alt Hacker News> …high speed jogging - not something that you typically do very often on a music player.
That’s exactly what you often do on them, when they are good at it. How would you rather browse a large library: one by one, slowly, or use a non-linear accelerator to quickly get close to where you want to be and then precisely pick your choice?
The click wheel was brilliant software and hardware, simultaneously, which is why I call it “Apple at its best”.
It could have been good software with unreliable, wobbly hardware, or robust hardware with a slight rendering delay, which would break the illusion. Instead it was sturdy, responsive and just a joy to use. Much like Apple’s trackpads, which remain surprisingly unmatched.
But I guess we have different tastes on music players.
I think it was an example of a well executed idea taken war too far, like the touchscreens on a Tesla replacing essential physical buttons. Or the obsession with getting rid of buttons on the iPhone (which we’re now thankfully retreating from).
It did have its sweet spot - jogging to an exact spot in a song, or scrolling a long list. But you do a lot more than just that on a music player. And the overall experience of the iPod was actually somewhat sub par because of the overuse of that one feature.