"Do you have the time?/To listen to me whine?"

Grow up. If the shortcomings of your IPod are your most pressing problem then you are luckier than most.

Go tell someone in Iraq about the major difficulties you have had trying to get the perfect playlist. I'm sure you'll garner a lot of sympathy.

May I propose an article topic? Not enough choices at my local Starbucks. Or inconsiderate people who open their door too fast and scratch my SUV. I'm sure everyone can relate to them. Forget poverty, racism, and a mess of a war.

Should be about the abject misery that is the life of those in the Third World. Or a story about how Iraq is worse than Vietnam. Or stories about Bush stomping puppies to death while urinating on the Bill of Rights. Dammit, I want my doom and gloom!

I own an ipod, and I am proud to say that it is filled with 10 GB of music downloaded for free off LimeWire. I use it at the gym, or occasionally when relaxing outside at night by the fire. It didn't change my life, nor do I play it loud enough for hearing damage, nor do I feel that I couldn't live without it. It's just another thing that I am lucky enough to be able to afford, that can make certain moments of life a little more pleasant.

Everyone just chill out.

Perhaps the author would feel better about what the iPod has done to the listening experience if music would just stay obedient.

Perhaps the author would feel better about how society has adopted the iPod if people would just stop being so damn creative.

Perhaps the author would feel better about the progress of technology if innovators got everything right on the first try.

Unfortunately, none of those situations are reflective of the reality we live in - which is why the iPod seems more perfect than it is.

Spare me from this psuedo-sociologic B.S. - I didn't realize that being an "active" listener (seeking out music, taking the time to browse the back catalogs of artists, gambling on new music) was such an effort.

I tried iTunes but it's a butt ugly site and too commercial and hyped up for my tastes. Rhapsody has an attractive site with lots of information for nerds like me who want to learn the difference between trip hop and ambient or classical and romantic.

But I don't have an mp3 player. I'm 50 years old and so far my hearing has been holding up pretty well. I'm not going to mess with my hearing by acquiring the habit of listening to music on headphones.

I've read that too much listening to loud music on headphones is the real reason why so many rock musicians have gone deaf.

Here's the picture of the future I'm getting from Salon:

Twenty years from now, there will be no real actual journalism left in the country, all information will be transmitted by blog comments, it'll be really hot, gasoline will be $1000 per gallon, and everyone over 40 will be stone deaf.

We have a saying in my family - the iPod knows. Mine is engraved on the back with the words: Rock and Roll 1967-1981. And that's exactly what it plays, over and over and over again. Hmmm...maybe it deosn't really know anything...

Jesus wept, Apple didn't invent music just a handy gadget to enjoy it on.

As I read this article I kept expecting a breathless Patrick Bateman-esque rhapsody about the Huey Lewis and the News albums he's got saved on it to appear any minute.

Whats next weeks Apple wank-fest? How the Apple i-mate helped me forget about a hundred thousand Iraqi war dead?

Why has the iPod grown so quickly? (And yes, there are other portable music players, and they've grown too, just not as fast.)

Nobody mentions what it is socially: an end to radio. Hopefully, at some point, an end to all broadcast. If you guys can't program your music experiences, you're pitiful. One of the iPod's effects has been on radio programming, many of which are now giving you "shuffle play" with fewer announcers mucking up the programming with inane chatter.

And nobody mentioned podcasts. There are some great shows out there. I listen to music when I jog, and to podcasts when I drive back and forth from work. My radio hasn't been on for about two years.

All hail to the new media, and the iPod as its messenger!

And they should make a movie about Farhad Manjoo, and call it, "Trivial Minds."

I'm 58 and having a fine time with my nano, especially the shuffle option which, as my good friend Gary Levine points out (and author Levy appears to understand) borders on musical masturbation. Load in 1000 songs that have personal meaning to YOU, and voila, a soundtrack that follows you everywhere and has the added charm of random play.

It's true, classical and jazz do not reproduce as well on the iPod as pop/rock. But that quibble fades when I get into my car, plug in the nano, and hear (to recap a recent sequence): Bernstein's "Candide Overture" Dexter Gordon's "Love for Sale", surf music, I'm Looking Through You" from the Beatles Anthology, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto (second movement), Ralph Covert's "Faces in Picasso's Notebook", and Patti Lupone belting "Blow Gabriel Blow" from the Anything Goes revival ... sheer musical bliss that beats talk radio anyday.

But it's not a substitute for turning off the telephone and the TV and listening to a fine CD from start to finish, engaging one's brain and emotions throughout -- or, for that matter, hearing live music in a small club or large concert venue. The key is to make room in one's life for all kinds of musical nourishment.

I-Pod listeners,

This week I shopped at Tower Records for the last time. I used to work at Tower and have an enormous CD collection, about half of which I bought at Tower. In case you haven't heard, Tower records is being liquidated. I also own an I-Pod. There are a lot of reasons why the music industry has changed and Tower is going under. I guess I-Pod has something to do with it but it is only part of the problem.

Over the years I have noticed that most music listeners only know the big hits by the Beatles or Hendrix and it is only the true officianados that appreciate the gems buried deep on "Axis Bold as Love" or "Achtung Baby". These people are not the majority. I-Pod doesn't change that.

I use my I-Pod and I-Tunes in shuffle mode at work or when I am at the gym. I delete the files about twice a week so I always have a fresh supply of tracks to shuffle through. I always listen to a new album twice from start to finish before I put the tracks in shuffle mode. When I want to listen to a Symphony by Beethoven or "Dark Side of the Moon", I put the I-Pod away and turn on a real stereo.

I own an I-Pod but I don't use it like most people. I sort my tracks by the last date they were played and delete the files by date so I am not listening to the same stuff over and over again. The same people that never listened to albums still don't listen to albums. I-Pod isn't the problem, it just makes it easier to do what they were already doing.

Steve