Revolutionary, it was. Apple’s iPod wasn’t the first portable music player that could stream music files and didn’t require a physical disc or cassette. That’d be the IXI, a prototype created by Kane Kramer in 1979 and never brought to market.
Neither was the iPod the first one sold commercially in significant numbers. That’d be Audible’s The Audible Player in 1997. Yes, Audible, the audiobook and podcast brand now owned by Amazon.
But the Apple iPod is the device that made it all popular. And on the iPod Mini and fourth-generation iPod Classic, Apple created the most perfect method of scrolling I’ve ever come across. No device has since bested it, in my humble but deeply nostalgia-laced opinion.
Remembering the iPod’s Iconic Click Wheel Interface
The Click Wheel, they called it. Unlike a lot of Apple’s naming decisions (Magic Mouse, anyone? What made it magic?), the iPod’s Click Wheel was exactly what it sounded like. It was shaped like a wheel.
You could click the four buttons—menu, pause/play, back, and forward—on it, yeah. But the true appeal was that it had a capacitive touch interface that responded to the gentle brush of a fingertip, no pressing required.
You’d sweep your finger around the wheel, which sat flush with the body of the iPod. Clockwise would scroll down, and counterclockwise would scroll up. It was as responsive to scrolling through huge chunks of long lists as it was to being so delicate and exact as to pluck a single song title out of a long list without overshooting the target.
The Click Wheel was so satisfying to use, too, wonderfully tactile and clicky as it scrolled through every song title, artist, or menu selection. You could whizz your finger around in a wide, fast circle to bypass hundreds of songs in a blur, like tossing a football far down the field. And when you got close to your chosen song, you could easily arrest the momentum and hone in on the one you wanted to select.
The Click Wheel debuted on the iPod Mini in early 2004 and later that summer on the fourth-generation iPod Classic, replacing the earlier Touch Wheel and, before that, the Scroll Wheel.
Yeah, OK. So it wouldn’t hold a candle to a touchscreen when it comes to navigating the complex user interface of streaming movies on Hulu or shopping on Amazon. This is true. The iPod had comparatively little to do, simply scrolling through menus.
But even 20 years later, I’ve never used a more satisfying method of control on an electronic device. Even the best button couldn’t hold a candle to it.
The post Why the iPod’s Click Wheel Is the Best Device Interface Ever appeared first on VICE.
