Is iPod the panacea?

> Those comments which directly addressed the starting point -- that the
> iPod's interface is basically clumsy -- mostly fell into the
> category I'd
> call relativistic defenses

How would you change the iPod's UI -- beyond adding an integrated
help system of some sort, which suggestion I fully support -- given
the requirement that it should be usable single-handedly, and which
specific UI widgets/methodologies (think "click wheel" vs. "x-y-
navigation buttons", etc.) would you like to see applied to the
device? More specifically, which ideas from the Newton would you copy
over to the iPod?


GreetinX,

Jochen.


--
A Polytrope's Musings <http://www.polytropia.com/musings>
A Polytrope on Flickr <http://www.flickr.com/photos/polytropia>
Some Thoughts on Tech <http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2663>

On Sep 21 , at 11:39 PM, John Massengale wrote:

> I just drove from New York to Miami, with an iPod full of Podcasts. I
> forwarded in the podcasts by holding the button down, and it was
> very clumsy
> and slow. I kept thinking there must be another way, but couldn't
> find one.

Press the middle button couple times until you see a diamond shape
indicates the position of the current track, then turn the wheel
forward or backward to your desired position. (at least worked on my
3G ipod)

--- John Massengale <johnmassengale.com> wrote:
 
> This makes me wonder if I don't know how to use the forward and back
> commands -- which is part of the point of this thread, right?
>
> I just drove from New York to Miami, with an iPod full of Podcasts. I
> forwarded in the podcasts by holding the button down, and it was very
> clumsy
> and slow. I kept thinking there must be another way, but couldn't
> find one.

If you click the center button twice, it gives you a screen where you
can move to any point in the podcast using the scroll wheel. I would
not suggest doing this while driving, however.
>
 
> and I still haven't been able to
> make
> myself of face up to the task of figuring out the 15 hours of those I
> listened to.

On my nano, podcasts have a blue dot in front of the name, which go
away when I have listened to them.

Mike

On Sep 21, 2006, at 11:39 PM, John Massengale wrote:

> On 9/21/06 2:14 PM, "Bob Williams" <bobtrivectus.com> wrote:
>
> This makes me wonder if I don't know how to use the forward and back
> commands -- which is part of the point of this thread, right?
>
> I just drove from New York to Miami, with an iPod full of Podcasts. I
> forwarded in the podcasts by holding the button down, and it was
> very clumsy
> and slow. I kept thinking there must be another way, but couldn't
> find one.

There is, but it's not obvious. Click the select (center) button
once while playing the track. This will put the iPod in search mode
(the progress bar at the bottom of the screen will turn to a bar with
a diamond-shaped dot in it). Then you can use the scroll wheel to
move forward and back within the track.

This is a bit clumsy for two reasons. First, because the scroll
wheel response is non-linear, it's a little hard to gauge how far you
have gone without really looking at the screen (something you
wouldn't want to do when driving). Second, the iPod automatically
goes back to normal playback mode after about 5 seconds of
inactivity. So, if you fast forward through a track, listen for
about 7 seconds (say) to see if you are where you want to be, the
iPod will go back to normal playback mode and the next time you move
the scroll wheel the volume will adjust instead. (This happens to me
quite a bit, where I give myself a start by jacking up the volume
when I really meant to fast forward.)

> Second, if there's a delete function, I couldn't find it. I suppose
> it makes
> sense that one wouldn't want to delete songs from the iPod, but I
> probably
> have a hundred hours of _pod_casts, and I still haven't been able
> to make
> myself of face up to the task of figuring out the 15 hours of those I
> listened to.

Related to this is one of my pet peeves about podcasts in iTunes/
iPod. The iPod marks any podcast as "played" the second you *start*
playing the podcast. Often I would be in the car and start a
Podcast, and never get to finish it. On next sync iTunes dutifully
removes the half played podcast from the iPod, requiring me to go
back and mark it unplayed if I want to get it back. I would
recommend that you set your iTunes to sync only unplayed podcasts to
automate your task of figuring out what you have listened to, except
that this will remove any podcasts that you might have played
partially through (even a second will do it).

This is inconsistent with the iTunes/iPod behavior generally. When
playing music, iTunes/iPod defines "played" (for the purposes of
incrementing the play count, for example) as *finishing* the track.

Another iPod interface annoyance as related to podcasts is that if
you press the "forward" or "back" buttons while playing a podcast, it
will stop playing the podcast and return to the home screen. A more
obvious (and consistent) behavior would be to skip to the next or
previous episode of the podcast---that is treat individual podcast
installments as analogous to "tracks" on a CD.

Tomoharu Nishino

> > And I just can see the
> > RIAA's members agreeing to unlimited, unrestricted beaming and
> > sharing of music between Zune users.
>
> If Ars Technica is right this morning, it's not unrestricted
> beaming. The recipient can't beam the tune to anyone else.

From what they describe in the Ars Technica article, Zune sounds like
it could end up being another WebTV for Microsoft.

Marilyn

On 9/8/06 at 5:06 PM, edwardpaleo.org (Edward Reid) wrote:

> At 10:21 09/08/06 -0700, Kirk McElhearn wrote:
> >I don't think you can fairly judge from the 3G iPod - the controls
> >are much easier to use on the click wheel now.
>
> It may be true that you can't judge a 5G iPod by the 3G. I also
> wouldn't judge an entire product line by the 1G version. But 3G =
> third generation -- plenty of time to fix problems like this. And
> people were crowing about the "great" interface long before the 3G.

As others have suggested, the 3G was a step backwards in usability. The
touch-sensitive buttons were a cool idea that proved troublesome in
practice; no moving parts to break, in addition to the cool
'touch-and-play-with-it' factor, but oversensitive. In addition, the
touch-sensitivity forced moving the action buttons from their former
'natural' cross position around the scroll wheel into a line above the
wheel, which as you noted makes them harder to reach, and also is a less
mnemonic arrangement.

Or to put it another way, the 'great interface' people were praising
went downhill in the 3G, before being improved past the earlier standard
in the 4G and later.

The 3G also took the brunt of the switch from a standard FireWire
connector to the dock connector; looking back at what's been done with
the dock connector, I have to agree that the switch was beneficial to
the platform, but the transition was painful and the 3G suffered for it.

I also have to say, in reference to the 1G version: I used three MP3
players before the original iPod, and reviewed two of them for TidBITS.
In my judgement, while the 1G had definite flaws, it was still
head-and-shoulders above the competition; the praise it received was
overblown but still mostly justified.

> >You can search by composer, if you enter composer names in tags in
> >iTunes.
>
> But the very presence of composer information is decidedly haphazard,
> both in iTMS and CDDB. iTMS is the better, but it's not good.

So? The same problem exists with any system for organizing and playing
MP3s. GIGO. Unless you're suggesting that the iPod/iTunes should be
psychic and be able to magically identify tracks and fill in missing
information for any music the user throws at it, I don't see how you can
get around the issue.

> At 10:22 09/08/06 -0700, Adam C. Engst wrote:
> >the physical constraints are so severe that designers are
> >essentially changing the rules to favor proficiency.
>
> But that's saying it's a great compromise, not a great interface.
> Hey, the one-button method of setting the time on a very small watch
> may be a great compromise too, but it's certainly not a great
> interface.

I think what Adam's trying to say (or what I'll say on my own, not to
put words into Adam's mouth) is that a perfect MP3 player is impossible.
Even if you assume magical tech (unlimited power source, terabytes of
data storage in a tiny solid-state mechanism with no moving parts,
infinite resolution displays, etc. etc.), you are still going to have to
deal with conflicting imperatives. Size vs. operational ergonomics.
Display size vs. player size. Features and configuribility vs.
simplicity of operation. Etc. etc., and once you start having to use
real technology the conflicts only get trickier.

Therefore, a 'great compromise' is not just the best thing, but the ONLY
thing you can get. The issue lies in how to bias the compromise so that
it satisfies the greatest number of people. The current iPod lineup
offers three different compromises: the full-size iPod, for maximum
storage, features, and the best display and control ergonomics, at the
expense of size and weight; the nano, trading away display, some
features, ergonomics* and storage for reduced size and weight and
solid-state operation; and the shuffle, for maximum simplicity and
minimum size/weight at the expense of storage and most features.

(* I find the nano a bit too thin to comfortably hold in my hand and
operate one-handed; the thumb has to move a little too much, leading to
potential cramping, and it tends to slide around in my hand. I find it
more comfortable to operate with either a hardshell case or inserted
into an iTrip nano, both of which bulk it up enough to avoid these
problems.)

> In any case, it's clear that fewer buttons was a much higher priority
> design choice than ease of use. It's not like the iPod didn't have
> space for a couple more buttons judiciously placed.

Or perhaps for many people, fewer buttons *mean* better ease of use. I'd
call attention to the benefits of the classic wheel-plus-cross
arrangement in all iPods but the 3G and shuffle (and even the shuffle
uses a stripped-down version of the arrangement):

* All controls are in one spot and in a comfortable position to be
operated one-handed; also,

* Ambidextrous; the cross arrangement works equally well left- or
right-handed.

* The cross arrangement makes buttons easy to distinguish by position, a
good mnemonic device for gaining muscle memory.

On the other MP3 players I've used, more buttons led to *more*
confusion, not less.

> It wouldn't have
> cost that much to double the rather poor resolution of the B&W
> display and get a lot more information on it.

Again, I have to disagree - not on the cost, which I don't know enough
to speculate on, but on the more information. They could have bumped the
resolution somewhat and still kept the display easily readable, but not
much; maybe an additional line of text, no more. They did bump the
resolution on the 5G models, but the main improvement in display
information comes from a larger screen area, not more ppi.

> And the older paradigms, when properly followed (emphasis), didn't
> penalize proficiency. This new paradigm only favors proficiency
> relative to non-proficiency -- in absolute terms, proficiency is also
> penalized.

What would you consider to be a workable paradigm for a handheld device,
then? In addition to the compromises I mention above, I also believe
that there are hard limits on what is even possible for a handheld
device.

Probably my biggest frustrations with the iPod interface are the linear
nature of browsing (artists to albums to songs, then have to go back up
a couple of levels and then down to browse by genre > artist > album >
song) and the lengthy scrolling through resulting lists. I'm much more
efficient in browsing in iTunes. However, I *also* believe that it's
impossible to replicate the full iTunes experience in a handheld device;
and I say this not just as a longtime iPod and iTunes user, but as
someone who's tried multiple times to use wireless PDAs to control
iTunes on a desktop machine via VNC. Some aspects of the iTunes
experience that can't be replicated on a handheld:

* Multiple simultaneous scrolling lists for random access. iTunes
simultaneously displays playlists, genres, artists, and albums, along
with a results pane; you can use the mouse or keyboard to move between
them and make multiple selections at once to narrow down the list of
songs. This simply can't work on a handheld. First, the screen's too
small to support display of that many simultaneous panes; the Nokia 770
has the biggest screen I've seen on a handheld device, 800x480 pixels,
and it doesn't come close to handling iTunes usably over VNC. Second, a
touchscreen plus stylus just isn't as efficient as a mouse for
navigating, at least in my experience with VNC, and a PDA's small screen
requires extra care and precision. Plus which, a stylus is something
extra to lose; making it finger-tappable as the m:robe 500 screen did
eliminates the stylus problem but requires larger UI elements to
compensate for the loss of precision.

* Quick keyboard shortcuts. This is the other big killer for handhelds;
not Cmd-T style shortcuts, but the ability to scroll through lists
quickly by typing the first few letters of a name. The Sharp Zaurus I
tried as an iTunes remote had a thumboard, but 'typing' on it was slow
and tedious; the Nokia 770's on-screen keyboard was even worse, and
don't even talk about the handwriting recognition on either model for
that kind of type-to-scroll. The Search field is also heavily
keyboard-dependent; I tried the Search feature on the new 5.5G iPods
last night, and while it was a nice addition, without a keyboard it
didn't hold a candle to the full iTunes version. The most efficient
iTunes operation for me requires a keyboard I can touch-type on, and you
simply can't fit one onto a handheld; let alone the expense and waste of
putting one on a music player just to browse songs, which makes it
impractical.


Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.

On 9/17/06 at 2:01 AM, cheshirenekomac.com wrote:

> While the iTunes/iPod *package* may represent a significant usability
> improvement over the competition and makes the iPod what it is, I
> don't think that the iPod itself is necessarily any more useable as a
> standalone music player than the best competition. (So, it's no
> wonder that Apple guards its APIs to iTunes integration very closely.)

As I said earlier, I've used a number of MP3 players, and reviewed a
couple of them for TidBITS, and I'd have to disagree; even judged on its
own apart from iTunes, the iPod gained and has retained a usability
advantage over all the others I've tried.

The scroll wheel is the biggest advantage; scrolling through long lists
is still tiresome, but it's far better than any other control system
I've tried. The mouse-style scroll wheels and jog dials lose in that you
have to keep stopping and repositioning your finger; the touch-strips
that several iRiver and Creative players have similar problems,
compounded by sensitivity/precision issues. Scroll buttons are the worst
of all.

SanDisk seems to have tried to pick up on the scroll wheel idea for
their new Sansa e200 line of players, but either Apple's patents kept
them from copying it completely or they just didn't have a clue on
implementation; it doesn't work nearly as well. Instead of a broad
wheel, the e200s use a thin ring that physically rotates. The ring binds
in its track instead of turning smoothly; in addition, it's too thin to
get a good grip on, so they put a series of ridges spaced at intervals
around the ring. Unfortunately, the ridges are rough enough that the pad
of my thumb started hurting after using it for a couple of minutes.

The alternate player I've probably used the most lately is the m:robe
500. I have to admit, the player itself looks classy, and the display is
*more* pleasing from an aesthetic standpoint than the iPods. However,
the all-touch screen control system has major issues. Controls aren't
consistently placed (hard to develop muscle memory). Navigation between
various functions is not always obvious or consistent, and is modal in a
less logical and more confusing way than the iPod (where the modality
can be annoying, but is at least logical and consistent to me). The
touch-screen soft controls are relatively inconvenient compared to the
iPod's. For example, to adjust volume, you have to tap the Volume icon
on the main display, which overlays a volume slider on the display.
However, you can't adjust the volume by tapping on the slider directly;
you have to tap the +/- controls at the ends of the slider.

To add insult to injury, to achieve the rated 8 hours of playtime, you
have to use the on/off switch (the only actual button on the unit) to
lock the display; this not only disables the touch screen controls (so
that you have to unlock it just to skip songs, pause, adjust volume,
etc.), but completely turns off the screen; no information display. It's
a sad thing, since I like Olympus as a company and the player does have
nice features and a very classy look.


Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.

On 9/17/06 at 2:34 PM, danfrakesmac.com (Dan Frakes) wrote:

> On 9/17/2006 2:01 AM, "cheshirenekomac.com" wrote:
> > There have been many other music players with similar
> > interfaces/ease of use as a stand alone device---Apple admitted as
> > much when it settled with Creative.
>
> With all due respect, I think that's an overly simplistic view of the
> settlement. There was plenty of "prior art" out there, and I
> personally don't think Apple would have had much difficulty in
> winning the case.

Absolutely. I reviewed Creative's original Nomad Jukebox for TidBITS,
which is the only model I think could get considered as a source for the
patent (the only ones I remember earlier than the Jukebox were
flash-based contemporaries of the Rio 500, and had considerably
different interfaces). The Jukebox did indeed recognize genre, artist
and album ID3 tags and allow you to browse using them as categories, but
the browsing experience using them was so completely different from the
iPod's that I have trouble seeing how any reasonable jury would consider
one as significantly borrowing from the other. Browsing the Jukebox was
tedious, to the point where I never did and just used SoundJam to create
playlists that I ran through in shuffle mode. The iPod and its scroll
wheel were so profound an improvement that it's hard to classify them in
the same league.


Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.

On 9/21/06 at 11:14 AM, bobtrivectus.com (Bob Williams) wrote:

> - Scrolling through a long list of items (songs, artists, etc.) to
> find one in particular item is tedious. It looks like the new
> features that Apple just added (showing the letter you're at while
> scrolling and the search feature) will address this to some extent

Ye, this is indeed a problem; however, as I suggested earlier, I don't
see how you can really do better on a portable device. There's no
keyboard to do type-ahead on, there's no multi-pane browser you can use
to quickly narrow down your song list, there's no scroll thumb you can
click and drag quickly with a mouse. The scroll wheel with acceleration
is by far the best solution I've seen to the problem on a handheld.

> - I find the scroll wheel cumbersome for fine movements. For
> instance, moving from one list item to the very next, I often
> overshoot if I don't take the time to slow down and get very
> deliberate with the way I move my thumb. With the increase in thumb
> RSIs I've seen reported in the media that doctors blame on the iPod,
> this seems to be a problem that's bigger than me, if not necessarily
> identified by many others.

I'd agree, with the caveat that I have yet to try anything better. Any
system that scrolled fast enough to be usable with 100s of songs has
been subject to overshooting; the scroll wheel is at least quick and
easy to reverse back with.

> - The scroll wheel's underlying buttons interfere with each other too
> easily. For instance, when I want to turn on the backlight by holding
> down the top portion, the iSkin that I have on the iPod means that my
> pressure is in slightly toward the center. As a result, the iPod
> often registers a center press. This, even though I'm nowhere near
> the center, I'm also not right at the edge where it wants you to be,
> and the iPod treats it like a center press. (I remember seeing an
> Apple technote about this, so I'm obviously not alone with this
> complaint.)

You may not be alone, but I think you are probably in a minority; I've
never seen this happen with my own 'pod or with anyone else's. I also
have to wonder if the problem is with your iSkin; I've always used
either a hard-shell case like Contour Design's or a thin-film shield,
not any of the silicone ones.

> - Speaking of holding down the top portion to get the backlight on,
> all that hidden functionality is a pain and very unfriendly,
> especially for fundamental functionality. Easy-to-use? Yeah, tell
> that to my mother who recently couldn't figure out how to turn off
> her iPod mini.

Things like the backlighting shortcut are exactly that - shortcuts.
Backlighting can be controlled through a timer on the Settings menu or
through a direct item on the main menu; holding down the Menu button to
switch it is a nice little extra, but it doesn't need to be obvious
because there are already obvious controls in the menu system.

> - I know others disagree, but I find navigation within a song
> (scanning) to be an excruciatingly painful experience. I don't do
> this a whole lot with music, but I do it all the time in books when,
> for example, I have to shift full focus to traffic while driving and
> miss some dialog. Often, I'll hold down the left side of the scroll
> wheel to start the backup process, then hit a slight bump which
> causes my thumb to shift and instead of scanning back, the iPod
> *skips* back, knocking me way back with no easy way to get back to or
> even locate where I just was. And when it does work, there's an
> annoying delay of a couple of seconds so that the iPod can tell that
> you want to scan rather than skip. (Ideal: a TiVo-like button to skip
> back several seconds, plus a separate, dedicated button pair for
> scanning versus skipping.)

I agree that it can be a pain to scan through a song or a video, though
using the scroll wheel-based scanner works much better for me than
holding the left/right buttons. And as I said before, I think adding
more dedicated buttons does more to complicate the interface than it
does to help, especially something like a 10-second skip button that
IMHO would get rarely used.

> - If you take the time to tediously set up playlist folders in iTunes
> (and it is a tedious process), those folders don't show up on the
> iPod. Why? It's a hierarchical UI, so playlist folders are a natural
> fit.

I agree completely; this is something that shouldn't be confusing, given
all the other 'container-like' levels of the UI, and really needs to be
there.

> - When looking at items in the menus, when an item doesn't fit on the
> one line it's assigned, there's no way to see the remaining portion.
> Only in Now Playing does it scroll. (And in the latter case, I think
> a multi-line solution would be better. The scrolling is so slow that
> it's irritating, but any faster, and the screen would blur it.)

...which iPod did you say you have, again, and are you running the
latest firmware? I know the items scroll in the menus on the color 4G
models running the latest firmware, and I'm almost certain it's there on
the B&W 4G models as well, though I know it's not on the 3Gs.

> Now, to be fair, I've never used a competing player, so I can't say
> whether the iPod is better or worse than its competitors. At the same
> time, that inexperience may mean that my expectations are wide open
> rather than high-marked at the iPod. That is to say, perhaps it could
> be much better if people would just realize how much better it
> *could* be.

I think the iPod is still much better than its competitors; however, I
think the problem with wide-open expectations is that they don't
consider what it's actually possible to do on a handheld device, both
from a physical possibility standpoint and from a conflicting attributes
standpoint. Take the list-scrolling issue you mention; how, exactly, can
you improve the experience without something like a keyboard? Even a
thumboard was in my experience slower than manually scrolling to the
proper point with the scroll wheel, and you just can't *fit* a full-size
keyboard on something like an iPod.

> (To see this in action on a mass level, we need look no
> further than all the people who honestly believe that you can't
> really do much better than Windows.) I have no doubt that the iPod
> served to significantly bump up the bar when it was introduced, but
> it hasn't changed significantly since then. Something else that could
> be in effect is that folks are getting used to working with terrible
> UIs - witness all the people running around trying to compose e-mail
> messages on a 3" screen using a keyboard that's about that same size.
> People think this is productive behavior?!?

Compared to waiting until you get back to the office, or at least to a
spot where you can stop for 5-10 minutes, pull out a laptop with a
full-size keyboard, and reply - yeah, it might well *be* more
productive. With any handheld device, you're compromising on something -
readability, interface, power, features, etc. - to get a device that
fits in your pocket and is always available for instant use. That's the
way it works, and them's the breaks. You can't put a laptop into
something the size of a Palm without losing something. If you want a
music playing experience the equivalent of iTunes, then you're going to
be limited to playing at your computer desk, because there's no possible
way to fit all of the attributes of iTunes into a handheld device.
That's just the way it is.


Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.

On Sep 23, 2006, at 9:36 PM, Google Kreme wrote:

> 3. If you press the center button more than once you go from playhead
> to album art<1> to lyrics<2> to rating and then back to volume.

To be fully complete, after those displays, you get audiobook
playback speed (for audiobooks) or podcast summaries (for podcasts).



Kirk

              Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
           Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more

On 9/23/06 14:36, "Lukas Mathis" <lukas.mathisnumcom.com> wrote:

>> There's rather a lot of advantage to it. Not
>> having to deal with batteries. Not having to
>> pay for the extra cost of higher end static
>> RAM. Not having to reprogram stuff continuously.
>> Having a timer that is more reliable. Etc.
>
> I don't understand that argument. Even though I didn't check this before
> buying, none of my devices lose their settings if I cut their power
> (well, the DVD player might, but it has no real state, so it doesn't
> matter). My VHS player keeps its TV channels, my stereo keeps its
> volume, and so on. I never had to deal with batteries (even though my
> stereo is over 20 years old). Those devices didn't cost more than
> comparable devices. I don't have to reprogram anything (and actually, I
> moved recently, so I would have had to reprogram everything if my
> devices didn't include batteries or some kind of memory). I never had an
> issue with the timer not being right (in fact, my VHS player
> automatically sets the time).

That's your system. That's not everyone's. If the power goes out, I spend
quite a bit of time resetting clocks on everything without a battery or
power storage of some kind. If I have the VCR set to record something, that
setting is gone when the power goes out.

>
> There's really no good argument against actually turning devices off,
> except that you have to manually turn them on again. But frankly, if
> that takes away 25%, 10% or even 5% from my electricity bill, and if it
> helps the environment, it's more than worth it to me. It's one button
> you have two switch. Writing your mail probably took more energy than a
> year of using such a switch :-)

Again, you seem to assume "my stuff" with "Everyone's". As well, you're also
making a lot of assumptions about power used, device types, etc., which
don't hold true for everyone.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On Sep 24, 2006, at 9:34 AM, Kirk McElhearn wrote:

> On Sep 23, 2006, at 9:36 PM, Google Kreme wrote:
>
>> 3. If you press the center button more than once you go from playhead
>> to album art<1> to lyrics<2> to rating and then back to volume.
>
> To be fully complete, after those displays, you get audiobook
> playback speed (for audiobooks) or podcast summaries (for podcasts).

Thank you. And, experimenting with the podcast summary showed that
the scroll wheel scrolls (as one might expect). (I have no audiobooks.)

I came to the iPod party (and the portable music player party) late:
I was faced with 12 days (at 2-week intervals) of 5-hour sessions
sitting around. As Apple had just put out the Shuffle, I bought one
of the first-round Shuffles (smaller memory).

That iPod was all I had (and I think I understand the user interface)
until this month, when one of the small memory new generation Nanos
was added. (Along with the lanyard/headphones: brilliant, Apple--or
whoever had the idea first.)

I haven't had much trouble picking up the UI, although I'm still
learning by experiment and by the helpful posts in this thread (TFM
skimming got me started, although I forgot to return to the nice
table of button actions after I had some experience).

As to other players, I'll just have to let others compare, as I have
none and it's likely to stay that way.

As to what I can do while driving, the answer is "not much, and
that's fine". With the Shuffle, I can skip a track or change
volume. With the Nano, I can skip a track, but volume changes return
to the car radio/cassette volume control (in Washington state, it's
illegal to drive with headphones on both ears--I'm currently using a
cassette adaptor, in which my choice is limited, and my car's device
is fed from the end of the cassette, leaving all adaptors whose wire
is in the center of the "back" of the cassette-like thing out of the
picture). As with cell phone use, I'll park when I need to do more.

   --John

The exhaustive (and exhausting) discussion of the iPod simply
reassures me that indeed I'll never buy one. Don't jump to the wrong
conclusion - I'm quite willing to believe that the various iPod
models are indeed the best available compromises among the
significant criteria that other writers have listed. It's just that
music is sufficiently important to me that I'm not willing to make
any compromises with my own criteria.

Don't jump to another wrong conclusion - by "important" I do not mean
"addicted". I'm quite willing to believe that some people feel a
need to be listening to some kind of music whenever their ears aren't
needed for some other purpose. I'm even willing to believe that some
people are capable of processing two different channels of verbal
input simultaneously, so that they can listen to songs while they
work at a desk (or its logical equivalent). However, I don't fall
into either category.

For me, most music that is worth listening to is worth focussing my
entire attention on. That includes all music with words, because my
wetware only has a single channel verbal processor. For me to use
music as a background to my work or my reading, it has to be purely
instrumental. Consequently, there are many situations where I'd
rather not have music at all than be distracted by it.

There's another factor - I was trained as a classical musician, and I
have very little interest in the kind of "songs" that make up the
vast majority of what's available in the arena that iTMS serves. So
the clumsy workarounds that others have described for managing
classical music in that arena leave me even less inclined to enter
it. I would much rather drop a CD into the tray of a good sound
system, or even set a needle to an LP, when I know I'll have time to
listen to it, than wrestle with the compromises inherent in iTunes
and iPods.

Nevertheless, for Apple's sake, I'm glad the iPod is such a success.
I'm much happier with Macs on my desktop than I would be with
anything else that's on the market. Like the iPod, they aren't
perfect, but they are far better than the competition.

Carl

On Sep 23, 2006, at 12:36, Travis Butler wrote:
> On 9/21/06 at 11:14 AM, bobtrivectus.com (Bob Williams) wrote:
>> - Scrolling through a long list of items (songs, artists, etc.) to
>> find one in particular item is tedious. It looks like the new
>> features that Apple just added (showing the letter you're at while
>> scrolling and the search feature) will address this to some extent
>
> Ye, this is indeed a problem; however, as I suggested earlier, I don't
> see how you can really do better on a portable device.

A couple of ideas:

- In addition to the click wheel, have a touch strip that's most of
the length of the iPod. Treat the strip as an absolute positional
element - think of the option in OS X to make clicking in a scroll
bar act as a "scroll to here" operation rather than a "scroll one
page" operation. Thus, you'd pull up your big list, press in the
middle of the strip, and find yourself at about the M section. Press
a the end, and you're at Z. Then use the click wheel to fine-tine.

- Revisit some old directory technology. Remember those flat phone
directory devices where you'd move a slider to a particular letter on
the side, then open it to find yourself at that letter? Well, the
iPod could borrow that idea by having the alphabet across the top of
the screen. While you have a list up, use left or right clicks (or
perhaps the wheel action with an added modifier button held down) to
move through the letters, and use the wheel action to do scrolling
from wherever you presently are in the list.

I realize there may be some pitfalls with both of these, but they're
just off the top of my head. You'd want to use focus groups, etc. to
properly refine them.

>> - The scroll wheel's underlying buttons interfere with each other too
>> easily. For instance, when I want to turn on the backlight by holding
>> down the top portion, the iSkin that I have on the iPod means that my
>> pressure is in slightly toward the center. As a result, the iPod
>> often registers a center press. This, even though I'm nowhere near
>> the center, I'm also not right at the edge where it wants you to be,
>> and the iPod treats it like a center press. (I remember seeing an
>> Apple technote about this, so I'm obviously not alone with this
>> complaint.)
>
> You may not be alone, but I think you are probably in a minority; I've
> never seen this happen with my own 'pod or with anyone else's. I also
> have to wonder if the problem is with your iSkin; I've always used
> either a hard-shell case like Contour Design's or a thin-film shield,
> not any of the silicone ones.

I know my mother and my wife, the only other iPod users I converse
with regularly, have had the same problem. Notably, though, they
didn't even realize what was happening until I listened to the
symptoms and described it for them. They just thought it was acting
wacky. IIRC, Apple writes its tech note from this POV, as well, so
the problem may be more widespread than you think, but not so widely
diagnosed.

BTW, the iSkin doesn't touch the wheel at all, so it has no direct
effect on it. The effect it does have is making it more likely that I
press slightly in from the outside edge of the wheel, and when you do
that, you have problems. Apple explicitly advises to press as close
to the edge as possible to ensure proper behavior, and in my
experience, that recommendation is spot-on.

> Things like the backlighting shortcut are exactly that - shortcuts.
> Backlighting can be controlled through a timer on the Settings menu or
> through a direct item on the main menu; holding down the Menu
> button to
> switch it is a nice little extra, but it doesn't need to be obvious
> because there are already obvious controls in the menu system.

I've never used the auto-backlight feature because I value battery
life. When you use it, does the iPod register the first control press
that's required to activate the backlight? This misfeature, common on
many cell phones, means you need to guess what control might be
"safe" to press to bring up the light so that you can see what to press.

As for them being shortcuts, the light is the only one I can think of
that is indeed a shortcut. I don't have my iPod at the moment to
check, but I'm pretty sure you can't scrub through songs, change
ratings, or even power down the iPod via the menus. To do these
things, you must know the proper hidden button incantations to use.

> And as I said before, I think adding
> more dedicated buttons does more to complicate the interface than it
> does to help, especially something like a 10-second skip button that
> IMHO would get rarely used.

This is partly a result of trying to serve so many functions in a
single, simple device. a 10-second skip feature would be extremely
helpful, I think, to people who listen to a lot of podcasts or books
(especially while doing other things, like driving), but generally
useless to people who just listen to music.

>> - When looking at items in the menus, when an item doesn't fit on the
>> one line it's assigned, there's no way to see the remaining portion.
>> Only in Now Playing does it scroll. (And in the latter case, I think
>> a multi-line solution would be better. The scrolling is so slow that
>> it's irritating, but any faster, and the screen would blur it.)
>
> ...which iPod did you say you have, again, and are you running the
> latest firmware? I know the items scroll in the menus on the color 4G
> models running the latest firmware, and I'm almost certain it's
> there on
> the B&W 4G models as well, though I know it's not on the 3Gs.

I have a 40 GB 4G B&W. The firmware is the latest, though I don't
think any features have been added in quite a while. I think my
wife's mini is the same way, as she sometimes complains that her
multipart books whose long titles all start the same way are
indistinguishable in the menu.

> I think the iPod is still much better than its competitors; however, I
> think the problem with wide-open expectations is that they don't
> consider what it's actually possible to do on a handheld device, both
> from a physical possibility standpoint and from a conflicting
> attributes
> standpoint. Take the list-scrolling issue you mention; how,
> exactly, can
> you improve the experience without something like a keyboard? Even a
> thumboard was in my experience slower than manually scrolling to the
> proper point with the scroll wheel, and you just can't *fit* a full-
> size
> keyboard on something like an iPod.

Who needs a full-size keyboard? I don't really need a keyboard at
all, but if you give me a small keyboard designed to be operated with
one thumb (e.g., by being arranged in a small square or circle), I'll
be *thrilled*. I don't want to compose e-mail; all I need to do is be
able to quickly type one, two, max three letters usually, and I'll be
right at what I want, or at least close enough to hit it with the
scroll wheel very quickly.

Those who don't want to bother with the keyboard can continue using
just the scroll wheel. In fact, with Apple doing it, I can even see
the keyboard being completely invisible until it can be used, at
which point backlighting would come on and you can see it (think of
those turn signals in cars' side mirrors). With this capability, it
could default to always-off, which make the iPod appear unchanged
from how it is today, but with the added flexibility for those who
need/want it.

> You can't put a laptop into
> something the size of a Palm without losing something. If you want a
> music playing experience the equivalent of iTunes, then you're
> going to
> be limited to playing at your computer desk, because there's no
> possible
> way to fit all of the attributes of iTunes into a handheld device.
> That's just the way it is.

I don't need all the features of iTunes on my handheld, but I do want
a UI that's very highly optimized for handheld-based manipulation of
iTunes data; those are very different requirements. You keep saying
there's just no way to do it. But really, the truth is that there's
no better way it's been done. With the former attitude, there's no
reason to attempt to innovate - had the industry felt that way back
in the late '70s, most of us would not be using computers at all and
those of us that would be would be using home-built behemoths and
attending user group meetings where we compared our latest programs
that computed square roots. Yes, coming up with a much better UI is
difficult, extremely difficult. So difficult, in fact, that perhaps
none of us on this list can fathom those ideas until we see them in
action - at which point we'll be amazed at how "obvious" they are.
You've said multiple times that the first iPod was a huge improvement
over previous offerings; you've even implied that it was perhaps even
a paradigm shift. Do you really think the current iPod represents the
last time such a paradigm shift in UI-friendliness will happen? Just
because we can't foresee it doesn't mean it's not out there waiting
to be discovered.

If nothing else, the infinite realities theory of quantum mechanics
suggests that a far-superior UI *must* exist. Okay, granted, it
exists in another reality, but knowing that still gives us something
shoot for. :-)

Regards,
Bob

On Sep 23, 2006, at 12:36, Lukas Mathis wrote:
> I don't understand that argument. Even though I didn't check this
> before
> buying, none of my devices lose their settings if I cut their power
> (well, the DVD player might, but it has no real state, so it doesn't
> matter). My VHS player keeps its TV channels, my stereo keeps its
> volume, and so on. I never had to deal with batteries (even though my
> stereo is over 20 years old).

Most modern electronic devices can hold their basic settings for a
certain period of time without external power. It's not an indefinite
period, however. For instance, many VCRs can retain their programming
for a few hours in an outage, up to a few weeks. Some devices, like
most receivers and DVD players (the latter of which, BTW, almost
always have state information for such things as aspect ratio and
audio format), can hold settings for months.

In some devices, only certain settings are retained. For example, a
TV might retain the list of programmed channels it receives, but not
the current channel or volume level.

Of more importance, though, is that this retention does not come for
free. Typically, a capacitor is used to store energy that is then
used as a power source when external power is cut. Basically, it's a
battery, but it doesn't usually need replacing in a typical device's
lifetime (although you will notice that as a device ages, it's
retention span shortens). Here's the catch: as soon as you apply
power again, the device starts taking a little extra energy to store
away in that capacitor. Even in devices that use some form of fancy
flash memory, the flashing process requires an extra burst of energy.

Thus, regardless of whether you've used a capacitor, a battery, a
flash memory of some sort, or a good ol' standby mode, you've
utilized a certain quantity of energy above and beyond just "power
on" to save your settings.

All things being equal, in this case, I'll go for the standby mode
any day because of the many automation advantages it offers. (If I
merely put all my equipment on a single on/off switch, we'd waste
many kilowatt-hours of power running devices full-power at times when
we were using other devices. We--especially the non-geeks in my
household--need more intelligence than that, and that intelligence
comes at the price of a small amount of extra energy usage.)

The only way you can truly go to a zero-energy-use model with
electronics and not lose settings is to go purely mechanical. For
instance, on a receiver, use an analog tuner with a physical dial, a
positional volume knob and tone control knobs, a toggle switch for
stereo versus mono mode, and toggle buttons for the input mode. This
worked great 20+ years ago, but on modern receivers, this idea is
laughable; just think for a second how many physical controls there
would have to be to handle such settings as room equalization
parameters, DSP processor modes and associated parameters, speaker
channel levels and delay timings, port-source associations, and so on
and so forth. A complex modern receiver can have several hundred or
even thousands of settings. Other devices are similarly complex: my
DVD player has dozens of settings plus data records for hundreds of
discs consisting of title, genre, and class; my cable box has
probably two dozen settings, plus network settings, plus detailed
guide data on about 500 channels; the list goes on and on. Try to put
all these on physical controls, and your gear would start to
resembler ENIAC. (Go with vacuum tube amps instead of solid state
amps, and you'd *really* have a resemblance!).

Then again, you lose even in this situation, since the energy supply
shifts from the wall outlet to *you* (through the mechanical work of
flipping switches), and since you get your energy from the same
ecosystem--by eating food that has to be produced--it all still
balances out in the end. And that's as it should be. Of course, by
the time you get through flipping and re-flipping many thousands of
switches, you'll probably have consumed far more energy than the few
watts used by a standby mode ;-).

So the bottom line is that, unfortunately, physics says that if we
want to retain settings, we must use extra energy. The key, as has
already been indicated by others, is to design devices so that their
standby/off modes are as power-efficient as possible. When a device
uses 40 watts while powered up to do something useful, then uses 5
watts while in standby to preserve settings plus another 30 to heat
the room, that's just wasteful.


Regards,
Bob

On 9/23/06 12:36 PM, "Bob Williams" wrote:
> Of course, when your iPod has just crashed and you have absolutely no
> idea where you are in that six hour chunk of a book--and sometimes
> don't even know which six-hour chunk you were listening to--all of
> this is trivialized to just salt in a gaping wound. (I've had way too
> many occasions where I took my iPod on a walk, only to spend the last
> half of the walk trying to relocate where I was before a crash, so
> I'm a bit bitter. In fact, I have several Audible books to which I've
> listened to just a portion because this problem caused me to give up.

Bob, it sounds like there might be something wrong with your iPod if crashes
occur that frequently. As someone who gets to test iPods as part of my job
-- yes, I enjoy my job ;-) -- I've used many different iPod models, and
often many samples of a particular model, and I've never had an iPod crash
on me when searching/skipping through an audio book. In fact, I can count on
one hand the number of times all the iPods I've ever used have, together,
"crashed."

Have you tried restoring your iPod? If yes, have you tried taking it to an
Apple Store to see if you have a hardware problem?

--
Dan Frakes / Macworld.com / playlistmag.com

On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 07:12:03 -0700
  Carl S Zimmerman <csz_stlswbell.net> wrote:
> The exhaustive (and exhausting) discussion of the iPod
>simply
> reassures me that indeed I'll never buy one. Don't jump
>to the wrong
> conclusion - I'm quite willing to believe that the
>various iPod
> models are indeed the best available compromises among
>the
> significant criteria that other writers have listed.
> It's just that
> music is sufficiently important to me that I'm not
>willing to make
> any compromises with my own criteria.

Okay, but let's make the point that most of your criteria
are not the iPod's fault. The music available on the iTS
has nothing to do with the iPod, nor does the quality of
the compression settings. You can rip full on AIFF to an
iPod, just less of it.

You can also rip from CD in one seamless file. If you
want, you can manually split things where you want them.
iTunes tends to rely on what the CD is telling it for
track splits. If the CD didn't do a good job, nor can
iTunes.

Music quality and music type on the iTS are outside of the
scope of iPod problems.
--
John C. Welch jwelchbynkii.com
Bynkii.com Opinions and analysis on stuff

On Sep 27, 2006, at 10:12 AM, Bob Williams wrote:


>
> Who needs a full-size keyboard?

I don't need a full-size keyboard, but a few years ago I dumped my
Palm in favor of loading my calendar/contacts to my iPod. There's
only so much room in my handbag, and I have back problems. The only
thing I miss about the Palm is the folding keyboard that I would use
occasionally on the road.

I can understand Apple not wanting to get in to the phone business,
as it would have to depend on a partnership with cell services and be
dependent upon the fortunes and pricing of the services, but I do
think that add-ons, like the folding keyboard, and now that iPod/
iTunes are featuring games, maybe a mini controller.

Marilyn

At 12:36 09/23/06 -0700, Jochen Wolters wrote:
>How would you change the iPod's UI?

That's a rather unfair question. As Bob Williams pointed out eloquently, UI
design is hard. I don't pretend that I have a drop-in design ready. Give me
a small team of experienced UI designers and a few months, and I'll give
you an answer. That's quite different from looking at the iPod and being
able to categorize the elements of the UI and say "nothing here that would
have been new in 1990".

A couple of people have tossed their ideas into the ring. Here are a few of
mine.

1) As Bob (I think) mentioned, different people use the iPod differently.
But people don't want a lot of different buttons, which would confuse
everyone. My camera addresses this in a small way by having one button to
which I can assign any of five functions. I could see this on the iPod --
some people care about easy access to shuffle or repeat, for example, and
others want quick access to fast forward. Even two assignable buttons might
be useful. (Beyond two it's probably more confusing than helpful. Even two
might be pushing it, although if my camera had another, I could make very
good use of it. The next point is critical in conjunction with this one.)

2) Don't make everything the same! Back to my camera: my index finger is on
the shutter -- a fat round button -- or can move to either of two other
controls which are shaped so that I can identify them quickly by feel. My
thumb can operate the zoom, the mode, and the various buttons that operate
the menus -- off the top of my head I count five or six widgets that I can
distinguish by feel. Most keyboards have two keys with nubbins so you can
tell by feel when your hands are on the right keys. But on my iPod,
everything feels the same -- and because it's touch sensitive, I couldn't
touch it to locate controls even if they were distinguishable.

3) About 15 years ago, I saw an early PDA with a five-finger keyboard --
you held the PDA with your hand wrapped around it and pressed combinations
of keys to get what you need. It was quite similar to the BAT keyboard in
being chorded, though not in the details. Before you say this would be hard
to learn, my exceedingly non-techie wife loves her BAT keyboard, in part
because it enables her to type with her left hand and save her right hand
to draw and write. I'm not saying that this would be useful on an iPod,
just that it was an example of innovative design, while by contrast the
iPod -- as I've said -- is a skillful blend of dial and pushbutton phones
and pine.

4) In more futuristic mode, I'd like to see experimentation with a
gesture-based interface. Too many buttons? Make it sensitive to the
direction you are dragging over the surface, move toward another part of
the interface space, giving feedback so you know where you are going --
sort of a multidimensional virtual reality space. Would it work? Dunno.
But it would at least have a chance of making a great UI in a small space.
As Bob pointed out, saying something can't be done is a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

5) Allow audio feedback (optional of course). This would be really helpful
with something like I mentioned in the previous point. But even finding a
song while driving might be possible if the iPod would just read out the
name of the song I'd stopped on.

There's lots of ideas floating around for a good team to work with.

Edward
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On 9/28/2006 11:42 AM, "Edward Reid" wrote:
> 1) As Bob (I think) mentioned, different people use the iPod differently.
> But people don't want a lot of different buttons, which would confuse
> everyone. My camera addresses this in a small way by having one button to
> which I can assign any of five functions. I could see this on the iPod --
> some people care about easy access to shuffle or repeat, for example, and
> others want quick access to fast forward. Even two assignable buttons might
> be useful.

I'd like this feature as long as, as you suggest, it's limited to one or two
buttons. I'd assign them to shuffle mode and Shuffle Songs, personally -- I
get tired of having to go up and down menus to access these particular
modes.


> 2) Don't make everything the same! Back to my camera: my index finger is on
> the shutter -- a fat round button -- or can move to either of two other
> controls which are shaped so that I can identify them quickly by feel. My
> thumb can operate the zoom, the mode, and the various buttons that operate
> the menus -- off the top of my head I count five or six widgets that I can
> distinguish by feel. Most keyboards have two keys with nubbins so you can
> tell by feel when your hands are on the right keys. But on my iPod,
> everything feels the same -- and because it's touch sensitive, I couldn't
> touch it to locate controls even if they were distinguishable.

As others have pointed out, this particular line of criticism is based on an
iPod model released three and a half years ago. That horrible (IMO) design
was rectified in January 2004 with the release of the iPod mini, whose
vastly superior (again, IMO) Click Wheel design addressed most of your
objections and has been used with every non-shuffle iPod released since.

--
Dan Frakes / Macworld.com / playlistmag.com