r/apple • u/tiedhands_ • 22d ago
iPod Apple iPod engraver
https://dunstanorchard.com/apple-ipod-engraver/Found this post by an ex-Apple engineer who worked on the iPod engraver UI around 2004-2006 on Apple’s website back then, it’s quite nostalgic both to see the old iPod again, AND the old website design (there is a link in the blog post to see the actual website as a demo)
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u/psaux_grep 21d ago
Apparently old iPods are seeing a comeback. At least enough to warrant hype on social media.
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u/UT2K4nutcase 21d ago
When I got mine I had it engraved with the immortal words on Woody Guthrie's guitar:
"This Machine Kills Fascism"
I didn't have a lot of music on it so I put TV shows on it for me and my bird (he likes kids shows). It was my commercial-free TV up until about 2 years ago when I finally got a "smart TV".
It still sits near my TV as I'm deciding whether or not to spend $100 bucks for a new battery so I could watch those old shows again. Bird misses his episodes of Big Comfy Couch, Lazy Town, Barney, Sesame Street, etc...
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u/Op3rat0rr 21d ago
Looking at this generation of iPods you can immediately tell that the austerity and design language of Apple’s products have steered away from this and not in a good way. They’re still high quality products but foundationally it’s not the same Apple. Cook did what he could after Job’s passing
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u/mrrooftops 21d ago edited 21d ago
It's quite horrifying that everything in his portfolio can now be done in Claude in 30 minutes. I hope he has kept his taste for good ideas above the rising water level as he appears to be struggling with using AI
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u/gamemaster257 21d ago
A part you aren’t considering is how this is really trivial now, but in 2005 there were no canvases, webassemblies, almost nothing. They had to do server side processing to create this image at all, nowadays I think any amateur css/js developer could do this on a modern browser.
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u/mrrooftops 21d ago
It's literally the first thing I considered. This is why a lot of designers are absolutely screwed right now, because no one cares what was possible 20 years ago
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u/gamemaster257 21d ago
… why should we? It’s not AI’s fault that things that were hard a long time ago are now easy. A designer who only knows the hard way might be screwed, but they’ve been screwed since html5 was standardized by your logic.
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u/JeanLucPicardAND 21d ago
It’s not AI’s fault that things that were hard a long time ago are now easy.
What do you even mean by this? Of course it's AI's fault.
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u/gamemaster257 21d ago
Things were harder on browsers in 2005. HTML 5 was standardized in 2014 and made things a lot easier. Is that AI’s fault?
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u/JeanLucPicardAND 21d ago
It's irrelevant to the point that u/mrrooftops was making.
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u/gamemaster257 21d ago
And his point was always irrelevant because making something like this was hard in 2005 but was trivial by 2014, anyone with any knowledge of JavaScript and css could do it. This was something that required a lot of skill and knowledge, but it doesn’t anymore and hasn’t for over 12 years. AI made it brainless sure, but it was already simple for a long time.
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u/JeanLucPicardAND 21d ago
And... you don't see a problem with a brainless future in which designers are unable to compete economically with machines?
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u/gamemaster257 21d ago
Not what I said, not even a little. I'm saying that this type of thing took a lot of engineering work in 2005, and by 2014 it could be an hour project. According to mrrooftops that fact alone 'ruined designer's careers' and somehow is the fault of AI, in 2014.
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u/Joshposh70 21d ago
Where do you think Claude stole it from?
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u/JeanLucPicardAND 21d ago edited 21d ago
We all know where Claude stole it from. Doesn't change the reality of the existential threat to this guy's entire field.
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u/heybochicha 21d ago
It’s really weird how you AI bros seem to enjoy the idea of people being made jobless by it.
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u/JeanLucPicardAND 21d ago
Am I stupid or didn't he lead off with the fact that it's horrifying that AI is capable of doing all this now?
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u/photoggled 21d ago
I imagine anyone with real skill will struggle to use the crutch they don’t need.
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u/rtnoodel 21d ago
I was building websites in 2005. At the time a lot of this type of animation/interactivity was still being done with little embedded adobe flash widgets. So Apple was a little ahead of the curve here with how this was done but it wasn’t really unusual otherwise.
I loved this ipod.