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iPod's Two-Year Anniversary 471

Posted by timothy from the non-terrible-twos dept.
the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow writes "Two years ago this month, Apple Computer released a small, sleek-looking device it called the iPod. This Sunday's New York Times Magazine has a long article on it: The Guts of a New Machine."
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iPod's Two-Year Anniversary More

iPod's Two-Year Anniversary

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  • Free registration sucks ;) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Daikiki ( 227620 ) * <daikiki.wanadoo@nl> on Sunday November 30, 2003 @01:54PM (#7593315) Homepage Journal
    Google it. [google.com]
  • to devolve from "Soul" to "Guts".

  • Two-Year Anniversary (Score:5, Funny)

    by smiley2billion ( 599641 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @01:56PM (#7593328) Homepage
    Hey, it's also the Two-Year Anniversary of when I started paying for my iPod, which continues to this day.

  • Thanks Google! (Score:3, Informative)

    by FsG ( 648587 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @01:57PM (#7593330)
    Thanks to google, we can read this article without registering: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/magazine/30IPOD. html?ex=1070773200&en=6cc3b984324f9225&ei=5062&par tner=GOOGLE [nytimes.com]
  • Anybody who has an iPod knows how cool they are, and if you have one of those imitation players, you owe Apple for being the first to innovate. I love my pod.

    • Don't celebrate too much (Score:4, Informative)

      by Doc Squidly ( 720087 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:56PM (#7593590)
      Apple wasn't the first to make hard drive MP3 players. The first one I recall seeing on the market was the Creative Lab's Nomad Jukebox (haven't got an exact date on the very first one), in 2000. It had to be out at least a year before iPod. Apple and everyone else pretty much took that idea and ran with it. iPod is a good device especially when paired with iTunes but, it's not without its limitations, as pointed out in this CNet article , five reasons not to buy an iPod [cnet.com] , already posted on /. Me, I've got a Rio Nitrus [cnet.com], which uses the Cornice Storage Element [corniceco.com] and it's a nice fit between the bulkier hard drive players (like the iPod) and the solid state players that have less storage. If Apple really wants to take the lead they should help Cornice to up their drive capacity (like to 20 Gb) and sell it in a smaller iPod that has a replaceable battery.

  • Initial reaction wasn't favorable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kajoob ( 62237 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:00PM (#7593351)
    I know everybody is going to come on here and praise the ipod, but if I recall correctly [slashdot.org], most slashdotters (even the mac zealots) bashed the ipod when it was launched. Slashdotters not infalliable? That's unpossible! ;-)
    • What the hell was the original poster thinking? Wireless? You wanna transfer 5GB of music over freaking wireless?

    • Re:Initial reaction wasn't favorable (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Skeezix ( 14602 ) <jamin@pubcrawler.org> on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:29PM (#7593473) Homepage
      Slashdotters are some of the most negative people on the planet. That's because nearly everyone on /. thinks he is a generalized critic with some profound insight that others need to hear.

    • For the Umpteenth time people. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Malcontent ( 40834 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:37PM (#7593516)
      Slashdot is not a person. It is however something akin to a rorschach test.
    • click on link and read comments. I think everyone on /. shoudl do it. its hillarious. Esp taco's "no wireless, lame " comment hahahah
    • CmdrTaco's reaction was typical of what I heard from many geeks, on Slashdot and elsewhere. It didn't occur to them that reducing download time by a factor of 30 was a big step forward. Interesting oversight. I saw it right away, and I usually don't grok performance issues.

  • too bad that... (Score:2, Informative)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 )

    Too bad that my 10GB(2nd gen ie dockable) iPod doesn't seem to like to fully charge its battery. It takes at least two tries to get it to charge fully, and yes- I've done the soft reset more than once. It's supposed to charge to 75% within a short period of time, and then trickle the rest- but it never seems to get "the rest" part done, even if left overnight on the charger. Or plugged into the powerbook.

    Oh, and I'm -still- waiting for my iTrip FM adapter to ship...I ordered it almost exactly 4 weeks a

    • Oh, and I'm -still- waiting for my iTrip FM adapter to ship...I ordered it almost exactly 4 weeks ago, still no sign.

      Have you never heard the words "6 to 8 weeks"?
      Common shipping mantra.

  • Marketing geniuses (Score:3, Funny)

    by gxv ( 577982 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:03PM (#7593365)
    I can tell one thing for sure about Apple. They have brilliant marketing - they take simple MP3 player does some magic advertising and tadam! we have the thing that changes culture [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Marketing geniuses (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hitmark ( 640295 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @03:20PM (#7593717) Journal
      the one thing apple does diffrent then the rest of the it world is that they sellan experience, not a machine, not a os but an experience. in many ways they are closer to disney or macdonalds then ibm and dell...

      this is why they gloss over stuff like hardware specs when they try to sell something and give the gui and user experience har hard beating to make sure its perfect.

      in many ways apple products are perfect for the general user that wants a pc thats as easy to use as your average tv, stereo or video/dvd recorder...

      sure they stuffed a BSD kernel under the hood but that just means that they can scoop the cream of the open source world, hook the power users that was looking at linux or one of the BSD users and still get people to buy theyre propriatary hardware...

      no, give me linux and a joe blow mainboard.

    • Re:Marketing geniuses (Score:5, Insightful)

      by YouHaveSnail ( 202852 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @04:15PM (#7593992)
      I can tell one thing for sure about Apple. They have brilliant marketing

      In recent years, Apple has become much more aware of what customers want. They've always made interesting technology, but they haven't always understood what customers wanted to buy, and they haven't always understood how to present their interesting technology in a way that appeals to customers. Steve Jobs is masterful in both these areas, and we have him to thank in large part for Apple's resurgence.

  • Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gsdali ( 707124 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:04PM (#7593367)
    Not least because it's adding a huge amount to Apple's bottom line. Its helped apple through a dodgy period whilst they were moving their users to a world class OS and struggling with a slipping processor roadmap. They need a new killer device soon though I predict that this xmas is going to be the peak in iPod sales so I home January's Macworld (or the next year at least) brings something twice as cool. I'm sure Apple won't disappoint. (Well I hope at the very least).

    • Re:Congratulations ... agreed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by adzoox ( 615327 ) * on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:25PM (#7593452) Journal
      I agree, but disagree. While the iPod has definitely added to the bottomline and to the recognition of Apple design and ease of integration, it has yet to actually be the single contributing source to a profitable quarter. In all profitable quarters since the iPod introduction, Apple has always posted a bigger gan that net from iPod sales alone.

      I think Apple's current roadmap and processor line is pretty impressive, especially now that it's backed by someone who actually can produce: IBM.

      I do agree though that it's time for Apple to wow us again. I think it's time for Apple to give us a TIVO iPod with Color LCD. I can't fathom where there's innovation elsewhere that the mass public and not just Apple users want to see...

    • I think it's also kind of a gateway drug... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MadAnthony02 ( 626886 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @03:27PM (#7593748)

      I suspect that there is a small group of techies who have bought iPods, and then gone on to buy their first Macs. I bought a Windows iPod and was very impressed by it, and my positive thoughts on it's design helped influence my decision to buy an Apple powerbook 12" a few months later - my first Mac. At least one of my coworkers also bought an iPod and a few months later bought a Mac. So I think the iPod might be introducing Mac design ingenutity to people who otherwise wouldn't have bought Macs.

      • Re:I think it's also kind of a gateway drug... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by generica1 ( 193760 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @04:05PM (#7593919) Homepage
        That's completely true.... I just got a G5 last weekend after owning my iPod for about 4 months. I convinced my boss to buy it for me (we are an all-mac company and I am the I.T. Manager) and traded him my old PC for it (who he is giving to his father-in-law).

        All in all, the iPod i bought really made me salivate for a computer that matched its elegance, logical design and stable, worry-free performance. Bye bye, Windows-flavoured PC... (I love *NIX but I've never had the time or interest to spend days and days configuring my computer to do even simple tasks like recognize and use all of my hardware, thus I've just casually ran Windows at home for years).
    • I'll agree that iPod sales have probably led to very few Mac sales but it helps keep Apple in business for my 3 yearly fix of powerbook.

      Did I mention they were cool?

  • Yes, I remember it well... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree&davidglover,org> on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:09PM (#7593388) Homepage
    "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." - CmdrTaco
  • "But then you meet the girl, and she says, 'Let me see what's on your iPod.' You pull out a tape player, and she walks away."

    Hmm.

    iPenisenvy?

  • Missing Some Points (Score:5, Insightful)

    by repetty ( 260322 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:28PM (#7593467) Homepage
    I know that this article was written for people who aren't technical types, maybe folks who first heard of "MP3's" just last year, but the difference between the iPod and the MP3 players that proceeded it are more numerous than suggested.

    Here's a story that makes a point...

    Some Apple employees loaded Mac OS X Server onto one of the early iPods and connected it to a desktop Mac. Then, they booted to it. It ran.

    I hope that all the folks who always seem troll on Apple product, saying that all they do is slap on some pretty exterior, jack up the prices, and market, market, market, will think for a moment and appreciate the depth of this product.

    And I don't even own one.

    --Richard

    • Some Apple employees loaded Mac OS X Server onto one of the early iPods and connected it to a desktop Mac. Then, they booted to it. It ran.

      I hope that all the folks who always seem troll on Apple product, saying that all they do is slap on some pretty exterior, jack up the prices, and market, market, market, will think for a moment and appreciate the depth of this product.

      How does that constitute depth? It's a firewire hard drive! My cheap, ugly archos jukebox studio is a usb hard drive. If my PC could

  • hey apple why White?

    ipod owners ... do your ipods get all grubby looking with that white finish?

    or did apple ship little white gloves with the units to avoid this 'grubbiness' problesm.

    Oh yeah my G/F is seemingly the only girl in the world who thinks the ipod looks stupid. As such I'll be getting her an Iriver iHP-120 for xmas.. Oh yeah and it plays .ogg too hell yeah.

    • Answers (Score:4, Informative)

      by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @03:03PM (#7593624)
      It's clear plastic with a white undercoat, like the previous iBooks.
      And it's smooth, you can just wipe it off.

      In short, it doesn't seem to get dirty or grubby.. not like you would think.
      For that matter, neither does my iBook.

  • A BETTER IDEA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by plinius ( 714075 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:51PM (#7593564)
    It would be nice if there were a slot in my car I could slide an MP3 player into so I wouldn't need two devices.

    Hey, there's a clever idea: make the removable faceplate of a car's stereo the thing itself: the mobile MP3 player.

    Two birds, one stone!

    • Re:A BETTER IDEA (Score:3, Informative)

      by Andy_R ( 114137 )
      Volkswagen and Smart (DaimlerChrysler's microcar - not on sale in the US) are both offering ipod options already

  • 2 iPod flaws that deliver me from temptation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by timothy ( 36799 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @02:53PM (#7593575) Journal
    1) The battery. Ignoring the "dirty little secret" brouhaha (what, you thought batteries did *not* have a finite lifespan?), the plain fact is that specialized, proprietary batteries are annoying. Your priorities may be different (hey, them's the breaks, to me and to Apple) but I'd happily settle for a reasonably shorter battery life and even a slightly thicker waist in the iPod if in exchange it would take rechargeable AA or AAA batteries.

    Device-specific batteries have advantages sometimes (allow sleeker shapes etc), but AA (and nearly as much, AAA) batteries are available everywhere in alkaline form, and easily gettable (in Western countries) in lithium variety. Better yet, both rechargeable AA/AAAs and the chargers that charge them (can I say 'charge' a few more times?) have gotten considerably better in the last few years. This is one reason I like my Nikon 990 camera over the later ones in the same series. I can carry extra batteries for cheap :)

    2) No ogg vorbis support. This may not apply to you, but 99% the compressed music I have is in the form of oggs, ripped for convenience from my CD collection. If the iPod adds a firmware upgrade which allows ogg decoding (I've heard mixed reports on the feasability of this wrt current iPods, but a chip upgrade in a later series could do it even if the pessimists are right), I'd probably get over my disdain for the battery and shell out for one.

    Obviously, this is just a rant, since Apple is unlikely to give the iPod AA/AAA batteries, and makes more money selling ITMS music in AAC than they'd probably make by adding Ogg Vorbus Support as a bullet point on the features list. However, these two factors, singly and apart, do make other players more attractive. (Like the Rio Karma; same battery lameness, but Hey, plays ogg ;))

    Now, when will low-end MP3 players at Target add ogg to *their* bullet list of features, though? (Part of) all I want is to listen to some books while driving, without changing CDs (or buying an overkill CD-changing car stereo).

    timothy

    • Re:2 iPod flaws that deliver me from temptation (Score:5, Interesting)

      by damiam ( 409504 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @03:42PM (#7593819)
      If the iPod adds a firmware upgrade which allows ogg decoding (I've heard mixed reports on the feasability of this wrt current iPods

      It's definately possible. The iPod Linux [sourceforge.net] project showed that the iPod can decode oggs in 80% realtime under Linux with an unoptimized Tremor decoder. The official firmware presumably has less overhead than Linux, and a little bit of decoder optimization would definately make it fast enough.

    • Re:2 iPod flaws that deliver me from temptation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Golias ( 176380 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @03:56PM (#7593866)
      1) I would utterly hate it if they switched to AA or AAA batteries. The current battery is one of the best things about the iPod.

      2) It's not Apple's fault that you chose to rip your CD's using a compression format that most of the industry (and most users) has chosen to to adopt. Ogg advocates are starting to sound like Betamax owners from around 1990 or so.

    • if you just have to use AA batteries, then might as well get one of these [belkin.com] for the ipod. it makes it a little bulkier, but it works.
      also, there's a plug-in for itunes that allows it to play ogg files. I know ogg is free and has great quality, but it's not like i pay for AAC licensing. in the consumers' eyes, AAC is also free, and it's arguably as good as or even better than ogg.
    • And you think that AA or AAA batteries will SAVE you money in the long term, perhaps?

      The iPod has to run a hard drive and power a bunch of other things with batteries, and these things typically take a lot of power to run. So, pretend that it takes 4 AA batteries to run the iPod. Here, it's $4 for a two-pack of AA Energizers, so that's $8 to run your iPod. Since they're not rechargable, it only takes about 10 packs before the cost of buying one of the third party replacement batteries (I'm working in Canadian money here, BTW) is cheaper.

      If you want to buy rechargable batteries, you can buy NiMH batteries with a charger for about $50CDN. These will last at least as long as the built-in battery, but the recharging is somewhat less convenient. Admittedly, the convenience of being able to carry spare batteries just in case can be a match, if you use it that much (and we assume that 4AAs last as long as one charge on the iPod battery).

      I think that it's probably better to have an internal, non-swappable rechargable battery, personally.

      As for Oggs, I used to have everything ripped to ogg, but I've switched to AAC, since I really like iTunes. (I know that there's a plugin to listen to oggs with iTunes, but it's REALLY bad under windows. It works great on my Mac, though). If you're using iTunes, re-ripping your library isn't so bad.

    • nobody cares about Ogg Vorbis (Score:4, Insightful)

      by porky_pig_jr ( 129948 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @04:55PM (#7594270)
      well, at least not even significant minority. As far as quality concerned, Vorbis is mediocre to say the least. There was enough tests done in this respect. Check hydrogenaudio.org for more information. It is also not well supported. Remember how slashdotters rejoiced when there was the announcement that BBC has adopted vorbis as its streaming protocol. I don't remember any news on slashdot when BBC dropped it, primarily because of lack of any decent support.

      AAC is the state of the art compression technology, and it is *standard* part of MPEG4 protocol suite. it is a natural extension and improvement of MP3. Remember my words: you'll see more and more vendors jumping on AAC bandwagon. Ogg Vorbis? Don't expect a lot. may be a few, like Karma.

      • Vorbis quality (Score:4, Interesting)

        by charnov ( 183495 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @07:11PM (#7595014) Homepage Journal
        Odd...after looking at the site you posted and combing their forums, it appears you are incorrect. Vorbis won most of the listening tests, especially at lower bitrates (which is more common on a portable device).

        Also, note that the reason Vorbis came about was that the people who own the patents on mp3 were starting to become real asses and it looked like the future of mp3 encoders and possibly players on linux was in danger. In addition, mp3pro is considered the next generation audio standard (although there are many unnecessary competitors) and even it has been shown to be inferior to Vorbis.

        And again, Vorbis is, and always shall be, free.

        • Re:Vorbis quality: at which rates? Free? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by porky_pig_jr ( 129948 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @08:27PM (#7595414)
          At the low rates, Vorbis quality is about the same as WMA. By low rates I assume you mean the rates lower than 128Kbps.

          Now with devices like iPod, the capacity from 10GB to 40GB, there is no reason *not* to encode at the rates of 160Kbps and higher, and this is where AAC and even MP3 beats Ogg.

          This is correct that Vorbis was created primarily for the low rates (as defined above) to compete with WMA and their likes, but once again, with harddrive based devices doing something like LAME with default settings (VBR, 200Kbps on average) or AAC (160Kbps CBR and higher) seems reasonable enough, and this also eliminates the majority of artifacts.

          With respect to Vorbis will be free, I frankly get tired of this mantra. Free for whom? For users? How much do you pay for MP3? How much do you pay for AAC? You may say 'hidden license charges'? This is a few bucks per device, which costs $200-300 and higher to begin with, drop in a bucket, don't you agree? For manufacturer? As i've mentioned, in addition to free software you need a good support. Also Ogg Vorbis binary is large, and not easily fit into many of the portables, so the code needs to be optimized, and then of course, the manufacturer has to support this extra work.

          So - before you repeat the slashdot favority mantra 'Vorbis is free', think a bit first.
  • expectations were high for an Apple PDA which would compete with the Palm and PocketPC. Instead, Apple gave us the iPod, which CmdrTaco called a "lame mp3 player". Is it lame? maybe, but it's been quite successful.

  • kudos to the ipod (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mantera ( 685223 ) on Sunday November 30, 2003 @03:44PM (#7593828)


    i guess it's a sign of the immense success of a product when you forget that it was only introduced no more than 2 years ago... once a product feels like it's been there forever and it somewhat doesn't easily occur to you that a while ago it didn't even exist and no body heard of it, that is when it become a part of the popular culture.

    kudos to apple; and also for the fact that 2 years on no one seems to have been able to bring to market a better product.

  • I agree with Moby (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tbmaddux ( 145207 ) * on Sunday November 30, 2003 @03:50PM (#7593852) Homepage Journal
    From the original article, Moby says:
    "...it's so elegant and logical, it becomes part of your life so quickly that you can't remember what it was like beforehand.''
    Like the subject says, I agree. I've had mine (30 GB) for a year now. My wife got one of the first 5 GB models and is now using a 20 GB model. We have used our iPods on two cross-country drives in the past 18 months... the freedom from the morass of country music that blankets about 75% of the distance between the two coasts is alone worth the iPod's price. When I discovered that play counts on my iPod would be updated to my computer when I synced, I started using only the iPod to listen to music. It connects to my stereo via the line-out on a spare dock. My CDs now just gather dust.

    The iPod competitors so far have lacked the interface and/or small size to be navigable with one hand. It will be interesting to see what Apple comes up with next. Can drive sizes keep going up and be useful? Do we need a 200 GB iPod?

  • iLove mi iPod (Score:3, Funny)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) * <ellem52@@@gmail...com> on Sunday November 30, 2003 @09:20PM (#7595689) Homepage Journal
    iT iS wiTh out a doubt the best piEce of hardware iHave purchased since my AmiGa 500.

    iCannot liVe wiThout iT.

    iT has changed me and the way iSpell.

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