alt Hacker NewsReally is heartbreaking that the click wheel is such an incredible and satisfying user interface but technology has evolved such that we have no need for it anymore.
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We have evolved to iPhone dark pattern updating to suddenly starting Apple Music in my car bulldozing Spotify and me almost getting in a fucking car accident every time.
It kind of lives on, on the Apple TV remote.
You know that ring around the main button, that kind of functions like a D-pad with four arrows?
If you're paused while watching something, you can drag your finger clockwise or counter-clockwise around the ring to seek forwards or backwards. It's really nice, much finer-grained control than normal skipping forwards or backwards.
The wheel doesn't actually spin, but it also doesn't really need to.
Its spiritual successor is the crown on the Apple Watch. I never swipe to scroll on the watch. It's way more fluid (and you get neat haptics) to twist the crown.
Maybe.. but someone thought that this exact format is better for kids to listen to music / audio books / podcasts from, a device that doesnt need internet access, you download what you want and need. Some people also noted (I think it was this device havent tried it) you can open the device up and put in a new SD Card to increase capacity.
On a roadtrip I doubt this stops playing music…
Yeah; I’m basically never going to upgrade from a BMW i3 because the i4’s jog wheel and UI was such a regression.
I guess I should be happy they saved me $10-100Ks, but it’s concerning that western engineering apparently peaked in the late 2010’s.
extremely ironic comment considering there has been a Renaissance of personal music players lately, including ones with click wheels. look on Amazon for all the Chinese made ones. there is absolutely still a desire, perhaps a growing one, for dedicated devices, as everyone grows wearier of phones
Customer needs and company needs are no longer aligned. The customer used to want the company to succeed in the long term. The company cares only about the next quarter.
I feel like it’d make for a great interface for a physical controller for smart lights/speakers. I’ve got a Hue Tap Dial with a physically spinning wheel, but the click wheel would be great instead.
I’m half tempted to buy an old iPod and attempt to hack something together…
My 2nd generation iPod stopped working last week. It had a spin wheel but its predecessor's actually spun.
The monochrome screen shows a folder icon with a warning sign. I haven't looked into it but I fear that something happened to the internal hard drive. It's one with spinning disks. It was truly a work of art, that device.
It's still the perfect interface for a dedicated music player
One of the best and most elegant UX designs of all time. I can't think of anything that has beaten it since.
I’d like a ring with a wheel that clicks as a remote for something like glasses or a TV
If they sold a modern "iPod Classic" with a clickwheel and headphone jack, there would be a small but devoted community.
The haptic trackpads on a Steam Controller use the same circling motion to perform scroll wheel actions, and the haptic feedback is superb at selling the effect both audibly and from the feeling on your thumb.
Same with a lot of things. A synchromesh gearbox comes to mind. There's definitely something bittersweet about technology becoming obsolete and redundant.
If you're a trackball person, a lot of trackballs have a scroll ring that's similar to a click wheel. The Ploopy A+ has two discrete scroll wheels: https://ploopy.co/aplus/
I'm pretty partial to the Kensington Slimblade though. You scroll by twisting the ball itself - very satisfying once you figure out the technique. I hate the aesthetics (it looks kind of tacky) and the client software (bloated and buggy) but it's the only trackball I know of with this feature and I like it enough to put up with the issues. https://www.kensington.com/p/products/electronic-control-sol...
I did not find pulling the wheel down to push the cursor up to be satisfying.
Lots of ‘phones’ have a camera wart on the back. Why not several other warts for additional functionality.
So long as it does effect the perceived thinness at the edges, I suppose.
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We do still need it. Any time to need to scroll through any extremely long list in order to find a single particular item, the scroll wheel beats the manual binary search of scrollscrollscroll... too far... scrollscrollscroll back... too far... etc.
I would, unironically, use a device that had that iPod interface as a music device until my dying day. Make it only able to stream from Apple Music, make me load up songs through USB -- I'll do it.