{"id":341,"date":"2003-12-02T09:50:48","date_gmt":"2003-12-02T14:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp\/2003\/12\/the_good_old_naughts\/"},"modified":"2003-12-02T09:50:48","modified_gmt":"2003-12-02T14:50:48","slug":"the_good_old_naughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/2003\/12\/the_good_old_naughts\/","title":{"rendered":"THE GOOD OLD NAUGHTS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why don\u2019t editors push writers harder, especially for special \u201ctheme\u201d issues (does the TIMES mag do any \u201cregular\u201d issues anymore)? Rob Walker\u2019s iPod story<\/A> last week quoted Steve Jobs as saying “People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” That\u2019s the Apple philosophy right there, and it cries out for unpacking. Instead, we go inside the guts of the iPod and learn there\u2019s a tiny hard drive. But the integration of design and engineering is the key reason this item is such a phenomenon and why its imitators lag so far behind. This union between the technical and the intuitive is so clean, so seamless, that it\u2019s the nose on the face of the product and the experience. But there aren\u2019t any talks with the engineers who articulated this marriage in form, nor from envious outsiders who wish they worked for Apple development.


\nAnother missed angle is Apple\u2019s new AAC (\u201cadvanced audio compression\u201d) format, which assaults the mp3 standard. I\u2019ve done side-by-side comparisons with WAV files, and simply cannot hear the difference, and this is with AAC files at 128, SMALLER than the weakest sounding mp3. So now that even Windows users are can listen to entire collections compressed to this level with little or no signal loss, and carry more than we can possibly listen to on a week\u2019s vacation, aren\u2019t CDs in for a pretty glorious sunset?


\nAny article I read on iPod I want to know how it overcame its totally uncool name. Finally, I picked up mine when I learned about Belkin\u2019s transformative microphone\/speakers, which turns the unit into a voice recorder. Now I can not only travel with hi-fi sound, I have my interview recorder in the same unit, and can also read edocuments, ebooks, and store contact info. It was a no-brainer for me: I\u2019d rather devote more space to sound than anything else, and I never got off jotting notes on a Palm, especially when I have the option of taking simple voice notes.


\nNow if they\u2019d just figure out the hack for track overlap, one of my favorite iTunes features. Tips?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why don\u2019t editors push writers harder, especially for special \u201ctheme\u201d issues (does the TIMES mag do any \u201cregular\u201d issues anymore)? Rob Walker\u2019s iPod story last week quoted Steve Jobs as saying “People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}