The iPod becomes software

iPhone’s iPod icon
I bought an iPhone 3G this past weekend (and waited 4 1/2 hours for the privilege). One of its functions is to play your music/movies like an iPod. You access this feature through a button labeled “iPod”. It has a picture of an old, non-iPhone iPod on it. This struck me as funny (haha funny). I think of the iPhone as subsuming the iPod in a device with extra functionality. But to explain to the user what this button does, it has a picture of an old iPod on it. And it’s not called “iTunes” or “Music and Movies”, or “Media” – it’s called “iPod”. So the iPod has become a piece of software, and the hardware has just become an icon.

Machine Learning Engineer

I am a software engineer and mathematician. I work on NLP algorithms for Apple News, and research homotopy type theory in CMU’s philosophy department.