On being too nostalgic: Tony Fadell mentions Amiga

[hishamk]

"I'll miss the iPod. I loved it," says Fadell. "But you know, that's just how it is. I also loved my Apple II, and also saw it come and go. You can't get too nostalgic. I mean, there are people out there who still want the Commodore 64 or the Amiga to come back. That's cute, but time marches on. It's better to be excited for the future." - Tony Fadell, Father of the iPod

The interview over here.

[klx300r]

LOL 'come back', my C64 and Amiga are still here so they never left:lol:

[trekiej]

+1

[Tenacious]

Why is the father of something perceived to have more wisdom than everyone else?.  "Ten billion flies can't be wrong, ............"  

[psxphill]

I mean, there are people out there who still want the Commodore 64 or the Amiga to come back.

I don't think anyone expects the commodore 64 to make a come back to the level it had in the 80's/90's. I think there are some people who think that AmigaOS or MorphOS could increase it's market share massively, but it isn't going to happen. It's not coming back, but sometimes things get released that allow you to pretend for a while that they never left.

Similarly there will always be people who own classic cars (when we run out of fossil fuels they will be powered with Mr Fusion). Sometimes the thing that makes it special is that there are fewer and fewer of them left every year.

[Minuous]

That article seems pretty silly, so I wouldn't give much weight to anything therein:

"His breakout success back in 2001 was the iPod, Apple's revolutionary digital media player"

Nothing revolutionary about it, there were (better) MP3 players long before then.

"Eighteen months after launch, the iPod owned the portable media player category, and for the next decade, it continued to do so."

They were quite popular with Apple fanboys, they hardly "owned" the category though.

"The iPod was one-in-a-million."

Yes, in the sense that there were a million other (better) MP3 players around...

"128GB storage, which is about the same amount of space the iPod Classic shipped with ...massive drive..."

Only 5Gb, actually...Plus 128Gb isn't massive, I didn't realize it was even possible to still buy drives that small these days.

"Using machine learning and AI to figure out context, so that the celestial jukebox knows the perfect song for every occasion."

Why would anyone want Apple to decide what songs they should be listening to!? I would think I'm much more likely to know what song I want to play than some AI.

"music in the cloud."

So to listen to a song 50 times means you have to download it 50 times...that's hardly efficient.

[warpdesign]

I guess he meant some people want it to come back*commercially*. Aren't Hyperion & A-Eon trying to make it come back by trying to sell it ?

I guess nostalgia doesn't play well with a viable commercial product and that's what he meant. And I don't think it is that wrong...

"music in the cloud."

So to listen to a song 50 times means you have to download it 50 times...that's hardly efficient.

Heard about cache? It means it's accessible from anywhere you have a connection. Doesn't mean you have to download it each time. Hence the storage he was talking about.

"128GB storage, which is about the same amount of space the iPod Classic shipped with ...massive drive..."

Only 5Gb, actually...Plus 128Gb isn't massive, I didn't realize it was even possible to still buy drives that small these days.

Then I suggess you open your eyes: very few MP3 players have 128Gb today... Most mp3 players (those that are "better" than iPods got as little as 8/16Gb), and the only HD-based ones come with 128Gb only.

[Minuous]

>Heard about cache? It means it's accessible from anywhere you have a connection. Doesn't mean you have to download it each time. Hence the storage he was talking about.

I don't understand what you mean by this. The data it is either on the device or not. If you don't have to download it, it's being stored somewhere on the device, so not cloud-based. In which case why would you still need an Internet connection?

>Then I suggess you open your eyes: very few MP3 players have 128Gb today... Most mp3 players (those that are "better" than iPods got as little as 8/16Gb), and the only HD-based ones come with 128Gb only.

But if you read the article where it claims it is a "massive drive", it is talking about the latest iPhone 6. 128Gb is plenty for a dedicated MP3 player but not for a machine that tries to be taken seriously as a proper computer. They really are just toys not just in terms of being locked down but also in terms of specification. My low-end netbook that is years old and cost only a small fraction of the price of an iPhone has nearly triple this much storage.

More generally, Apple's dismissiveness of retrocomputing serves a convenient excuse for their atrocious lack of backwards compatibility, early abandonment of products and forced upgrades.

[warpdesign]

If you don't have to download it, it's being stored somewhere on the device, so not cloud-based.

What if it was store on the cloud, but you're device downloaded it somewhere, and kept a copy there?

That's what I meant... So if you go into the train where there's no connection, well, you still can listen to your music.

And guess what? If you connect to a friend's computer, you can still listen to your music by connecting to the cloud... even though he doesn't have a copy of your music.

[Jpan1]

I wonder - If think the design of the Ipod was inspired by those Braun products of the 1960's, I wonder if it is nostalgia for aesthetics inspired from the past, so it seems nostalgia retro is neccessary... and besides nostalgia is Fun! The more boring shiny-glassy-plasticy phone products that come on the market, the more desire there will be for nostalgic looking things.
I like the design of my Amiga 1200, maybe could be slimmed down a bit and have more rounded curves, but otherwise it's fine looking chunk!

[psxphill]

The data it is either on the device or not. If you don't have to download it, it's being stored somewhere on the device, so not cloud-based. In which case why would you still need an Internet connection?

 Your hard disk doesn't disappear because your OS has cached some files.
 
 The internet doesn't disappear because your web browser has cached a web page.
 
 A cloud doesn't disappear because your device has cached a song.
 
 You don't need an internet connection, people demand an internet connection because it makes it more convenient. You get a cheaper and more rugged device and when you buy songs on iTunes you don't have to sync them to your iPod. Walking around with a magnetic hard disk that will die if you shake it too much or some immensely expensive flash based device that you have to manually sync with a PC, is just not attractive to modern users.
 
 A lot of these people will end up just having an iPod/iPhone/iPad and no computer, because that is what they want.

[danwood]

"His breakout success back in 2001 was the iPod, Apple's revolutionary digital media player"

Nothing revolutionary about it, there were (better) MP3 players long before then.

Were there?  Such as what?  I had a Diamond Rio mp3 player that held 64mb of songs, 2 albums at crap quality, AA batteries, a parallel port interface and fiddly UI.  Then the iPod came long with 5GB, firewire, rechargeable battery and the scroll wheel control, it was streets ahead of anything else I saw before 2001.

[tone007]

My first MP3 player was an Archos Jukebox released in 2000. 6GB drive, standard USB mass storage so all you had to do was drop your MP3s onto it, no dealing with iTunes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series

Ugly as anything, but Archos always stayed ahead of Apple in terms of features (still have a 20GB Archos gmini mp3 player/camcorder that can run an NES emulator, long before any iPod had a camera.)  Prices were always better too.

Bonus, Archos also made some Amiga hardware.

[Tenacious]

>

More generally, Apple's dismissiveness of retrocomputing serves a convenient excuse for their atrocious lack of backwards compatibility, early abandonment of products and forced upgrades.

Yes.

For me, the "cloud" is were computer development took a sinister turn for the worst.  I'm not surprised that a few powerful and rich companies want to convince the world that everyone's private data is safer, more secure, more private when moved from individual hard drives to the cloud.  (Only that data that needs to be shared among a separated team, has any reason to be moved to a cloud).

What is frustrating and shocking, is the way most of the world seems to have bought into this fallacy.  Smart phones have become the default data gatherers for every aspect of life (who are your friends, family, what are your assets, what do you and they look like, how predictable can you be, etc?) that, until recently, could remain anonymous and private.  

If the world is ever again seduced by another Hitler or Stalin, what becomes of these giant databases?  When technology becomes fashion, a consumer society becomes cattle.

OK, that's the end of my rant.

[Darth_X]

I think there are some people who think that AmigaOS or MorphOS could increase it's market share massively, but it isn't going to happen.

There are 7 billion people in the world, so there's no reason why we have a nice new Amiga like platform come back with 5-10 million people. ;-)