2002: "Apple is contemplating ... an 'iPhone.'"(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
2002: "Apple is contemplating ... an 'iPhone.'"
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/19/technology/19APPL.html?8hpib
4 comments
That's because they've chosen iTunes as the iPhone's control panel.
You could say that out of all of their successful products, iTunes comes out as a big stain of shit on a white piece of clothing.
You could say that out of all of their successful products, iTunes comes out as a big stain of shit on a white piece of clothing.
Call it shit, but in my opinion iTunes is what made the iPod the hit that it is today.
You have to think back to the MP3 player market back in 2001 to see what a pile of shit the entire world was. Every player, from MpMAN to Rio, was saddled with a last-minute-afterthought of a PC interface for loading songs. iTunes might not have been that much better, but it worked seamlessly with the iPod.
You have to think back to the MP3 player market back in 2001 to see what a pile of shit the entire world was. Every player, from MpMAN to Rio, was saddled with a last-minute-afterthought of a PC interface for loading songs. iTunes might not have been that much better, but it worked seamlessly with the iPod.
That's why I bought an MP3 player with the best interface ever invented for uploading: a visible file-system (or you could say Windows Explorer to non-technical types).
And how do you manage your library? Folders within folders buried somewhere in /home/user or C:\Documents and Settings\user\Desktop\Music\Mp3 Files\Artists\...?
I would jump at an MP3 player with the capacity of an iPod but software better than iTunes for synching or indeed the native iPod (Classic for me, I need the space) software.
What are the problems for me? * Abysmal interface for large collections. _You_ try navigating around a multi-thousand entry main playlist. * Because it insists on maintaining its own database but doesn't make any effort to keep it up-to-date, it goes bad easily if you do _any_ housekeeping. Decide you don't like a file and move it out of your main folder, or have to rerip an album for a reason? You now have to manually move the old files out from iTunes, one by one. I might be able to do better if I let iTunes manage my library, but given how much I prefer other software for playing off the PC rather than the iPod, that wasn't something I was prepared to do and it should be able to handle it better than this. * Very basic duplicate files finding, which interacts with the above. Does such a simplistic match that it grabs huge numbers of false positives, making it unneccessarily difficult to find where you've actually got duplicates. You then can't see what the file path is or sort by the missing file marker so it's a real pain to remove the old version and leave behind only the new. Back to removing them one by one. * I've no idea what it's doing, but it multiplies artists and albums all over the place. Other music library programs I've used were bright enough to tell that BEATLES, Beatles and The Beatles were all the same band. ITunes isn't, including giving some multiples that appear identical in the interface. It periodically does the same with albums too, making album playlists vastly less useful because rather than one seven track album you have seven, identically named, one-track albums with ascending track numbers. * Play me my top rated songs within a genre. Can't do. Show me my top rated songs by a particular band or even within an individual album. Can't do. * Podcasts resume part-way through if you jumped out into another part of the software; 'Songs' don't - why? That's annoying with some long classical or prog track, doubly so with a podcast I simply decided not to manage with ITunes (because, frankly, I didn't find its podcast software any better than the rest of it).
I could go on... It's one of the worst music managers / MP3 players I've used.
ITunes is pretty and relatively easy to use (for simple tasks - anything out of the ordinary is a real pain IMHO) but that's as far as I'd go in its praise. For me they've created an MP3 player which is designed to handle tens of thousands of songs but lumbered it with the software to do a few hundred and left it. That's not good enough. It might have been barely adequate in 2001 (I'm not convinced frankly) but it's an embarrassment by now.
What are the problems for me? * Abysmal interface for large collections. _You_ try navigating around a multi-thousand entry main playlist. * Because it insists on maintaining its own database but doesn't make any effort to keep it up-to-date, it goes bad easily if you do _any_ housekeeping. Decide you don't like a file and move it out of your main folder, or have to rerip an album for a reason? You now have to manually move the old files out from iTunes, one by one. I might be able to do better if I let iTunes manage my library, but given how much I prefer other software for playing off the PC rather than the iPod, that wasn't something I was prepared to do and it should be able to handle it better than this. * Very basic duplicate files finding, which interacts with the above. Does such a simplistic match that it grabs huge numbers of false positives, making it unneccessarily difficult to find where you've actually got duplicates. You then can't see what the file path is or sort by the missing file marker so it's a real pain to remove the old version and leave behind only the new. Back to removing them one by one. * I've no idea what it's doing, but it multiplies artists and albums all over the place. Other music library programs I've used were bright enough to tell that BEATLES, Beatles and The Beatles were all the same band. ITunes isn't, including giving some multiples that appear identical in the interface. It periodically does the same with albums too, making album playlists vastly less useful because rather than one seven track album you have seven, identically named, one-track albums with ascending track numbers. * Play me my top rated songs within a genre. Can't do. Show me my top rated songs by a particular band or even within an individual album. Can't do. * Podcasts resume part-way through if you jumped out into another part of the software; 'Songs' don't - why? That's annoying with some long classical or prog track, doubly so with a podcast I simply decided not to manage with ITunes (because, frankly, I didn't find its podcast software any better than the rest of it).
I could go on... It's one of the worst music managers / MP3 players I've used.
ITunes is pretty and relatively easy to use (for simple tasks - anything out of the ordinary is a real pain IMHO) but that's as far as I'd go in its praise. For me they've created an MP3 player which is designed to handle tens of thousands of songs but lumbered it with the software to do a few hundred and left it. That's not good enough. It might have been barely adequate in 2001 (I'm not convinced frankly) but it's an embarrassment by now.
Palm founded in 1992. Apple offers to buy for $1Bn in 2002? Average of $100M per year in business...
Palm sells to HP in 2010 for $1.2Bn. 1Bn in first 10 years and only $200M in the 8 years that followed? Wow. Should have sold in 2002!
Palm sells to HP in 2010 for $1.2Bn. 1Bn in first 10 years and only $200M in the 8 years that followed? Wow. Should have sold in 2002!
I assume people with a stake in Palm are now not so happy now about not having sold to Apple. I wonder how that would have worked out, though.
From my memory of what Palm devices were like then and seeing what's happened since, IMHO Apple dodged a bullet there. Palm was an overvalued, overhyped company with a product line that was already hitting technical limits due to design ties to a too-slow processor and too-small screen, and one that's spent all the time since fighting to stay up-to-date and relevant.
OT - a bit of checking a while back revealed that the larger current Smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S are roughly the same footprint as an old Psion Revo. I never had a Revo but did have a 5Mx and could touch-type on it fast enough to take notes. How I would love to have a phone with a keyboard that good, not the silly little things we get stuck with now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Revo
OT - a bit of checking a while back revealed that the larger current Smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S are roughly the same footprint as an old Psion Revo. I never had a Revo but did have a 5Mx and could touch-type on it fast enough to take notes. How I would love to have a phone with a keyboard that good, not the silly little things we get stuck with now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Revo
I have a Palm Pre. Previous Palm devices weren't that great from the little I've used them. WebOS is amazing though. It is, without exaggeration, the best piece of software I've ever used.
''We decided that between now and next year, the P.D.A. is going to be subsumed by the telephone,'' he said last week in an interview. ''We think the P.D.A. is going away.''
As someone who would love to have a smartphone-that-isn't-a-phone, I'd have to agree. The iPhone killed the PDA. Oh well, I'll always have my iPod Touch.
As someone who would love to have a smartphone-that-isn't-a-phone, I'd have to agree. The iPhone killed the PDA. Oh well, I'll always have my iPod Touch.
Well, the iPhone is more 2002 PDA than 2002 phone. It’s not exactly that the PDA lost, it’s just that being able to make phone calls and to surf the web are essential features a PDA needs.
How about a tablet like they Galaxy Tab or a Dell Streak? Those are PDA like in that they can make phone calls, but it doesn't seem to be the main focus of the device (...not that it's the main focus of the iPhone, either). You can purchase them without a contract, which is why I bought an iPod Touch, too. Presumably the iPad is disqualified because it is relatively huge.
or, how about just a used contract-free smartphone? This is the route I've been taking, going from an iphone 3G to hopefully soon a nexus one.
Disclaimer: I can't stand carrying both a phone and a pda device in my pocket.
Disclaimer: I can't stand carrying both a phone and a pda device in my pocket.
I love how the article mentions Danger, Andy Rubin's company before Android.
Even in a 2002 article about iPhones, Andy Rubin lurks.
Even in a 2002 article about iPhones, Andy Rubin lurks.
And yet, that's still the biggest thing that really doesn't work well with the iPhone.
I mean, seriously. I have to physically plug my phone into my computer to delete a song? Or change it's name? Or reorder an out-of-sequence album? Yet, I can make and edit movies on it.
Not to mention the fact that iTunes has a habit of breaking something every time it syncs my phone (album covers disappear, ringtones disappear, apps get reordered (that used to be worse) etc.)