Look at Birth of the IPod
Inside Look at Birth of the IPod
wired.com
Starts off:
..."Ben Knauss is a former senior manager at PortalPlayer, the company Apple Computer approached to help develop an MP3 player that would eventually become the wildly popular iPod.Knauss shared his firsthand knowledge of the device's development, the glitches that almost killed it, and the extraordinary steps Apple took to keep the iPod a secret."....
Tony Fadell: Father of iPod
fadell.com
Apple and nondisclosure agreements:
elecdesign.com
iPod : Elaine Wherry, manager of usability and design at Synaptics Inc
includes:
...."It was an unusual strategy for a design engineer, but it was appropriate for the job. Elaine Wherry, manager of usability and design at Synaptics Inc., put on her hooded sweatshirt so she would blend in at college campuses. Her mission was to understand user requirements for a digital music player.
On campus, she observed people jog, ride bikes, walk, sit quietly, and in myriad other ways, enjoy their tunes. She made similar observations in libraries, airports, and other venues where individuals carry music to speed up, slow down, or blend with the pace of their lives. She carried a player herself, but she avoided the urge to tweak an interface according to her own preferences.
Apple Computer's market-redefining iPod and iPod mini benefit from Synaptics' user interface design and capacitive sensor technology. Synaptics didn't create the original iPod interface, which was done by Apple employees with the help of independent designer Tony Fadell and others who may never receive due credit for the iPod's success. But part of Synaptics' contribution was to understand that less is more; that users want to get their music into the player quickly and easily, navigate smoothly from one song to another, and hear their music faithfully reproduced.
Apple won't say much about the iPod, especially about its inner workings. Those who supply electronic components for the machine, wrapped as they are in nondisclosure agreements, still won't reveal much either. But the iPod's success is clearly due to the combination of its sleek design, its deceptively simple user interface,"...
09/22/04: "The secret behind the iPod's scrollwheel"
By Eliot Van Buskirk , Author of "Burning Down the House" ; Section editor, MP3.com
cnet.nytimes.com
Starts off:
..."There are many reasons to like the iPod, but to me, the most compelling one is the scrollwheel. There's never been anything better for negotiating the prodigious amounts of music that we're lucky enough to be able to fit into our pockets these days. The scrollwheel has been through three iterations. The first one actually rotated; then there was the touch-sensitive one; and finally there's the clickable one found on the iPod Mini and the fourth-generation iPod. I'd always assumed that this bit of genius sprung from Apple's R&D labs, but in fact, I discovered that a company called Synaptics, which primarily makes touch pads for laptops, actually perfected this little piece of navigational heaven, in accordance with Apple's stringent design requirements."....
01/21/05, SYNA: "Two Peas in an iPod"
By Monica Rivituso
yahoo.smartmoney.com
Starts off:
APPLE COMPUTER (AAPL) ISN'T the only beneficiary of the wildly popular iPod. Synaptics (SYNA) saw its stock jump nearly 22% to $36.81 Friday following a blowout quarterly report driven in large part by demand for the digital music player. So far in 2005, the maker of customized interfaces for consumer electronics is sitting on an impressive 20% gain, putting the 3.6% decline in the Standard & Poor's 500 to shame. Simply put, Synaptics, based in San Jose, Calif., makes cool parts for computers and gadgets. The company focuses on user interfaces that require little power, are easy to use and small in scale so they can be incorporated into notebook computers, cell phones or PC peripheral devices. Synaptics is known for notebook mouse touch pads; more than half of all notebooks include Synaptics flagship TouchPad product, according to the company. It's also gotten plenty of props for its innovative touch screen, or "click wheel," technology that lets users scroll through song catalogs on Apple's iPod.".... |
