an invention is finished...
Sep. 12th, 2007 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyear...not when you've added every feature that can be added, but have taken out every feature you don't need.
Question: Did Apple (with iPod and iTunes) invent the idea that you don't actually need a "stop" button anymore?
Certainly "stop" was a remnant of the tape days - to hit stop would also move the heads away from the tape so the magnets didn't rip the tape out of the casing as you tried to eject it. CD's inherited it but nobody really thought that you didn't need it. It really became a function of the fact that there wasn't an easy way to say "go back to track one" - or rather, the lack of a feature to allow for real random access made the stop button, as a "reset" function, necessary. By providing direct playlist access, the Apple products thus showed that "stop" wasn't necessary.
Except it is on most cheaply-built PCs. When playing a CD in a crappy cd-rom (and there aren't any good ones anymore), the disc continues to spin like mad, usually making quite a racket, until you have to give up and eject the damned thing.
But it certainly isn't on a DVD - how many people *really* use the stop feature on a DVD player? You don't. Why? Because as a reset to the beginning, it means you have to put up with the 2-4 minutes of bullshit "Don't copy my crap" and "I'm going to play my corporate jingle at 10 times the volume of the actual film" screens that you can't skip through...sometimes in 3 different languages (usually for anime with its interpol references). So you don't bother. You just pause, or hit menu. Stop becomes not only superfluous, but actually detrimental.
I wonder if iPod and iTunes would have recognized the ability to ditch the "stop" button if DVD players weren't around to show its futility.
I do note that YouTube's player doesn't have a "stop" - just play which becomes pause.
No, I've not eaten dinner yet. Why do you ask?
Question: Did Apple (with iPod and iTunes) invent the idea that you don't actually need a "stop" button anymore?
Certainly "stop" was a remnant of the tape days - to hit stop would also move the heads away from the tape so the magnets didn't rip the tape out of the casing as you tried to eject it. CD's inherited it but nobody really thought that you didn't need it. It really became a function of the fact that there wasn't an easy way to say "go back to track one" - or rather, the lack of a feature to allow for real random access made the stop button, as a "reset" function, necessary. By providing direct playlist access, the Apple products thus showed that "stop" wasn't necessary.
Except it is on most cheaply-built PCs. When playing a CD in a crappy cd-rom (and there aren't any good ones anymore), the disc continues to spin like mad, usually making quite a racket, until you have to give up and eject the damned thing.
But it certainly isn't on a DVD - how many people *really* use the stop feature on a DVD player? You don't. Why? Because as a reset to the beginning, it means you have to put up with the 2-4 minutes of bullshit "Don't copy my crap" and "I'm going to play my corporate jingle at 10 times the volume of the actual film" screens that you can't skip through...sometimes in 3 different languages (usually for anime with its interpol references). So you don't bother. You just pause, or hit menu. Stop becomes not only superfluous, but actually detrimental.
I wonder if iPod and iTunes would have recognized the ability to ditch the "stop" button if DVD players weren't around to show its futility.
I do note that YouTube's player doesn't have a "stop" - just play which becomes pause.
No, I've not eaten dinner yet. Why do you ask?
