I thought colloquially the distinction is with people who didn't grow up without computers. I was born in 1992 and admittedly was perpetually online as a teen in the mid 2000s but before the age of 10 or so I actually went outside.
2 years ago
Anonymous
No. I was born in 1987 and I grew up with computers. Doesn’t make me a fricking zoomer.
Cost cutting for what was already their most inexpensive product, it's not really a surprise to anyone that ipod shuffles were a gateway product into getting dumbasses hooked on iPhones and macs.
At the time your only poorgay option was buying a discman. But they were big and very noticeable. If a teacher saw you with one out, even during a break, the policy was to collect it and not return it until the end of the school day.
iPods were expensive as frick. You were not going to convince your parents to buy you one and even if you had a job that would mean saving up 60 hours of pay to buy one. Money that was much better spent on drugs.
The shuffle was tiny, unnoticeable by school staff. and let you store like 10 CDs on it. Cost about $70 which was expensive but no where near the cos of a full iPod.
>At the time your only poorgay option was buying a discman.
op's pic is a shuffle 3g, which is from 2009, cheap flash/sdcard mp3 players were common and cheap by this point
i was a poorgay and i had one of those common-as-dirt "S1" mp3 players for years by that point, got it from my local supermarket for like $30, it cost little more than it cost to get a similar-sized usb flash drive
ps. i did have a cd discman prior as well, but they were well out of fashion by the mid 00's, once flash-based players became affordable at useful sizes
ipod shuffle with the usb stick bottom fit discreetly anywhere, i could hit the buttons through my pocket and ran earbuds up my shirt and sleeves so i could listen to music while taking tests and shit. was awesome.
>If a teacher saw you with one out, even during a break, the policy was to collect it and not return it until the end of the school day.
This was the dumbest shit. I could understand phones but fricking CD players? My school was initially pretty chill with everything, yugioh cards, gabe noys, whatever, but one day some homosexual parent that weaseled their way onto the school board complained and they went full moron, couldn't have anything anymore. From then on it was running an earbud up your sleeve so you could discreetly listen by holding your hand up to your ear and looking bored (not hard at school).
Experimentation and market research. The iPod Shuffle and Nano both saw radical changes through their product lifetimes. And being the cheapest models, ensured tons of people would buy them across many demographics. This gives Apple lots of feedback on its features which could then be applied to more expensive products that change at a glacial pace.
Make it smaller by moving the controls to a more convenient spot? The only reason people didn't like it was because back then you had to use Apple's crap headphones because no-one else had an inline remote back then. If they released it maybe 2 or 3 years later it would have been fine
>no-one else had an inline remote
Every phone had an inline remote, they just weren't compatible and every phone manufacturer used their own proprietary headphone connectors.
I meant earbud manufacturers, they didn't bother until the modern standard was adopted with smartphones. The most in line control you'd get before that was an analog volume knob
>What was apple thinking with this?
They were thinking that people like to take their music places like the gym and the beach and whatnot where their expensive scratch-prone, shatter-prone iPod fatty with a mechanical hard drive shouldn't go. So they made a cheap hold-over product until technology caught up. It's ironic that the "improved" iPhone is worse in a lot of ways than the original iPod and doing music.
A compact version of the Spotify free tier for the Mp4 era.
Looking back, it's kind of genius.
"Let's make the greatest fricking gadget this world has ever seen."
They were thinking about how cute it'll be for zoomers
>Ipod Mini
>Zoomers
Go to sleep grandpa
>Ipod Mini
thats a suffle you banana
>Ipod Mini
whaT'S so funny?
it's not a mini
'97 and up are zoomers
USB 2.0 over TRRS so I'd imagine USB 2.0 speeds
you mean millennials
There's a sort of gradiential generation between millennials and zoomers. I like to call them nineelevennials.
>I like to call them nineelevennials.
I call them little brothers, but ok.
zoomers. those born after 1993 are zoomers
I thought colloquially the distinction is with people who didn't grow up without computers. I was born in 1992 and admittedly was perpetually online as a teen in the mid 2000s but before the age of 10 or so I actually went outside.
No. I was born in 1987 and I grew up with computers. Doesn’t make me a fricking zoomer.
Man, I could fit so many of those in my hair…
Was definitely an improvement over my first MP3 player.
Cost cutting for what was already their most inexpensive product, it's not really a surprise to anyone that ipod shuffles were a gateway product into getting dumbasses hooked on iPhones and macs.
So these were HUGE in my highschool.
At the time your only poorgay option was buying a discman. But they were big and very noticeable. If a teacher saw you with one out, even during a break, the policy was to collect it and not return it until the end of the school day.
iPods were expensive as frick. You were not going to convince your parents to buy you one and even if you had a job that would mean saving up 60 hours of pay to buy one. Money that was much better spent on drugs.
The shuffle was tiny, unnoticeable by school staff. and let you store like 10 CDs on it. Cost about $70 which was expensive but no where near the cos of a full iPod.
>At the time your only poorgay option was buying a discman.
op's pic is a shuffle 3g, which is from 2009, cheap flash/sdcard mp3 players were common and cheap by this point
i was a poorgay and i had one of those common-as-dirt "S1" mp3 players for years by that point, got it from my local supermarket for like $30, it cost little more than it cost to get a similar-sized usb flash drive
ps. i did have a cd discman prior as well, but they were well out of fashion by the mid 00's, once flash-based players became affordable at useful sizes
this
ipod shuffle with the usb stick bottom fit discreetly anywhere, i could hit the buttons through my pocket and ran earbuds up my shirt and sleeves so i could listen to music while taking tests and shit. was awesome.
>So these were HUGE in my highschool.
what? in 2009/10? Last time I saw one of these was like 2003
>If a teacher saw you with one out, even during a break, the policy was to collect it and not return it until the end of the school day.
This was the dumbest shit. I could understand phones but fricking CD players? My school was initially pretty chill with everything, yugioh cards, gabe noys, whatever, but one day some homosexual parent that weaseled their way onto the school board complained and they went full moron, couldn't have anything anymore. From then on it was running an earbud up your sleeve so you could discreetly listen by holding your hand up to your ear and looking bored (not hard at school).
god damn I remember a fricking JANITOR taking my game boy advance once and I had to pick it up at the front office. it was scratched to shit too
Experimentation and market research. The iPod Shuffle and Nano both saw radical changes through their product lifetimes. And being the cheapest models, ensured tons of people would buy them across many demographics. This gives Apple lots of feedback on its features which could then be applied to more expensive products that change at a glacial pace.
>What was apple thinking with this?
Why do we need two sets of buttons? The only person who'd care is some autistic SOB on "IQfy" in 13 years.
Make it smaller by moving the controls to a more convenient spot? The only reason people didn't like it was because back then you had to use Apple's crap headphones because no-one else had an inline remote back then. If they released it maybe 2 or 3 years later it would have been fine
>no-one else had an inline remote
Every phone had an inline remote, they just weren't compatible and every phone manufacturer used their own proprietary headphone connectors.
I meant earbud manufacturers, they didn't bother until the modern standard was adopted with smartphones. The most in line control you'd get before that was an analog volume knob
i loved this little guy
used it exclusively to listen to podcasts and audiobooks
they made a dongle for it
I would like to see an Apple Bluetooth DAC like this.
jogging was popular back then
>What was apple thinking
Same thing Apple always thinks:
How can we sell more cheaply made Chinese junk at inflated prices to maximize profit?
>find my old iPod Shuffle from ages ago
>plug it into my PC
>all of my songs are gone
Can they be recovered?
>What was apple thinking with this?
They were thinking that people like to take their music places like the gym and the beach and whatnot where their expensive scratch-prone, shatter-prone iPod fatty with a mechanical hard drive shouldn't go. So they made a cheap hold-over product until technology caught up. It's ironic that the "improved" iPhone is worse in a lot of ways than the original iPod and doing music.
i have one of these, its brilliant, also if you do sports quite convenient (not to mention there is no ads or tracking or abusing you)
>cheaper
>smaller
>great for running
>can still skip songs with earbuds
>being this mad decades later that apple literally changed the industry
Thinking about making an mp3 player probably.
Cheap low risk ploy to lock poorgay high schoolers into iTunes and by extension the apple ecosystem
These actually worked with winamp, wmp, etc. believe it or not. iPhones broke that.
jesus whats the transfer speeds on these? was it a proprietary 3.5mm jack?