20 years of the iPod

Re:20 years of the iPod by robertoandred on Sunday October 24, 2021 @12:45PM (#28979576)

The first iPod had the wheel, which was the revelation. The later clickwheel was just an iteration. And the iPod had FireWire, which meant you didn’t have to wait all day to move your music over USB.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:20 years of the iPod by Voline on Sunday October 24, 2021 @03:47PM (#28981270)

USB 1.1 moved data at 12 Mb/s and carried insufficient power to charge an iPod. Whereas FireWire shifted data at 400 Mb/s. That difference was huge.

Apple didn’t come out with USB support for the iPod until USB 2.0 became a common feature on PCs, with it’s theoretical speed of 480 Mb/s (in my experience of real-world use it was actually still slower than FireWire 400) and sufficient power.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:20 years of the iPod by giantrobot on Sunday October 24, 2021 @08:08PM (#28983153)

FireWire also charged it while you were loading music. You plugged it in, stuff got loaded, and the battery topped off. You didn't burn through the battery while it took an hour to load an album like USB 1.1 players.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:20 years of the iPod by wanderingstan on Sunday October 24, 2021 @03:04PM (#28980914)

Sometimes I forget how painfully slow usb 1.x was! I had an external drive and copying a few cds worth of music would take hours.

[ Parent | on HN ]