How do you know when a gadget becomes an iCon?


... by the various ways it's referred to, which sets it apart from its competitors: Apple's iPod.

Last Monday I had the pleasure of speaking to the local Victorian Macintosh group who had invited me to present a section on iTunes. Others presented on iPhoto, and down the track there will be presentations on iDVD, iMovie and Garageband.

I used Keynote and gave a brief history of iTunes which was launched in January 2001 as an OS 9 app. with a strong family resemblance to Cassidy and Green's SoundJam. No surprises there since the same developer was responsible for both.

I also embedded some Quicktime movies showing Israeli Folk dancing - circles, partners, and lines - and described how iTunes is well up to the task of programming a night's session and how the playlists and metadata can be used to help categorise the dances. Someone in the audience actually stated they recall their children being exposed to IFD in their state school!

The group were pleased when I mentioned that the combination of iTunes, Mac laptops, and iPods were now being used by several dance groups in Melbourne as a result of my early adoption of iTunes.

I didn't get through 90% of the material I wanted, but many seemed quite pleased with the historical aspects I focused on, including showing the original "Rip.Mix.Burn" ad first shown in March, 2001. This is when Apple introduced CD burners into iMacs when the Wintel world was seeing burners more for copying CDs and making backups rather than as an element of a digital hub. (Are you really surprised?)

One thing I did show was how iTunes was Applescript-able and there was a site devoted especially to getting more out of iTunes using scripts. One allows you to wake your Mac from Sleep using a certain track and a selected time, and another allows the current iTunes playing track to appear by name and artist at the bottom of the Safari browser window when you're surfing! The site is Doug's Applescripts for iTunes.

In fact, my presentation, which was about getting more from iTunes in general, was informed via an essay I had written for my Knowledge Management studies, where I focussed on the iTunes Music store and its meaning regarding Technology and Society. I think I interpreted "getting more" quite broadly!

One of the slides I included in my presentation is below. It is one of a number of questions I was asked when participating in an online survey. Does anything leap out at you?


So, what do you notice? It's like one of the popular magazine's IQ test: "Which one doesn't fit with the others?"

Ah yes! Apple's iPod stands out - all the others are generic descriptors, while the iPod is the only named product!

To my eye, that's the sign of a marketing iCon! To be given an entire category on your own, a unique descriptor, says you OWN this market.

Now here's another! I was walking near my home last night, when I noticed the Tattersall's (Lottery Agency) electronic sign in East Caulfield, which carries product advertisements and news. Lo and behold, I looked up to see this:

So, I did two things.

I took a picture (using the great Optio S4 digital camera from Pentax) and bought a lottery ticket. (Update: A loser).

Now, can you imagine the same sign saying iRiver introduces updated H-120 mp3 player? I think not! The spelling of iPod was even correct: not IPOD, or Ipod, or IPod.

And what an interesting juxtaposition too! Because above the Apple iPod story, is written the header, "News on the move". How appropriate, especially since I so often walk with my iPod (as I was last night) and listening to recordings of news broadcasts, especially IT and Mac stuff, like Doug Kaye's IT conversations and Shawn King's "Your Mac Life".

So here have been a couple of ways of knowing when a product has reached a significant place in the communal mindset, apart from the front covers of news magazines:

We know there is a term for when a television show reaches a peak then it's all down hill from there. It's called "Jumping the Shark", named after an episode of "Happy Days", which then went off its game from there!

So what's the term when a product has "made it" and reaches iConic status? To be podded?

(Update: July 22): If you've come here from "Your Mac Life" or my first mention in MacSurfer, you might want to read my piece about the iPod posted to this blog soon after COMDEX earlier in 2004 when the HP/iPod announcement was made. The referred-to pictures of HP CEO Carly Fiorini were lost when my blog software crashed (do a Google for "Carly iPod" and you'll see lots of her holding up an HPBlue 3g iPod). But to read my post about the history of the iPod and a very funny list discussion of idiot prognosticators predicting how Apple got it so wrong with the iPod on its release in October, 2001, go here and have a good laugh. Just as well so many used pseudonyms to protect their identities.

Posted: Wed - July 21, 2004 at 01:09 PM         |

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