That was also when I learned what happens if you dd a Creative Nomad Jukebox system image onto your root partition while the machine is running. The RedHat install stayed stable for about 20 minutes before weird things started failing and eventually the whole thing just locked up. Remember kids, always check you dd out file path!
In that time frame... I was using sub-GB MP3 players, with MMC cards or maybe SD cards by that point. (I didn't have those massive multi-thousand song collections, so it was fine...)
Because I have pics saved in my personal folder, mine in high school/early college were:
- Classic 64MB w/ 128 MB memory card
- MPIO FL100, probably 2 or 3x bigger; I wore this on a belt holder
- Sandisk Sansa, the bulbous one, before later using some of the smaller ones. Probably still only 256 or 512 MB of built-in storage.
- If you held the fast forward button it would slowly increase the speed it fast forwarded. Not something that matters with a 2 minute song, but it really matters with an hour long audiobook section.
- If you went to listen to something else but then you came back to the audiobook, it would open with the section you’d been listening to highlighted, and if you selected it it would pick up where you’d left off. If you accidentally skipped forward you could back out, move back to the previous section, and it’d do the same thing - starting where you’d been.
- On top of that, you could add more storage with microSD cards!
I eventually did get an iPod, the one that was all capacitive touch buttons and wheel, the last one before the click wheel.
I have never seen a nomad and I know that line. The nomad was famous for it as far as I am concerned.
If you're buying a phone or Mac or watch or Vision, they seem happy to help you on the spot or tell you where to hang out until someone's avaiailable.
It's sometimes difficult to find someone to let you buy something, even.
I was looking at a 17” PowerBook, salivating at the screen and performance but struggling with justifying the price tag. An incredibly nice lady walked up to me and asked if I had any questions. I told her I was thinking it over as it was a large purchase. She beamed and said “Of course, that’s totally understandable. In fact it takes on average 3 visits to an Apple Store before making a purchase”. It was the smartest, nicest, most low key way of saying don’t feel pressure…you’ll be coming back, and then you’ll buy the machine you’ve always wanted.
Very on brand. And surprisingly still not really copied by others.
I hadn't seriously considered a Porsche until I learned they make niche parts for cars for decades - like interior bits and trim that most brands stop making/carrying after about 10 years. You can get parts for a 2002-2016 Cayenne at the dealer, but even though it shares a TON of components with the 2002-2016 Touareg you won't be able to get the parts from VW that you can still source from Porsche for those same years.
Go outside of tech though and the Apple Store experience is commonplace. Apple itself copied the concept directly from high end fashion houses.
I went in to try the (then new) Surface Studio (the drafting table like AIO) and they couldn’t find the peripheral knob. But it kept triggering, but it turned out employees would mess around with customers by spinning it while they used it.
Of course that’s just one store, but I walked by several and they all just looked depressing inside. Layouts felt about as poorly planned as a Best Buy or staples display, and even things as simple as lighting was harsher.
It’s just not as simple as making a store. The store has to provide the right vibe, and Microsoft don’t understand vibe.
Plus, IIRC their return policy on what they had in stock was worse than other PC retailers
The people I worked with REALLY tried and cared to deliver what the bigger MS office asked for, but the distributed nature of the organization combined with a lack of unifying vision made delivering something great almost impossible.
Even with dedication, the result would be half-baked Wizards and ASP "solutions" that met the punch list requirements
Anyhoo, they shuttered pretty quickly (Apple Store is still there, of course).
Recently i've bought the new iphone, it's not as expensive as the high end macbook, but still, not a small amount of money.
I got to the store, asked for the phone, finalized my purchase and got out, all in 15 min i guess. No second guess, no cold feet, because i had been researching smartphones for years before going with it, i knew what i would get and what i wouldn't.
Back in the day you would indeed need to go to the store to know what you were getting.
Same for Android, I wouldn’t buy one without testing before, for example.
Also: The Microsoft and Chromebook displays at electronics chain-stores have seriously stepped up their game in the last 10 years or so. Before that it was a shitshow, with keyboards missing keys and the OS crashing on demo devices that would be otherwise perfectly usable machines.
(nobody does -- don't forget there are bounce lights and 20 people just out of frame...)
Apple Store employees are definitely trained better than the average shop, but they are far from luxury.
In my experience the Apple TV skews hard towards those who have a lot of Apple products. It's priced far higher than the rest of that market. Most people buying an iPhone are buying a Fire stick or a cheap smart TV. I'd bet most people buying an Apple TV have an iPhone and a Mac.
It would be like going into a Burberry store and shopping for replacement buttons for your $3000 coat.
You know, like our parents and grandparents would have done at a store. With humans who shouldn't be beckoned by glaring while standing near a display.
I got a Zune and immediately realized MS had no idea why people liked the iPod
Different folks like different things, but I don't think a big menu of lowercase text is more fun than the iPod in any of its variations
Not a fair comparison since a wire will always have more bandwidth for fidelity, but the difference in listening experience on an old iPod vs a modern iPhone is so shocking I find that modern iPhone listening is like diet soda and is somewhat unfulfilling (I have Apple Lossless turned on, but the sound chip + low power of modern headphones + no wired connection... loses something)
I don't mean in a "vinyl is better" sense... I mean, everyone I've demo'd this to has looked at me with big eyes when they put the iPod on and listen to the same song vs. the same headphones plugged into a modern phone. It's weird, especially since the iPods of this era can't do anything close to Lossless... they're 160-192k AACs so the limited RAM cache can play a full song without pausing on an old iPod.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...
The trick here is that people just think whichever one is loudest sounds best. The iPod might be able to drive high-impedance headphones better than a phone too, since the phone is pretty limited there. You can always get an amp.
The iPod isn't louder, but it has sounds in the music and a breathiness and real, moving sensation that my recent iPhones with lightning or USB to 3.5 adapters haven't had. It's hard to explain unless you listen side by side, and now I sound like an audiophile but I am far from it - the ears just don't lie and the old iPod really had amazing sound.
> Part of my brain was saying "this place is bullshit and I use it to clown on the staff," and part of my brain was saying "I want the luxury good!! and I am going to purchase it now."
Might've been an S1, which arguably was better than Apple's products in many ways, and likely sold a lot more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1_MP3_player
From the Wikipedia page:
This product is what is referred to as a 'common mold' which means many different suppliers can produce this same model. The manufacturers are almost exclusively located in China.
Primarily defined by the use of a system-on-a-chip of one of the Actions brands and some common core features, S1 products vary widely in software and hardware as well as design.
I counted 62 different manufacturers listed in the Wikipedia article that apparently licensed this reference design (the core features and basic hardware), and who then made variations to the user interface or added a feature or two, and slapped their names onto it.
There seems to have been a whole industry of MP3 Players that were essentially identical at the core electronics level in the early 2000s, and we never realized it.
I remember getting a Creative Zen a few years later, and it was the first time when I realized how everything turns into crap with the technology advancement. No batteries, so needed USB charger to travel (USB chargers weren't even too popular back then). No mass storage support, only sync through Windows-only software, MTP was unusable on Linux, didn't work with cars or boomboxes. Video playback required converting to very specific formats, which the provided software often failed to do, needed custom codec packs. Absolutely required MP3 ID tags to even show the song in the playlist. Cool idea for a player, but the software was pure garbage. I think I broke it once and used the old player for years more.
I started with a 32 MB Diamond Rio PMP300, so cramped as I transcoded music to 64kbps just to cram an hour in there, but the ability to listen to music without it _ever_ skipping (I was MTBing in the summer and snowboarding in the winter) was invaluable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300
And then upgraded to a 64MB Rio 600
https://tweakers.net/ext/i/964783073.jpg
After that it was straight up to a 4GB black iPod Nano gen 1 that I rocked for a loooooong time as it was insanely hardened and durable.
My first mp3 player was a 20GB archos xs202, which I loved. Partly for being a great music player, partly for being a generic 20GB external drive when needed. I think at one point I had it set up both as a music player and to boot debian on a host PC when connected via USB...
I wonder: what roles are they being hired for? How does Apple ensure they never talk about their work?
(I have no idea how much a drink costs in the US so I’m using my local prices and currency for overpriced drinks)
We once had a guest lecturer who broke down the ROI of making the ladies bathrooms beautiful (but not the men's). Presumably it leads to more alcohol consumption, which is where the margins are. I think restaurants in the UK make almost no money on the food itself.
This is such a funny end to this article that is reflected in my time too using Apple and non-Apple products. I had a similar generic MP3 player and I also got heavily into piracy (I remember it had a small screen so I tried to compress and stuff a full movie into it, which I successfully did by learning about and messing with ffmpeg settings, for example). Then when I got an early iPhone, I was flabbergasted as to how locked down the thing was (no, I do not want to sync my entire phone audio contents to iTunes), and soon after I switched to Android. Only recently have I started using a Mac and that's only because for historical reasons it's not locked down like the rest of Apple's devices, you can actually run whatever software you want on it without needing to go through a walled garden.
I also think the iPad isn't terrible, although it's a bit on the expensive side.
Idk if this is about age or sex or location but in Apple Stores in Asia I play another fun game: just stand and wait until anybody talks to me. Could take 20+ minutes no problems. I play on my phone or I try to stare down staff but they chat among themselves and make sure to not accidentally look.
If the store has only one entrance and there is unoccupied staff, they sometimes assault me with questions when I enter. But even in those stores as soon as I browsed and made a choice and ready to buy they vanish magically!
https://www.amazon.com/Archos-Jukebox-6000-Player-Drive/dp/B...
bigyabai•3d ago
The secret being, of course, that they're not actually luxury goods. Like many things at the mall, it's a high-margin doodad sold to people in the proverbial impulse aisle of life. Dippin' Dots, knock-off watches, Build-A-Bear workshop - all in same vein of "looks expensive but is cheap to make" no different from the iPod.
I think the American shopping mall is one of the things that helped me contextualize Apple's brand identity. Apple does good marking in isolation or on a screen, SF Pro looks very stunning and the Apple logo is chic and simple. But so is the Cartier logo. And the Rolex storefront. Or any of the other genuinely valuable things sold at malls. It's the marketing that people respond to, not the value of a good.
ericmay•4h ago
The iPhone or your equivalent Android device truly is one of the most useful inventions humanity has ever created, especially for the era that we currently exist in.
msgodel•4h ago
zxexz•4h ago
msgodel•4h ago
leakycap•3h ago
I have an Android phone with a physical keyboard and it is a totally different mindset when you can "check in" and communicate with the device/through the device without constantly checking/fixing the touchscreen/dictation errors.
HaZeust•3h ago
If you do, you'll find that you'll stop feeling the need to project your scorn for the things you voluntarily surround yourself with!
msgodel•3h ago
HaZeust•2h ago
You're 100% correct to talk about your criticisms still, but you read as if it was still a problem in your everyday life, so I gave a suggestion more apt to that scenario. It didn't translate well, I apologize!
rekenaut•4h ago
msgodel•3h ago
The illusion is that you're getting a computer and not a collection of knickknacks and appliances.
Gigachad•3h ago
worthless-trash•3h ago
Gigachad•2h ago
bacon_waffle•3h ago
tgsovlerkhgsel•3h ago
Someone is deluded, and it's either all of the people using these apps despite being worse off due to doing so... or it's you. (And we're talking about actual utility apps, not something that you could dismiss as a dopamine trap.)
msgodel•3h ago
Secondly I think the only thing I really miss that's particular to smartphones is the map. Everything else is either a dumb gimmick or actually bad and all of it is to just get you're attention so they can sell it.
astrange•2h ago
rekenaut•4h ago
eigen•1h ago
and you keep a phone 1-8 years but a car 3-20 years or 4x as long? seems like a bad ratio
thaumasiotes•4h ago
Well, a Rolex has extremely high utility too. It's just that it has much less utility than a digital watch you can buy for $23 from Casio. The purpose of spending the other $59,477 [ https://www.rolex.com/en-us/watches/sky-dweller/m336935-0008 ] is just that you can say you did.
Apple products are similar. They have high utility that is nevertheless not as high as competing products that are much cheaper. All of the value is coming from the luxury branding.
jwagenet•3h ago
Products competing directly with Apple products offer, at best, equivalent utility and performance for no more than 1 magnitude cost difference. Flagship android phones have cost about the same as iPhones for the better part of a decade and macbooks are often price competitive with a similarly specced ultra books. It’s understood that cheaper phones and laptops have similar utility for the average user, but some aspect of performance or quality is often a tradeoff.
dotancohen•3h ago
Of course, like the SUV, often it's actual use case is a far cry from what it is actually capable of doing.
hx8•2h ago
Rolex has a long history of being a tool watch, and mechanical watches can be used in a lot of neat ways, but I would never want to depend on one in a life or death situation without fully understanding a backup plan.
thaumasiotes•2h ago
jojobas•3h ago
Gigachad•3h ago
All of the cheaper options make pretty significant trade offs. Ones that you might not care about, but that others do.
The same can’t be said for a Rolex where the much cheaper options are better in every way other than flexing.
tempestn•1h ago
The Rolex (or luxury watches in general) are pieces of jewellery that also tell the time. The more expensive ones have some combination of -more expensive materials -better finishing -superior craftsmanship (including more intricate complications)
The goal is not just to tell the time, it's to wear a piece of artistic craftsmanship. (Though I would agree that other brands are a better example than Rolex, and some people do indeed just buy expensive watches in general and Rolex in particular just to flex. As some do with art.)
astrange•2h ago
It's like how Google is pointlessly overengineered even though literally nothing they do affects revenue since they're a monopoly.
zxexz•4h ago
gertlex•4h ago
thaumasiotes•4h ago
If you're against the idea of selling things that are cheap to make at high prices by relying on branding, you might not want to call Cartier or Rolex products "genuinely valuable". Jewelry is not fundamentally expensive.
LeoPanthera•3h ago
Apple stuff has always been expensive, yes, but it's not "luxury". You get what you pay for. Apple products are the best in their category, despite the surprisingly organized hate machine that has existed forever.
crooked-v•3h ago
But one thing that really stuck with me was a few years back when I was making a spreadsheet of standard tech choices available for new employees for a startup, and almost all the Linux or Windows laptops out there that I could trust to last out of the box as long as a (non-butterfly-keyboard) Macbook had a baseline of 1080p screens, with upcharges just to get to 1440p. It might be better these days, but I felt like I was taking crazy pills just trying to find a certain baseline of quality for tech that would be getting used all the time every day.
cosmic_cheese•1h ago
Screens have gotten better thankfully, but now the thing is to use screen panels that are only practically usable at 1.5x/150% UI scaling for some reason. It’s better than being stuck with those horrid 1366x768 TN panels that used to plague laptops, but it’s still more annoying than panels that can do integer scaling well. Given the choice between 1.5x panel and its 1x decent resolution counterpart, I’d actually prefer the latter just because it’s less trouble.