Sunday, April 3, 2011

New iThingy

Can anyone explain to me how over 300 songs can fit in something smaller than a matchbook?



On second thought, don't. I think I prefer the mystery.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if the novel we're living in is either sci-fi or fantasy. Still, it's definitely the future - and I'm so glad I'm here.

(got this to use during my workouts. Much more convenient than sticking my iPhone in the waistband of my yoga pants.)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

17 comments:

Unknown said...

Well, getting the songs in that space is easy. It looks to me like the real trick was to get enough battery in there to play the songs for a decent length of time.

Tam said...

Imagine showing that to the you of 20 years ago. (You know, back when cell phones were rare status symbols the size of a brick, and a DiscMan cost $200 and skipped when you used it in your car...)

Anonymous said...

I think the only reason it is so big is so that the buttons are halfway human-sized.

Jim

Marty said...

No moving parts.

It's a kind of magic...

Alan said...

It's not living in the future until I have my flying car, dammit.

Mike W. said...

Geez, and to think growing up I was happy to have a discman that took 4 AA batteries and lasted a few hours at best. And I thought that was great because I didn't have to use tapes anymore.

Kids these days have no clue how good they have it with their iThingies.

Old NFO said...

Flat batteries and micro SDs the size of your little finger nail are what make it work... and this is OLD technology... :-)

WV- Implant The NEXT new technology...

Sevesteen said...

I recently took apart an 8G USB stick to make it as small as possible. When I was done, the only thing left was the metal tip. Still worked fine, holds like 2000 songs.

MonteG said...

I have an 8GB micro SD card just sitting on my desk, going unused. The thing is smaller than my pinky fingernail, can hold thousands of songs, and I just can't be bothered to find a use for it!

Ed Rasimus said...

Getting the songs in is easy. You simply reduce all the quarter notes to sixteenth, but slow the tempo down.

Glenn B said...

A radio technician once explained some bit of technology to me about a two-way radio. He told me this that and the other thing and said that was all based on technology and anything else that made it work was just FM. I asked if he meant it was an FM radio. He replied "What little I understand is technolgical and all the rest that I do not understand is just F'ing Magic". Made sense to me. Maybe your little box runs on FM.

Jake (formerly Riposte3) said...

Imagine showing that to the you of 20 years ago.

Imagine showing my 1st gen iTouch to the me of 20 years ago - a music player that can do more than the most advanced desktop system of the time could ever hope to do, and it fits in a shirt pocket - smaller than any (non-radio) music player of the time.

I remember reading an old sci-fi novel when I was a kid (I forget which one) where a character pulled out his "pocket computer" to do some orbital calculations. I now have a "pocket computer" far more powerful than that author probably imagined would ever be possible, and its primary function is supposed to be as a "communicator". I bet what he envisioned was more like the TI-85 I had in high school 20 years ago than the now ubiquitous smart phone that I'm actually talking about.

I still want my flying car, though.

Kevin said...

The first iPod I ever actually handled was won by my daughter at work. She already had one, and gave it to her mother. It was handed to me with the instruction to "put some music on it," which I did, then I popped in the earbuds and fired it up.

After a couple of minutes of listening to excellent quality sound coming from the tiny package (I believe this unit was one step up from the iPod Nano shown here), I stopped it, took it to my wife, and had her put the earbuds in. When I hit "Play," she sat in stunned silence for a minute, then looked at me and said, "We're old, aren't we?"

Yes. Yes we are.

be603 said...

As the music media has shrunk so have the back seats of cars. Think about it...

Apple and an a Accord or 8-track and a Plymouth Satellite. Are we really better off? :-)

Timmeehh said...

I see you found the nail polish.

Mike W. said...

Monte G - You can buy a cheap MicroSD >> SD adapter and then use that MicroSD card in your camera or as a thumbdrive of sorts in most laptops.

Douglas2 said...

Reminds me of years ago when my roommate, an engineer, came back rather glum after a date with his then girlfriend, and artist.

I asked him what was up, and he replied "we were driving along at sunset and she said to me 'Ooohh! Look at that sky! I wonder why it has all those bright colors.' After I told her, she didn't talk to me for the rest of the evening"