{"id":19204,"date":"2014-10-11T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-11T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=19204"},"modified":"2014-10-10T15:33:02","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T19:33:02","slug":"echoes-of-the-ipod-clickwheel-in-the-beatsmusic-touch-interface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2014\/10\/11\/echoes-of-the-ipod-clickwheel-in-the-beatsmusic-touch-interface\/","title":{"rendered":"Echoes of the iPod clickwheel in the BeatsMusic touch interface."},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"vvqbox vvqyoutube\" style=\"width:425px;height:344px;\"><span id=\"vvq-19204-youtube-1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4l05s4CXbw0\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/4l05s4CXbw0\/0.jpg\" alt=\"YouTube Preview Image\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/span>\n<p>In an earlier post, I talked about Apple\u2019s 86ing of the iPod Classic, the one with the clickwheel interface rather than the touchscreen interface. There was plenty of iPod nostalgia as news of the clickwheel iPod\u2019s discontinuation spread, including <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/personal-technology\/2014\/09\/10\/the-classic-ipod-is-dead-but-the-click-wheel-lives-on\/\">this <\/a>piece, which focuses on the aesthetics of the clickwheel as an interface.<\/p>\n<p>Though the touchscreen is often seen as replacing the clickwheel, I think the clickwheel has influenced toucscreen music interfaces. As you can see in the video above, the BeatsMusic touch interface echoes the iPod clickwheel. Just as you use the iPod clickwheel to fast forward or rewind or jump around in a track (press the center key, then slide back or forward on the wheel to place the cursor on the track\u2019s progress bar at the bottom of the screen), you use Beats\u2019 circular touch interface to fastforward or rewind the currently-playing track. (Beats is owned by Apple, so this resonance isn\u2019t surprising; however, I don\u2019t know if the Beats touchscreen wheel was developed before they were acquired by Apple.) So, to paraphrase a line from L.A. Style\u2019s \u201cJames Brown Is Dead,\u201d maybe we shouldn\u2019t be mislead when the newsman said the iPod clickwheel is dead?<\/p>\n<p>You could argue that the Beats interface also echoes turntable interfaces&#8230;and that\u2019s not wrong, but when I scroll around the circular wheel on my iPhone 5\u2019s touch screen, that much more closely and directly echoes the iPod classic than it does a record turntable. In fact, I\u2019d argue that the clickwheel itself echoes turntablism (has anyone written on this?), so the resonance with turntables is included in the Beats interface\u2019s resonance with the iPod clickwheel.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly the clickwheel has had a lasting impact on digital music interface design. Are there other examples, besides the BeatsMusic interface, that y\u2019all can think of?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an earlier post, I talked about Apple\u2019s 86ing of the iPod Classic, the one with the clickwheel interface rather than the touchscreen interface. There was plenty of iPod nostalgia as news of the clickwheel iPod\u2019s discontinuation spread, including this piece, which focuses on the aesthetics of the clickwheel as an interface. Though the touchscreen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19204"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19210,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19204\/revisions\/19210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}