Friday, July 13, 2007

Attention to details marks the good UI

MIT is so rich that the music library lends out iPods loaded with a bunch of music from the library's collection! Which means, I have finally started listening to music on these devices.

Today I noticed something very interesting: if I remove the headphone from the iPod, it automatically pauses playing. I guess they look for changes in offered impedance as the cue to pause. This can turn out to be useful if the headphones get disconnected mid-sentence while you are listening to an audiobook during your run.

But of course there is a bug. I had connected the iPod to my Sony receiver. Then I moved to my Bose headphones. The iPod paused, but fails to recognize the bose headphone until I restart playing from the main menu. Difference in offered impedance/capacitance/inductance?

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