unpopular with the Slashdot set because they had folder hierarchies for organising music and didn’t want something else in the way of their organisation. Only 10-20% of the population thinks of hierarchies as the structure for organisation and music is a great example of their limitations. If you do band/album/track, how do you find all of the track by a particular artist on compilations (you’ll end up with a big ‘Various Artists’ folder)? If you want a playlist that is ‘all music from the ‘60s that isn’t classical or by The Beatles’ (an actual playlist I had in iTunes), the hierarchical view doesn’t help, but iTunes model of a soup of tracks filtered by metadata did. Gmail also leaned into this model, with tags and searches rather than traditional mail folders.

The iPod itself had 5 GB of space on a micro drive (1.8” hard disk). That was enough for 40-50 CDs at 128 Kb/s, which was more music than a lot of people owned, so just plug it in and it syncs all of your music was a much better interface than copying files in a file manager. I think my hard disk, when the iPod came out, was 20 GB, and I didn’t want to use 1/4 for music! You put a CD in your computer, iTunes ripped it automatically and then the next time you plugged in the iPod it was sync’s (and play counts for the tracks were sync’s back. These also were usable in smart playlists. I had one for ‘underplayed good songs’ which found things with a rating of 4-5 stars with a low play count). If you had more music than would fit, you could select playlists to sync and it would copy those. This included smart playlists, so you could create simple saved metadata searches and sync all the tracks they found, even if you never played them as a playlist.

You had less control in this model than with the Nomad, but it didn’t matter because the thing that most people wanted to do almost all of the time was very easy, whereas the Nomad made it harder.

As Jef Raskin argued, making difficult things possible shouldn’t come at the expense of making simple things easy.