Braised Lambchop
a nurse trying to work while suffering with chronic pain - she rambles a bit

Only an engineer would think an iPod is "just a hard disk with a play button."

Some engineers -- in this case, Jim Turley, an electrical engineer writing for Electronic Engineering Times, a barn-burner publication if I've ever seen one -- don't understand why the iPod and iTunes are so 'complicated.'

Like zillions of others, I've got an iPod. But, unlike every other mammal on the planet, I don't think it's all that great. Frankly, I don't get it. What's the big deal? I've had MP3 players before and I think they're terrific, but the iPod, frankly, is inferior to all of them. It's just a hard disk with a Play button.

I'm reliably informed that that's part of iPod's charm: With no controls, you can't screw it up. Or so I thought. The much-vaunted iTunes software that comes with every iPod handles all the content, for the simple reason that you can't manage it any other way. But iTunes is terrible. It's absolutely appalling, in my humble opinion. In no time at all, I'd erased all the content I'd laboriously downloaded onto my iPod. Twice.

That's a classic engineer for you. To understand why Turley doesn't understand iTunes, you have to understand the way engineers think. Simplicity is bad, because a simple device doesn't do enough, and can be made to do more. Complexity is good, because one device can do 183 different things.

I can clearly see what he's doing wrong; he loads his music into iTunes, then syncs his iPod, then disconnects the iPod, erases the files on his PC and expects the iPod to know he's done that erasure. When he mounts his iPod again, iTunes doesn't have anything in it and syncs the empty iTunes Library to his full iPod, and automagically his iPod is erased.

I could go on and on about how iPod only copies files one direction (from your PC to your iPod, never the other way); or how it obliterates all your content should you casually plug your iPod into someone else's computer; or how it makes you keep a duplicate copy of every music file on your computer, wasting 20 Gbytes of disk space. Hey, I thought that's what an MP3 player was for!

Clearly the man doesn't follow the whole DRM thing, but why would he? If it doesn't directly affect engineering, he's not interested. He obviously can't read directions, either. Hey, what happens if his iPod is stolen or he loses it? Or if he gets a newer, bigger iPod? Answer: He has to reload all those songs back on his PC to move them to a new device. I'll bet he never makes backups of his PC or systems, because those disaster things are so 'counter-intuitive' they'll never happen to him.

I've worked alongside chemical and electrical engineers -- try telling an engineer why you can't put an ice pack on his tongue sometime -- and they have an unusual way of thinking. Engineers are somehow genetically incapable of explaining something in simple terms. They think that complexity is a value instead of a vice. Press 5 buttons in this way to 'play' but press the same 5 buttons another way to 'pause'? That's great! There's a 'Stop' button that only does one thing? That's a waste of a perfectly good button -- why can't it make the display turn different colors too?

So when iTunes and the iPod with its four buttons -- clearly-labeled four buttons, I might add -- burst on the scene, engineers like Turley automatically dismiss both as 'counter-intuitive.' Counter-intuitive to them, not to the millions of normal people who don't think in terms of blueprints. That's why he didn't hesitate to click 'Yes' when iTunes asked him if he wanted to erase his iPod -- he automatically assumed the computer knew what was best for him. It didn't occur to him that he would have to do anything so primitive as think or make a choice. That's what the computer is for. If he would just set his iPod to 'manually sync, he's be in geek heaven.... until his iPod messes up and he has to load all those songs into his PC again.

And people wonder why the Space Shuttle is so complicated.