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TheRealEvanG t1_iy6zd6y wrote

Reply to comment by revfds in TIL about the TwitterPeek, a Twitter-only mobile device introduced in 2009 that allowed users to send and receive tweets...and nothing else by wilymon

The first Fast & Furious came out in 2001. In 2001, only 56% of American households had a computer, and well over 90% of all internet access was on dial-up modems. That was a massively different time, technologically speaking, than 2009.

By 2009, over 74% of households had computers, many of those households had multiple comouters, and 63% of internet access was broadband. In 2008, Netflix and Hulu were already competing for streaming customers, and in 2009 Netflix had more streaming customers than DVD rental customers.

I remember people having iPhones and iPods. The issue was because of the first iPhone's super garbage battery life. If you listened to music on your iPhone all day, it'd be dead before you got home. Having a dedicated device to listen to music for hours at a time is way more functional than having a dedicated device to check Twitter once in a while, especially when the Twitter app did the exact same thing the dedicated device would do.

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mournthewolf t1_iy75apf wrote

I worked at Blockbuster in 2001 and we just started going to about 50% DVD and started selling DVD players. In 2001 they were definitely a luxury worth stealing for a heist movie. They were a huge deal at that time.

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[deleted] t1_iy8a9a2 wrote

LOL remember when LaserDisk was a huge deal...those things were so laughably huge oh man!

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TheRealEvanG t1_iy7xs10 wrote

I agree with that. 2001 was about the time we got our first DVD player. My point was that the person I replied to implied that The Fast and the Furious (a 2001 film) is an accurate representation of the technological landscape in 2009, which it's not.

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mournthewolf t1_iy8s55b wrote

Oh yeah, I was in agreement with you. I was just adding my experience from 2001.

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vomitpunk t1_iy8to0s wrote

I seem to remember around that time there were also tiers of DVD players, with the barometer of quality being if it could play The Matrix DVD. People needing firmware updates for a DVD player to work in 1999/2000? Good luck with most consumers getting that done! Head cannon is those were fully updated players they stole :p

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c010rb1indusa t1_iy7wupx wrote

> I remember people having iPhones and iPods. The issue was because of the first iPhone's super garbage battery life. If you listened to music on your iPhone all day, it'd be dead before you got home. Having a dedicated device to listen to music for hours at a time is way more functional than having a dedicated device to check Twitter once in a while, especially when the Twitter app did the exact same thing the dedicated device would do.

This isn't the reason people hung on to dedicated devices. The iPod Classic had a 160GB HDD at the time vs the 8GB of flash storage on the iPhone. It was litteraly 20x the space. Streaming wasn't a thing yet, people were still syncing their music with their computers and they had built up dozens of GBs worth of music & videos.

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TheRealEvanG t1_iy7zeau wrote

I don't want to be "that guy," but the iPod classic had been discontinued by 2009. Gen 6 was released in 2007. I remember my junior year of high school (2008) when one of the guys came in bragging and showing off his customized/engraved 160 GB Gen 1 iPod, and we were all like "Bro...iPod nano." Almost everyone I remember having an iPod in my school had either an iPod nano or an iPod Shuffle. For an 8GB device, you're talking about 1500-2000 mp3s, which is a lot of songs.

Most people I knew who had an iPod Classic and an iPhone had both because they had their iPod Classic before the iPhone came out, so they kept using it.

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TemporalSidus t1_iy8jzqx wrote

2009 sounds a bit too early; I remember they still had them at least a few years beyond that. I was still into the MP3 player market at that time (mainly into competitors to the iPod), and the iPod Classic was still an option.

Quick Google search says 2014 discontinuation.

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c010rb1indusa t1_iy8vru3 wrote

> and we were all like "Bro...iPod nano.

Lol I would have been like "Bro....that Nano won't even fit 1/5 of my library" on there. You're also forgetting video. Remember iPods played movies and tv shows sold through the iTunes store. Those took up lots of space and were very popular. And in 2008, the iPod Touch was the new hotness for iPods, not the iPod Nano. You're off by about 3 years. 2005/6 is when the Nano had it's moment in the sun. Also the Classic wasn't discontinued until 2014.

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Flamekebab t1_iy8n1si wrote

>The issue was because of the first iPhone's super garbage battery life.

Literally the first time I've ever heard that as a complaint and I owned the original iPhone.

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Whifflepoof t1_iy8x7ls wrote

It was garbage. I was constantly pissed off about apps killing the battery. I'd try to ride my bike with GPS to map my route and music playing and it would be dead in an hour.

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