Against the iPod

It's so completely uncool to not like the iPod. But I'm putting myself out there as someone who feels very ambivalent about it. It's so very easy to call our the typical adulations for the product -- it's sleek, it's fast, it works, it's Apple.

But here are my summer-cold-fueled negatives on the product -- negatives which I have never seen previously:

• The iPod separates us from the very physical reality that we inhabit. It's similar of course to the now 25-year-old Walkman but the iPod makes it far too easy for a person to ignore, or worse, sneer at, the concrete.
• The iPod holds too much music. I know that more is more when it comes to technology. But no one should have access to that many songs in one's pocket; there's something grotesque about the millions of hours of musical arrangement and production being reduced to a tiny replay apparatus.
• The iPod, despite Apple's best attempt at creating an integrated and legal music store, by its nature encourages the illegal downloading of music. 'Nuff said.
• The white ear buds on the iPod are ugly, inhuman, and unworkable. For some reason, the white color of the buds on any skin color looks horrendous, fetid, silly.
• The iPod's streamlined design and button functionality has nothing to do with music, musical instruments, or the history of musical recording, playback, or re-authoring.

Boy, I'm glad to get that off my chest. Now if I could just do the same thing with this cold.

Posted by Andrew at July 23, 2004 3:51 PM