Apple admits Brit invented the iPod 30 years ago (sorta)

Written on 8th September 2008                                                                                                              1 COMMENT
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

Apple has admitted that 52-year old Kane Kramer, a British man who left school at 15, is the inventor behind the iPod. Kramer says he came up with the technology that drives the digital music player nearly 30 years ago.

Documents filed by Apple in a court case show the US firm effectively acknowledges him as the father of the iPod. They even flew Kramer to its headquarters to give evidence in its defence during a legal wrangle with another firm, Burst.com, which  claimed it held patents to technology in the iPod and deserved a cut of Apple’s £89 billion profits. The dispute between Apple and Burst.com has since been settled confidentially out of court, mainly thanks to the help of the Brit.

Kramer’s design was made in a technological era that allowed for only 3,5 minutes of music to be held on a memory chip. He rightly anticipated long-term improvements in portable data storage and patented the device, which he called the IXI, worldwide. But in 1988, after a boardroom split, he could not afford to renew the filing.

He is now negotiating with Apple to gain some compensation from the copyright that he owns on the drawings.

And this is probably the funniest quote from the Daily Mail article:

‘I can’t even bring myself to buy an iPod for myself,’ he said. ‘Apple did give me one but it broke down after eight months.’

The man is currently starting up a new business for himself after his furniture design business was closed: he is working on an invention called the Monicall which will allow people to have phone calls recorded and emailed to the various parties as an audio file.

Apple, Burst.com, Daily Mail, invention, ipod, Kane Kramer, Patent, united kingdom

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Just so you know: there’s an iPhone nano rumor

Written on 4th August 2008                                                                                                              9 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Britain’s second newspaper has thrown a rather interesting and spectacular rumor into the world. Supposedly, there are iPhone Nano’s on their way to thousands of Christmas trees all over the world. The Daily Mail reports that the little device will be launched in December.

The product will be launched in the UK at up to £150 – €190 – for pay-as-you-go customers by O2, states the conservative newspaper. An iPhone Nano will be the affordable alternative that is cheap enough for most people to give to their family and friends for Christmas.

If these rumors turn out to be true, two things will surely happen. Firstly, early adopters will be angry (like me). Secondly: time for the early majority: the iPhone is gonna be as common as the iPod – which partly owes its success to its stocking stuffer task during the joyful feast of Christmas.

But for now, it’s just a rumor. And not really a realistic one if you take the last paragraph of the Daily Mail article in account. A touch wheel on the back… are you serious?

One expert suggested the nano phone would have a touch wheel on the back and display on the front so that numbers would be dialled from behind.

UDPATE: also check out this article on Techcrunch. Foxconn is building 800.000 iPhones a week now. Are those iPhone Nanos?

Christmas, Daily Mail, iphone, iphone 3G, iPhone Nano, lust, shiny object, united kingdom

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