iPod, therefore I am
Yes, I have joined the faithful hordes of those who have one of those shiny white icons called iPod For those who have been living under a rock for the last couple of years, this device primarily built to play audio, but does so much more. My iPod “saga” is probably much more interesting to me than it would be to anyone else, so let’s just say that I was able to get a large discount on the thing through a special offer on Audible.com, but once ordered, the thing was perpetually backordered. I finally broke down and went to an Apple store and bought one because not so much because I couldn’t take the waiting (I have been “waiting” to get one of these for many months, if not more) but more the uncertainty of when it would arrive – the last estimate I got was 5 weeks away!
For those who are new to iPods, like myself, the vast commercial and social entity surrounding the thing seems a bit intimidating. The iPod itself is designed (like much of Apple’s products) with ease of use and simplicity in mind. Perhaps because of this, the documentation that is offered is fairly basic. There are three excellent resources for iPod owners that I have come across, iPodLounge, iPoding, and iPodHacks.These sites offer news, FAQ’s, and large discussion forums filled with info. But, of course all this information is a bit daunting and the FAQ’s actually don’t seem to add much to Apple’s own very basic info. I found myself actually pining for a good old-fashioned device called a book!
iPod: The Missing Manual to the rescue. There are a few books out there on iPods. “iPod: The Missing Manual” is probably the newest one, although another, “Secrets of the iPod, Third Edition”, has just been updated and re-released. The Missing Manual is a series from O’Reilly, the venerated computer book publisher.Their computer books are excellent, albeit often very much geared towards programmers as opposed to beginners. The Missing Manual series, however, seems not to have such a technical approach. I found the iPod: The Missing Manual a very easy read. In fact I read the entire book yesterday while ripping my CD collection. Of course, much of the book is divided into talking about Windows vs. Mac. This isn’t really because of the iPod itself, since the latest iPods come out of the box compatible with either and act virtually identical whether you use them with a PC or Mac. The differences come with the myriad of computer programs that help you do things with your iPod, including most importantly the ones that let you rip MP3’s, manage your music collection, and transfer this to your iPod. Although, according to the book, the program Mac folk have been using for years to do this, called “iTunes,” Apple has promised to put out a Windows version by the end of 2003. Up until then, Windows users use MusicMatch. In case your local bookseller doesn’t have the Missing Manual book, there are a couple other ones out there which probably are just as good, including “How to Do Everything With Your iPod“.
Some of my friends and family would ask me why I wanted an iPod so much. After all, these things aren’t cheap! There are other devices that do similar things for a good deal less, or do a lot more for the same price. But the one thing these other devices don’t have is compatibility with the audio book service Audible.com, which I subscribe to. Of course iPod fans will also talk about how well they are designed, from their outer shell to their user interface. And while design (especially in a user interface) is important, I sometimes wonder if it worth the very large premium that Apple charges for it. Then again there is also the huge community of both iPod users and third-party vendors who produce both software and hardware for it. No other device has this kind of userbase, especially one so fanatical! Maybe this is due to the fact that the iPod is made by a very large, solid company (one who engenders a great deal of loyalty via its other products) backing it and that it was the first MP3 player out there to use hard drive technology to enable it to store gigabytes worth of songs. Maybe if another large company like Microsoft or Sony got into the fray, the iPod would really have some competition. Competition is almost always good for the consumer, but iPod fans (fanatics) seem to have done fine without another juggernaut out there.
It also turns out that the iPod is useful in ways I hadn’t even realized. I can actually use the thing as a portable hard drive, although I will probably need to get a USB cable to make that feature useful. Also, I can actually synchronize all my Outlook contacts, calendar events, to-do’s, and notes onto the iPod using a handy program called iPodSync (there are others as well). Who’d a thunk? And here my phone, Danger’s Sidekick, a device that was built with personal information management options from the ground up still doesn’t have a synching option a year after they promised one! I suppose this is mainly because the iPod is a bit more hackable than the Sidekick!
Seeing how well portable hard drive technology works with the iPod makes me wonder why it hasn’t been implemented more often not just for listening to music but for PDA’s like the PalmPilot or PocketPC. I suppose one might argue that the 32-64MB that these devices typically hold (along with an additional up to 512MB or more through an external smartmedia, SD, MMC, or memory stick card), is plenty for almost any use. But then again, multimedia players are showing up now that processor capability has increased. You can play MP3’s and even video. So why not have some of the vast storage that one might find on a player that is built ONLY to play audio and/or video? Or maybe that’s just the annoying convergist (?) in me? It’s funny, I used to take the approach, since this is what you see in the world of hi-fi audio/video equipment, that It’s better to have a single device devoted to a single function. It’s seems logical that if this is the case, the quality that’s delivered will be much greater since the unit can specialize. But when the whole object is portability, this approach doesn’t work of course! It’s true that combination devices usually are not nearly as usable as ones that focus on a particular use. But who wants to carry around a PDA, a phone, a walkman, a GPS, and portable device for getting online?
In any case, I can see now how the iPod had developed a following. I still think it could be cheaper, but then perhaps this is one reason for the following – people have spent such a big chunk of money on theirs that they feel they need to cherish it and devote much more attention and time to it than if they had picked it up for cheap. I got the middle range of the newer models, one that has 15 gigabytes, a number that would have been unimaginable when I got my first computer hard drive about 13 years ago, one that was a mear 200GB and was probably ten times the size and weight of my new shiny iPod! But already I am thinking I should have gotten the much larger 30GB model so that I can not only fit my entire music collection and a dozen audio books, but also my fiancée’s music collection and a couple dozen more audio books to boot! But I suppose if I wait a year Apple will come out with a new iPod that holds 60GB and plays video, so perhaps I should wait?
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My caffein-addled brain is on a tear. I often get this way, even when I’m just drinking decaf. Something about coffee sets my mind in motion. Caffeine just adds some speed. I have been out all morning (and part of the afternoon) wondering my neighborhood of Adams Morgan in DC as well as a bit south into the Dupont Circle neighborhood. It is the perfect day to do this. There is no humidity, it is warm, but with a nice breeze. Perfectly blue sky and sunny. It’s also a Sunday morning where lots of other folks like me are out just enjoying a lazy Sunday before the workweek starts again tomorrow. If only life were a perpetual series of Sundays like this. I could get used to it. Then again, experience seems to show that days like this have such value because they are not so ordinary. If every day were like this, perhaps it would just be boring. Or at least we’d take it for granted much more. I remember a year or two ago there were big swaths of time during the spring and/or summer where the weather was just as perfect as today. I would take every opportunity to be outside. I’m sure there were days where I stayed inside despite not having to, but I do remember always thinking, “Take advantage of it!”
I mentioned surfing the Internet, so I thought I’d elaborate a little on this. I have a phone that lets me browse the web, send and receive email, and send and receive instant messages as long as I can receive a signal (which is often very easy in the middle of DC, but sometimes surprisingly fickle). Although the screen is small, black and white, and won’t let me visit just any page, it will do in a snap. I eagerly await the day when I upgrade to a device that has a slightly larger color screen that has fewer limitations in what pages it can load, has a faster speed, and can even do wifi. Wifi, for those not familiar, is another word for wireless networking. You see this mostly in laptops, but an increasing number of smaller devices like Palmpilots, PocketPC’s, etc. are starting to incorporate the capability with varying degrees of success. Of course you can also put a wireless network card in a full-blown desktop PC and thus avoid having to deal with all the ugly wires.