iPod turns five
26/10/06 14:49 Filed in: Apple
This week is the fifth anniversary of the
iPod.
Other than my first Apple laptop, it is without peer as the coolest gadget I've ever owned. It brought music back for me - all the CDs stacked in dark drawers where we never bothered to play them. We hauled them out, loaded them and spent hours that would otherwise have been swamped in the ennui of kids at the park. Every room in the house is ready for whatever mood we feel like.
I remember buying a Walkman in Fiji when I was about 17. I thrashed about six cassettes on it and then made - by taping off the radio! - another half a dozen. You would have one cassette all day: 12 songs. My iPod has over 4000 loaded on it.
When Maria was born, no one had ever heard of an iPod. Now it is the iconic device of the new century. The Internet seems full of theories about its success. It's simple really - it is just an almost perfect toy. It brings exactly the emotional tone you want, wherever you are, in a package so small you can take it anywhere, in a format that is easier than peas to operate. It takes about ten seconds to learn, feels good...and it just works.
The Slate commentary linked to above argues the iPod changed nothing. This from a magazine that has argued salmon is just too declasse and Marlborough sauvignon blanc too bland. The highest acclaim of success is the sneer of the would-be cultural arbiter scambling for a snobbish high ground from where the tastes of the uninformed masses can be mocked and derided. Nothing reveals cultural irrelevance so much as cultural commentary unable to explain the pleasures consumers find without first seeking permission. Cultural snobbery is how modern class pretension conceals its classically fashioned bigotry (see also The Middle Classes Declaiming On Childhood Obesity; Middle Class Derision Towards MacDonalds; and Salman Rushdie).
Anyway, five observations on the fifth birthday of my perfect toy:
We're all rocking crooners in our heads.
You never quite get used to a shuffle playlist that jumps from the Dead Kennedys to Mozart's Requiem.
As they say about mobile phones, electronic gadgets are the one thing where men think smaller is better.
There is a good reason we stopped listening to some of those songs.
Motown r-o-c-k-s. Still.
Singing out loud when you're the only one who can hear the tune?
Other than my first Apple laptop, it is without peer as the coolest gadget I've ever owned. It brought music back for me - all the CDs stacked in dark drawers where we never bothered to play them. We hauled them out, loaded them and spent hours that would otherwise have been swamped in the ennui of kids at the park. Every room in the house is ready for whatever mood we feel like.
I remember buying a Walkman in Fiji when I was about 17. I thrashed about six cassettes on it and then made - by taping off the radio! - another half a dozen. You would have one cassette all day: 12 songs. My iPod has over 4000 loaded on it.
When Maria was born, no one had ever heard of an iPod. Now it is the iconic device of the new century. The Internet seems full of theories about its success. It's simple really - it is just an almost perfect toy. It brings exactly the emotional tone you want, wherever you are, in a package so small you can take it anywhere, in a format that is easier than peas to operate. It takes about ten seconds to learn, feels good...and it just works.
The Slate commentary linked to above argues the iPod changed nothing. This from a magazine that has argued salmon is just too declasse and Marlborough sauvignon blanc too bland. The highest acclaim of success is the sneer of the would-be cultural arbiter scambling for a snobbish high ground from where the tastes of the uninformed masses can be mocked and derided. Nothing reveals cultural irrelevance so much as cultural commentary unable to explain the pleasures consumers find without first seeking permission. Cultural snobbery is how modern class pretension conceals its classically fashioned bigotry (see also The Middle Classes Declaiming On Childhood Obesity; Middle Class Derision Towards MacDonalds; and Salman Rushdie).
Anyway, five observations on the fifth birthday of my perfect toy:
We're all rocking crooners in our heads.
You never quite get used to a shuffle playlist that jumps from the Dead Kennedys to Mozart's Requiem.
As they say about mobile phones, electronic gadgets are the one thing where men think smaller is better.
There is a good reason we stopped listening to some of those songs.
Motown r-o-c-k-s. Still.
Singing out loud when you're the only one who can hear the tune?
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