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  • Hacker News
  • I wish I could write up short blog posts on some of the past projects I worked on like this, but I am afraid my former employers would not like that
    by dominick-cc
  • I think it's worth noting that 2004-2006 was a time period where a Flash applet could have done this on the client. This was also a time when Flash content was supported by Apple QuickTime, so it's interesting that they didn't make use of it here.

    I wonder if a SWF was ever hosted on the apple.com domain.

    by rezmason
  • apple used some flash, for example:

    store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/vday07/img/PersonalizationHome.swf

    (Reported a security problem to them back in the good old days 2013)

    Not sure about swf files on www.apple.com directly, would have to dig into my older collections on a dusty server.

    by btx
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash
    by asukumar
  • > This was also a time when Flash content was supported by Apple QuickTime

    While QuickTime supported some Flash content, my recollection is that it only supported simple animations which could be mapped onto QuickTime's own interactive video features. I don't think it supported ActionScript, so this kind of interactivity would have been beyond it.

    by duskwuff
  • I really enjoyed working with imagemagick back in the day. Really did feel like magic to be able to manipulate custom images dynamically.
    by mathgeek
  • I used to make little meme generators with imagemagick before those were a thing, wish I had thought to make a job of it.
    by Suppafly
  • I used to love that glossy gradient header that looked like physical tabs. Apple used to be so colorful and skeumorephic in their interfaces, I kind of miss that.
    by bbx
  • I loved the custom engravings. I still have two red iPod shuffles with "STEAL THIS" engraved on them, one I occasionally use, one unopened it its box.

    Ironically, the reason I have two is because I accidentally ordered two, didn't realize until I received them…and they were non-returnable because of the engravings.

    I figured I'd just give one away as a gift, but this was right around the time everyone started getting smartphones so the opportunity to do so never presented itself.

    by jasomill
  • We all want to be able to afford to do what Apple did back in 2019. Have a full developers salary dedicated to adding sparkle. I wonder in todays day and age how do you add that level of personalization and differentiation?
    by hahla
  • *2004
    by josemwarrior
  • Three lines of JavaScript.
    by andai
  • "Add customer delight to the product pages; make no mistakes"
    by jasongill
  • This was 2004-2006
    by skinner927
  • The article mentions the 'yellow fade' or 'yellow flash' to highlight when elements change -- I miss that!
    by eclipticplane
  • > The engraving was created using imagemagick, which took the user’s text and returned an “engraved” image to be overlaid on the rear of the iPod.

    Couldn't this be handled client-side, just overlaying plain text in gray 'Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif' on top of the image? At this scale, the specific font doesn't matter.

    Although interestingly, Apple still renders the text server-side (and offers engraving only for iPads, apparently): https://www.apple.com/shop/preview/engrave/PH304LL/A?th=hell...

    by Kwpolska
  • Maybe browser font tech wasn't quite there yet. It's not shown in the video but if you want the text to show mid animation then you need to do a skew effect on the text.
    by c0_0p_
  • I was wondering the same thing. Maybe it had to be done server side for accuracy. I can imagine customers returning their iPod because the shipped result didn't match what the webpage was showing. At that time, text rendering in the browser was still fairly pixelated.
    by bbx
  • I would I have tried that. Presumably it either didn't look as good, or there was something about the bad-word checker that required me to run it server-side. Maybe we didn't want a list of rude words sitting around in a .js file for anyone to look at. I don't recall, but whatever the reasons the imagemagick solution worked best for us.
    by dunstanorchard
  • > We obviously have much better ways of doing such things today, but in 2005, with limited browser technology, those solutions seemed a little bit magical

    Nah, this still seems like a pretty good way of doing things. Yes, we can probably run the image engraving on the client now, but to address a wide audience of older devices, we probably shouldn't change very much about this process.

    by swiftcoder
  • Is there any audience using a web browser that can negotiate a modern TLS connection to apple.com, but not support a better rendering method?
    by speedgoose
  • Since this is about old iPod technology, I thought this might be interesting here:

    I’ve been working on getting the real Apple iPod Classic 6G firmware running in QEMU. It currently emulates two clickwheel iPods, including the display ,click wheel input and music player.

    https://github.com/davidmonterocrespo24/qemu-ipod-classic

    Still a work in progress

    by dmcrespo
  • Great! Maybe someday it will also help unlock the possibility of replacing the nands on old iPods so they can be reused.
    by wpwpwpw
  • > Still a work in progress

    Wow, over 100k commits! It is definitively a work in progress, and an impressive one as well. :)

    Edit: Ah, I now see that it is a fork of qemu-ios, but it is still cool. :)

    by emilbratt
  • I really appreciate that someone's job (or at least part of it) was to "prototype concepts that would add some interactive sparkle to the site". Working on a larger team, we generally add this kind of interaction at the start of a project or during redesign. There are larger prototypes, of course. But very rarely is someone designated to independently go out and just find small ways of making the experience just a bit nicer for the users, and build that; and I really like that idea.
    by georgecalm
  • I wonder if he was hired into that role or if the role was created for him after it became clear it was his talent.
    by radial_symmetry
  • That dedicated sparkle role is rare and honestly kind of beautiful. Most teams treat micro-interactions as leftover polish rather than something worth assigning ownership to.
    by wangxin199
  • As much as there are things to complain about Apple in 2026, it's nice that it still seems like their design and UX teams have latitude to do things like this. See the folding animation on the Duo, for example.
    by lukeify
  • That’s my site. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have about it.
    by dunstanorchard
  • Nice to see you!
    by georgespencer