Well, here goes again.

Will someone please tell me what the draw is to the iPod? Is there some brainwave frequency involved or what? My wife has one. My 21 year old son has one. I don't have one and could not care less. WHAT IS THE BIG DEAL WITH THE IPOD?? I mean, it's an MP3 player for goodness sake, not a direct connection to God. It's also an MP3 player that forces you to do things its way, and yet people pledge their children's souls to it.

The only thing I can figure is that Jobs (the worlds biggest tech toad) signed a deal with Satan, or there's meth embedded in the ear buds or something. How can the iPod, a cheap toy that costs $400.00, be doing better than the Segway, and equally lame concept that costs $3,000.00. You can't even ride an iPod!

Don't even get me started on iTunes. I design and write software, and iTunes is not one of the more elegant UIs i have seen. In some ways, it is counter intuitive. It's a rude piece of software that takes over any machine it is installed on like a virus (though I know how to confound its evil ways).

The writer of this article needs to do a close read and try real hard to prove there is not some compulsive insanity involved in the "iPod revolution".

Poco

For a "new age" company Apple has done very well--and not just with the I-Pod.

I presently have two dead one's at home, given to me by my daughter/step daughter after the hard-drive fails, in hopes I could recover some of the music. When I went to purchase a replacement I tried very hard to find a way to recycle the dead ones--I was even willing to pay shipping. Alas, no such mechanism exists.

Come on Apple--how hard would this be? Think of the possibilities here for education...

From Joyce Maynard ignoring reality and her very real in-the-flesh kids to whinge over CHOOSING to abort, to this Manjoo guy whinging over some pretty shallow bitches about his iPod (sorry, I couldn't stomach reading beyond page 2),to all the whiny Salonistas in between (do I need to say their names??) - good lord, is THIS what passes for reflection and introspection these days????

Whoever it was that said "The unexamined life is not worth living" sure never read Salon these days. Sure didn't mean this babyish, narcissistic navel-gazing writ large.

The Salon-examined life is NOT WORTH READING.

Enough already with the narcissitic babies!!!!!

All MP3 players use a lossy compression format. That means that the music you are hearing sounds like crap compared to the recording in its original format. Of course you have to have some actual appreciation for music, not just noise or background clutter, and you have to know what good music actually sounds like. I read a short bio on some clown musician described as "anti-folk" (see the Rock Snob's Dictionary. A Rock Snob must be the musical equivalent of a Rolex Ranger Harley dude) . His cool new music was produced using "lo-fi" production techniques. iPod=lo-fi. He must be producing music for iPod listening pleasure. Go figure.

Poco

All your tunes are belong to us!

I've had an iPod for about four years and I like it very much: It enables me to carry around a huge variety of music, including those "deep cuts" and oddball tracks that I generally wouldn't bother with if I had to tote a physical CD. I listen to the BBC News podcast on it, I listen to books, I catch up with "This American Life" and the DemocracyNow podcast: It's like a TiVo for my pocket. I can take basically my whole music collection to a party, or flip through some pictures for a friend. Relax, it's just a tool.

It's strange to me that the device seems to polarize people so much, and it also seems to encourage some broad-stroke generalizing: I listen to my iPod on the train every day, while I'm reading, despite the poster who suggested that I'm post-literate or a-literate or whatever the phrase was. Why would someone else's pleasure--at no expense to you--make you so angry?

There was a time when I would listen to music in my bedroom. I would sit and read the liner notes that came inside the LPs of bands like Big Black and the Dead Kennedys while I listened to the record as it played on the turntable.

These days, I write software for a living. And while I write that software, I have white earbuds in my ear connected to my 2nd Generation 20GB iPod. This was the iPod when it still had physical buttons, but had just received a refresh that added the virtual wheel and 20GB capacity.

What is the battery life on such an old iPod like, you ask? When the battery became long in the tooth and short on the charge, I easily replaced it myself. It turns out that a new battery for your iPod is only a Google search away. I bought mine from Newer Technology. It was pretty easy to install and took about 5 minutes and cost about $20. A year after I replaced the battery, my iPod has better battery life than the day I unboxed it. Therefore, I estimate that my iPod is even cheaper to use than my previous music player, a Rio 500 which used only a single AA battery each week. This is why I am irritated when people criticize the iPod over battery issues.

Also, I keep hearing about problems with iPods becoming "scratched". I don't understand this. Mine still looks perfectly fine. True, I haven't thrown it across an asphalt parking lot, but I have never kept it in a protective case of any kind. Heck - I'm still using the original ear buds and the whole thing looks and works just fine. Even my daughter, who is 11 years old, has an iPod Shuffle and it looks perfectly fine after over a year of everyday use. She doesn't keep hers in a case either. She keeps it in her coat pocket and listens to it on the school bus. (And she likes Punk too - who says kids today don't have good taste in music?)

It is hard (but not impossible) to import vinyl LPs and 45s into iTunes. It was much easier to rip by CD collection. I was even able to buy the latest Fugazi album from the iTunes Music Store.

Honestly, I've purchased Apple products before that didn't live up to my expectations. For example, I am the proud owner of an Apple QuickTake 200 digital camera that I purchased in 1997. This is most terrible camera I have ever used: the pictures are blurry unless your subject is very still (and my two year old daughter was rarely that still), the camera does not have a built in flash, the camera requires 4 very expensive high energy lithium AA batteries and they don't last very long in the camera either. More expensive than film photography and bad pictures, too. Steve Jobs canceled the QuickTake cameras when he returned to Apple.

There are plenty of bad products in the world to criticize - even made by Apple. The iPod isn't one of them, though.