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, and the holistic nature of its find-the-music/save-the-music/hear-the-music solution.
Apple launched the iPod in October 2001. But in January that year, the company introduced digital jukebox software called iTunes. It lets Mac users import songs from CDs by converting audio files to the MP3 format and storing them on the computer's hard drive.
When it set out to develop a digital music player, Apple faced the decision of using a hard-disk drive or flash as a storage medium. The hard disk offered the advantage of capacity and the disadvantages of size and cost, while the case for flash was just the opposite.
Toshiba America Information Systems, which had pioneered 2.5-in. hard-disk technology, offered Apple a compromise of sorts. With its protective cover, its 1.8-in. hard disk measured just slightly more than 2 by 3 in. and weighed less than 2 oz., but it could store 5 Gbytes of data. That's enough for approximately 1000 songs, or about 100 CDs.
The first-generation iPod, an all-white model (including the headphones), debuted in time for Christmas 2001. Priced at $399, far beyond the tag for most competing players, the 6.5-oz. device sported a 160- by 128-pixel monochrome screen with a white LED backlight for displaying song title, artist, album, playlist, and genre information. Just beneath the screen were four buttons (Back, Menu, Play/Pause, and Forward) to help users navigate their music files.
Below the navigation buttons, visually complementing the rectangular display screen, was a mechanical scroll wheel that users could turn with a thumb or finger to select music by playlist/album, artist, or song. Along with the 1.8-in. disk, the scroll wheel is widely considered to be the iPod's most significant innovation.
With the desired selection highlighted, users click a button at the center of the wheel—as they would click a mouse—and the music begins to play. In "Play" mode, the scroll wheel functions as a volume-control knob. Click the center button again, and the wheel provides an accelerated scrolling capability. Other features in the first-generation iPod included shuffle and repeat settings, customizable startup volume, and a sleep timer. Menus were available in English, French, German, and Japanese, and song data could be displayed in any of those languages.
Along with the iPod, Apple announced an enhanced version of iTunes that included a 10-band equalizer with more than 20 presets, as well as a cross fading feature for smoother transitions from one song to another. An Auto-Sync capability facilitated the downloading of music from a Mac to the new portable media device. All users had to do was connect the iPod to the Mac through the machines' respective FireWire ports via the FireWire cable that came with the iPod. Then, Auto-Sync would automatically download songs and playlists from iTunes to the iPod. Apple estimated that downloading via FireWire was approximately 30 times faster than downloading elsewhere via USB cable connection.
Once music was downloaded, Apple promised 10 hours of continuous play from the iPod's rechargeable lithium-polymer battery. The device supported MP3, with bit rates of up to 320 kbits/s, as well as AIFF and WAV file formats. Its 60-mW amplifier could deliver 20- to 20,000-Hz frequency response. And, its earbud headphones were built with neodymium magnets for enhanced sound quality.
In March 2002, just five months after its initial product launch, Apple introduced a $499 iPod with a 10-Gbyte hard drive—enough for 2000 songs. To put that quantity in perspective, Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs told an audience at Macworld Expo in Tokyo that they could fly six round trips between San Francisco and Tokyo, should they want to, without hearing the same song twice.
The ability to do something doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. Apple offered software that took the iPod down what some would call a rabbit trail, enabling users to download and store as many as 1000 contacts from Entourage, Palm Desktop, or a Mac OS X address list. The company has done little to promote the Contacts capability or the Calendar, Games, or other extras provided in subsequent models. While the extras are there for users who want them, they can easily be ignored by those who simply want to download and play lots of music.
In the summer of 2002, Apple began to flesh out its second-generation iPod line, which differed only slightly from the first generation. The company introduced a 5-Gbyte iPod for $299; a 10-Gbyte unit, estimated to be some 10% thinner than its predecessors, for $399; and a 20-Gbyte (4000-song) model for $499. Thus, for the same price, Apple offered twice the capacity of the version launched just four months earlier.
The 10- and 20-Gbyte iPods were fitted with a solid-state touch wheel, Synaptics' interface, in place of the mechanical wheel. This eliminated a potential source of failure while also enabling a thinner device. Apple touted the solid-state touch wheel as an industry first. Synaptics' capacitive sensing technology consists of an array of conductive metal electrodes covered by an insulating layer that protects the electrodes from wear. Analog circuitry measures the changes in capacitance that occur as a user's finger moves around the wheel's surface, pinpointing the finger's location at any given moment with accuracy in excess of 1/1000th of an inch (Fig. 1).
Equally, if not more important, from a marketing standpoint, both Mac and Windows customers could use the new models. The Windows version included the Musicmatch jukebox, widely popular among Windows users, while Mac users were treated to a new version of iTunes with smart (automatically updatable) playlists, a sound-check feature for consistent volume during playback, and support for programming from Audible.com.
Though barely midway into its first year of shipments, the iPod had generated sufficient buzz to warrant a "teardown" by Portelligent Inc., which makes its living in techno-archaeology. As though he were dictating notes from an autopsy, Portelligent president David Carey describes a 2-cm thick enclosure that combines a stainless-steel lower shell and dual-plastic top casing, with the latter co-molding clear resin for the viewing window and white resin for the rest. The two halves of the enclosure are held together by a snap-lock design that Carey says is likely to outlast the electronics in a drop test.
In first- and second-generation iPods, the navigation wheel assembly used contactless construction, with a ball-bearing axle and optical "chopper" for smooth menu selections. Synaptics' touch-scroll technology required a separate board for the touchplate and supporting electronics. The board, which also connects the monochrome LCD and backlight, includes a Synaptics ASIC and a sawtooth electrode pattern.
Components inside the iPod include Toshiba's 1.8-in. disk drive, stacked with a 3-mm Sony lithium-polymer battery and system electronics. Apple used four screws to fasten the electronics, display, and control interface assemblies to the top casing of the plastic enclosure. The disk drive and battery are attached to the stack with adhesive strips. The stacked assembly weighs 185 g and leaves virtually no extra room inside the enclosure. Carey reports that the frame for the navigation-wheel assembly has cutouts for nesting high-profile components, honing thickness by a few millimeters.
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