Apple's iPod series mp3 player has become the most popular and fashionable player in the world, and the iPod has been sought after by people for its exquisite design, powerful functions, huge capacity and dynamic personalized configuration. But among all these advantages, one thing you must not ignore is the unique operation interface of the circular turntable. The circular turntable of iPod series has been continuously updated for three times, and now it is ideal: the first generation is the rotary turntable; The second generation is the touch dial; The third generation is the touch-sensitive button turntable which is widely used in the iPod mini and the fourth generation iPod. It has always been believed that this creative cremation originated from Apple's R&; But recently, it was discovered that a company called Synaptics applied touchpad technology to notebook computers long before Apple. It can be said that Synaptics is the pioneer of touch technology in the true sense!
The story behind
Maybe you have never heard the name of this company, but you will be surprised when you know that more than 70% of the touchpad of your daily laptop is made by Synaptics. When you gently move your finger on the touchpad, the mouse will move at a faster speed. The turntable of the iPod series works in the same way, which is why you can move quickly in the lengthy song list when operating. Synaptics can become a pioneer of touch technology because he first applied touch technology to players, such as the creative Zen Touch and HP's new iPaq Pocket PC.
Synaptics can design touch pads according to customers' needs. We can see this from the original design of the iPod series turntable to the increasingly perfect iPod mini turntable. It can be said that the continuous introduction of the iPod series is also a process of continuous improvement of the turntable.
Improvement of turntable in past dynasties
The original circular turntable designed by the company itself.
The picture shows the original circular turntable designed by Apple, which can only rotate and has no touch sensing function. Personally, I prefer the later design, but as far as I know, some people still like the original design because they prefer the way of finger manipulation. Since the first generation of iPod came out, Apple has been trying to improve this machine. This is also the reason why Synaptics enters people's field of vision. Synaptics has worked with Apple before. And touch technology is used on Apple's iBooks. So when designers want to make the iPod thinner and lighter, they will naturally consider using capsense of Synaptics. Through this design, the iPod becomes more portable. However, another problem followed. Because of the particularity of the turntable, users must avoid the entry of dust and hinder the normal work of the turntable. Below you can see the original iPod and touch-sensitive turntable, which will be used to replace the original iPod design.
The playback control buttons are arranged above the turntable in a straight line.
Apple originally intended to take the design of the touch dial as a great improvement on the original design, and the specific design is also different from the first generation. Designers set the playback control buttons on a straight line above the turntable, which is different from the first generation of control buttons located around the turntable. Synaptics' circular turntable keeps the fashionable appearance of iPod, only adding four touch buttons. At first, this design was affirmed by consumers, but later some people complained that it was inconvenient to operate. I think this may be the reason for the design idea. People are generally used to determining the completion of the operation by touching their fingers, but after adopting the touch dial design, people still need visual feedback to confirm the completion of the operation. Of course, the touch dial design is still loved by most people.
Considering the compactness and flexibility of the iPod mini,
When Apple designed the iPod mini, due to the compactness and flexibility of the iPod mini, it had to remove the original linear operation buttons, because there was not enough space on the main panel of the iPod mini to set these buttons. We have to admit the ingenuity of the designers here-they designed the turntable as a touch, which gave it two other functions: song selection and browsing, as well as various playback operations. This can be said to be a great progress, because the original dial of the iPod series will not feed back any information to the fingers. After using the touch dial, you can feel the operation key pressed by pressing the dial with your finger. This has also greatly overcome the complaints of a few consumers about the original design. The improvement of this design has achieved such good results that Apple completely adopted this design on the fourth generation iPod.
A touch technology is designed.
Well, you've heard the story between Apple and Synaptics. Synaptics has not provided this technology to any player company except Apple, and has only recently cooperated with some manufacturers. But he never disclosed the technology related to iPod to any manufacturer. Synaptics designed touch technology for Zen Touch produced by Creative, but this did not infringe on Apple's interests. Unlike the turntable of the iPod, it can only move the song list up and down, while the turntable of the iPod can move circularly. I think this machine of creative company must be improved in some aspects if it wants to be as competitive as iPod, because the convenience of operation is always the most intuitive for consumers.