iPod's Two-Year Anniversary

the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow writes "Two years ago this month, Apple Computer released a small, sleek-looking device it called the iPod. This Sunday's New York Times Magazine has a long article on it: The Guts of a New Machine."

Comments

Initial reaction wasn't favorable

[kajoob]

I know everybody is going to come on here and praise the ipod, but if I recall correctly, most slashdotters (even the mac zealots) bashed the ipod when it was launched. Slashdotters not infalliable? That's unpossible! ;-)

Re:iPod durability

[Fulkkari]

When iPod harddrive spins up, it's usually in the end of the song. That means that the risk of it spinning up in the middle of a song with you jumping around like crazy is pretty small.

My iPod has fell a couple of times to the floor while playing, and nothing happened. I heard from my cousin that some Apple salesmen even threw an iPod against a wall... or was it floor to demonstrate it. But if you're unlucky with the harddrive spinning at that time, it's propably not going to take that. Anyways, don't try this at home!

Re:Marketing geniuses

[hitmark]

the one thing apple does diffrent then the rest of the it world is that they sellan experience, not a machine, not a os but an experience. in many ways they are closer to disney or macdonalds then ibm and dell...

this is why they gloss over stuff like hardware specs when they try to sell something and give the gui and user experience har hard beating to make sure its perfect.

in many ways apple products are perfect for the general user that wants a pc thats as easy to use as your average tv, stereo or video/dvd recorder...

sure they stuffed a BSD kernel under the hood but that just means that they can scoop the cream of the open source world, hook the power users that was looking at linux or one of the BSD users and still get people to buy theyre propriatary hardware...

no, give me linux and a joe blow mainboard.

I agree with Moby

[tbmaddux]

From the original article, Moby says:

"...it's so elegant and logical, it becomes part of your life so quickly that you can't remember what it was like beforehand.''

Like the subject says, I agree. I've had mine (30 GB) for a year now. My wife got one of the first 5 GB models and is now using a 20 GB model. We have used our iPods on two cross-country drives in the past 18 months... the freedom from the morass of country music that blankets about 75% of the distance between the two coasts is alone worth the iPod's price. When I discovered that play counts on my iPod would be updated to my computer when I synced, I started using only the iPod to listen to music. It connects to my stereo via the line-out on a spare dock. My CDs now just gather dust.

The iPod competitors so far have lacked the interface and/or small size to be navigable with one hand. It will be interesting to see what Apple comes up with next. Can drive sizes keep going up and be useful? Do we need a 200 GB iPod?

Re:I think it's also kind of a gateway drug...

[generica1]

That's completely true.... I just got a G5 last weekend after owning my iPod for about 4 months. I convinced my boss to buy it for me (we are an all-mac company and I am the I.T. Manager) and traded him my old PC for it (who he is giving to his father-in-law).

All in all, the iPod i bought really made me salivate for a computer that matched its elegance, logical design and stable, worry-free performance. Bye bye, Windows-flavoured PC... (I love *NIX but I've never had the time or interest to spend days and days configuring my computer to do even simple tasks like recognize and use all of my hardware, thus I've just casually ran Windows at home for years).