

Apple admit Briton did invent iPod, but he's still not getting any money - nickb
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053152/Apple-admit-Briton-DID-invent-iPod-hes-getting-money.html?ITO=1490

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noonespecial
The article didn't say. Was there ever even a prototype or was this just a
60,000 pound worldwide-wide empire of patents based on that little sketch?
Wouldn't they have all expired anyway by the time the Ipod hit the market?
(even with extensions)

I drew magical music players that could hold all my tunes when I was 12 too. I
even tried to make one with the innards of a vhs tape, reel to reel heads and
an MC6800 microcontroller. Locating a specific spot on a big ribbon of tape is
damn hard with only 128 bytes of ram...

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Dobbs
It stated in the article that there was infact a prototype it just could only
play 3.5 mins of music.

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noonespecial
_His invention, called the IXI, stored only 3.5 minutes of music on to a chip
– but Mr Kramer rightly believed its capacity would improve.

His sketches at the time showed a credit-card-sized player with a rectangular
screen and a central menu button to scroll through a selection of music tracks
– very similar to the iPod._

This seems to me that if there had been a prototype, it would have stored only
3.5 minutes on the chips available at the time, but there wasn't. Only
sketches. The thing he has in the picture there is most certainly _not_ a 1979
prototype.

