Matt picked up his iPod months ago, and we've had some pretty gnarly AIM arguments about the gadget. One of my biggest problems was the price. $400 for 10gig of music? Music? As I've said before, music just isn't my bag. There's one group that I'm passionate about (They Might Be Giants), most of my other favorites stem from college days, and everything else can go hang. I generally consider music to be even lower on the Interest totem pole than movies/tv... and I have an extremely low opinion of that entertainment wasteland. (If you're making a chart, I place sports even further down.)
So why did I buy one? I think I can trace it back to one moment. Mike and I had started playing Doomtown, and he suggested we play some background music. And I had nothing to play. Rather, I had plenty of cds, but nothing to play them with.
See, we recently bought a big wraparound couch, which is so big that it actually pushed my old Sony stereo out of the room. Rhonda and I never listen to music at home (it's true!), so we never noticed. The best I could do to satisfy Mike's natural inclination towards multiple simultaneous sensory inputs was to play a chosen cd with the PS2... and that is too annoying to expect me to try that too often.
So our iPod is now our stereo. I was up until 7:00am Saturday night digitizing 90% of our cd collection, putting over 4gigs of music on the iPod. That endeavor made me re-think my longheld notion that I'm not into music, believe me. A $4 Radio Shack adaptor now sits by the surround sound receiver, so we can jack the iPod in and easily skip through whatever songs or albums we want. (By the way, what the hell is wrong with the non-spellchecking idiots who submit to CDDB? I fixed about twenty to thirty spelling errors.)
But keeping Mike distracted between Doomtown plays wasn't the only reason that manifested itself. No, his mournful and disappointed stare when I balked at providing aural pleasure was just the Final Reason Required for purchase. We also plan to use it for long car trips, as neither of our vehicles have ever had a cd player. Plus, it's damn-ass cool.
I still think it's too expensive for what it does. I don't like the metal on the iPod rear and the remote, as it attracts fingerprints almost magnetically. The iTunes-to-iPod sync is great, but I find it weird that you can't do the reverse and create playlists on the iPod that then are sent to iTunes.
I also think the very concept of an attached remote on a portable device is ridiculous. That was another key point in my fights with Matt. Basically, the iPod remote sits on another cable that goes between the iPod and the earbuds, making the entire cable string another two feet longer. So instead of reaching down two feet to the iPod sitting on your belt, you can use the remote clipped to your lapel to skip tracks, play/pause, and adjust volume.
That's great, if you're jogging. Or if you're a veal calf. But unless your iPod is locked inside a lead-lined safe, you're really not saving much effort there. If the remote was wireless, then you could stash the iPod at the bottom of your backpack, snake the earbuds out to your skull, and hide the remote in your interior vest pocket. That strikes me as more useful: The remote is handy but not being forced into service as jewelry, and the iPod is completely safe instead of hanging off your waistline. Matt suggested I was a fool and that you'd need line of sight to make the remote work via infrared. I retorted that he was a complete moron and that you could use RF, not infrared. He further announced that I was a sublime jackass, and the RF receiver would add too much extra bulk to the iPod's slim design. I denounced his ability to form logical thoughts based on his utter lack of experience and pointed him towards the RF-based Nintendo Wavebird wireless controller: a AA battery inside the remote could R-freaking-F to a receiver in the iPod no bigger than an average man's pinky finger.
I don't remember what happened next, because an ad for Drumline just aired, and I was thinking how it seems like a marching band version of Top Gun, with extra booty.
Anyway, with the iPod, the Hiptop, and the Game Boy Advance, I now have quite a lot of portable gear, each more important than the last. This is why I fairly demand that Rhonda do all the driving these days.
