The iPod revolution

[sbisson]

Glenn Mcdonald, of the excellent music blog The War Against Silence, continues to switch, and this week discusses just how much an iPod changed his listening habits.

It's exactly my experience.

The iPod is one of those devices which has begun to change the world, and it's a world that industry organisations like the RIAA can't roll back.

Comments

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

I know I've got an iPod I like it; but I don't see it as hugely different from the other hard drive MP3 players, like the one I had 2 or 3 years ago. Well implemented concept, not seminal product, surely; if Compaq had built the (snaps fingers, scratches head: what was it called) player designed for them, it could have done the same, surely?

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Why is iPod different?

I don't know.

But it is.

It's different enough that people who, a couple of years ago, when I talked to them about the Hanjo PJB100, gave me that look which says "Liam's doing his weird geeky enthusiasm about something incomprehensible again".

The PJB100 did the job, but you have to be a geek to get it.

Now, the iPod is...

small

sexy

cute

cool

smaller than the devices it seeks to replace

blessed with an awesomely simple UI - vastly better than Creative's, frex

comes with a really fast interconnect

pleasingly free of knobs and sockets

partners with a wickedly simple piece of software, iTunes, which is...

a player

a ripper

a library manager

and also in itself pretty and easy and accessible, which none of the Windows ones are - I think Apple knows this, which is why it's happy to sell a MusicMatch-dependant Windows iPod, knowing it won't hurt Mac sales, it's a sodding £500 hardware ADVERT for Apple design.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

that's it! Hanjo Personal JukeBox
thanks!

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Good bit of writing, that!

I still don't really 'do' the blog thing - most of 'em don't interest me at all. The recent thing about "sex blogs" somewhere - bOING bOING, perhaps? - was a case in point. They were so dull! So dull and worthy and American! Ick!

But that is a good piece.

Top comment:

For the moment, people like me still need a little too much space, but 7000 CDs as MP3s is somewhere on the order of half a terabyte, and I could buy two 250GB firewire drives right now for less than I'd spend on the shelving for that many CDs (hmm, hadn't actually done that part of the calculation before).

Whoo, baby! Now that is a telling point!

Now. Someone tell me how I can fill this here brand new Creative Jukebox Zen from my OS X Mac full of MP3s? [Grrrr]

[drpete.livejournal.com]

The iPod is cool. Official. I'd got mine on the table on a Midland Mainline train today. The young man opposite enquired if it was a 20gb. I said it was. "Oh man, they're so COOL" he said, "I wish I could afford one".

I tend to use mine almost exclusively these days on universal song shuffle. That way I get to listen to material I might not hear too often. -Of course I'm still trying to fill the damn thing up again after the first one blew up, but hey ho.