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Samsung Takes on iPod By Turning to the Source Software Designer Aided Apple Creation

Posted on: Wednesday, 1 March 2006, 03:02 CST

By John Markoff

When Samsung, the consumer electronics giant, decided to mount a serious challenge to Apple Computer's iPod music player early last year, it turned to Iventor, a little-known Silicon Valley software start-up company with a cluttered one-room office here.

The result of that partnership is Samsung's newest Z5 portable MP3 player, which is to appear on store shelves on Sunday. The software inside the player was forged at Iventor by a small team of programmers led by Paul Mercer, a veteran Apple Macintosh software designer. Samsung's decision to hire Mercer is significant because Apple, in designing the original iPod four years ago, turned to Pixo, the company that Mercer founded after he left Apple in 1994 to create software for hand-held devices.

Apple used Pixo software to create the music player's simple interface, and Pixo's name appeared in the credits of the original iPod MP3 player. Sun Microsystems acquired Pixo in 2003.

For Mercer, the Samsung project is the culmination of more than two decades of focus on extending personal computer technologies to the realm of portable devices.

"My whole vision has been to take Macintosh-class technology and to move it into new places," he said during an interview in his office, which was filled with more than a dozen smartphones in various stages of disassembly.

Samsung executives said they had engaged Mercer and Iventor to design a user interface for the Z5 because they were hoping to offer an ease of use to match that of the iPod, which has a simple screen and a distinctive touch-sensitive scroll wheel for making selections.

"Paul helped us to design and develop a user interface for the Z5 from the beginning," said Phillip Chung, vice president for the digital audiovisual division at Samsung Electronics.

Samsung's choice of Mercer also shows how much consumer electronics now rely on the powerful computing capabilities that defined personal computers two decades ago. Samsung is betting that it can win a share of the music market dominated by Apple by using new software that mimics what is found in powerful PCs.

The Z5, shaped like a stick of gum, has a 1.8 inch, or 4.6 centimeter, color screen and a 35-hour battery life and is priced at $199 to $249 to compete with the iPod nano, which costs $149 to $249. Early reviews have been positive, and Samsung is hoping that the Z5 will work smoothly with the range of subscription music services that support the Microsoft PlaysForSure digital music standard.

But a significant factor in Apple's success in digital music is the seamless connection between its iTunes Music Store software and the iPod players. The rest of the industry, hampered by the divisions among hardware, software and online music providers, has not come close to offering consumers a music experience as easy as Apple's.

It is not known whether subscription music services, which permit users to choose among hundreds of thousands of songs but require a continual monthly payment, will win broad consumer approval.

What sets the new Samsung device apart from other digital music players and even from Apple's newest iPod nano is the fluid quality of its software, which includes transparency effects usually found only in powerful PCs and video game machines. This technology gives a more refined and polished appearance to the Z5 software.

Such design flourish is characteristic of Mercer's approach, said a number of software designers who have worked with him both at Apple and elsewhere.

"He is an unusually detail-oriented software engineer," said Steve Capps, a former Apple and Microsoft software engineer who was one of the designers of the original Macintosh interface and the leader of the Newton project, which created a hand-held computer. Alliances between small firms and big electronics makers are becoming increasingly common as companies are forced to bring new devices to market practically every season.

Mercer is the epitome of a specialist. Growing up as a personal computer hobbyist in upstate New York during the early 1980s, he became enamored first with the Apple Lisa and then with the Macintosh. As a computer science student at Syracuse University, he wrote programs for the Macintosh, which attracted Apple's attention when it was recruiting young programmers. "The programs were my resume," he said.

At Apple, Mercer quickly became one of two software engineers responsible for the creation for the System 7 version of the Macintosh Finder the program that displayed the distinctive desktop visual display that acted as the computer's dashboard.

In 1987 and 1988, after Steve Jobs had been ousted from the company by John Sculley, then chief executive, engineers like Mercer were given wide latitude in exploring new ideas. Mercer pursued two projects for hand-held computers, code-named Swatch and Pen Mac.

In the early 1990s, before a meeting of Apple's top executives, he showed off the Macintosh software running on a hand-held computer, long before products like the Newton, Palm Pilot or the General Magic communicator had been introduced.

The technology demonstration was impressive, but Mercer acknowledged that he had been naive about the reception he would receive for his invention.

Instead of being welcomed with open arms, he received a call from Sculley to tell him Apple had signed an agreement to work with Sharp Electronics on the Newton technology and saying there was no room at the company for competing hand-held computing projects.

Mercer was asked to join the Newton project, where he worked on the core system software until he left Apple in 1994 and founded Pixo.

At Iventor, which he founded in 2000, Mercer has made no immediate effort to expand the company but instead has concentrated on building a new software platform that can be used in products like the MP3 player.

The Samsung Z5 was done on a tight schedule, and Mercer said he worked "hacker hours" to be time-compatible with his South Korean partners.

With the Z5 is about to reach the market, he is thinking about his next target. Mercer said he was still dreaming about a personal device that offered complete access to information and media.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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