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RUMOR: Apple handheld device on the way?28 Comments
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they are really scrapping the bottom of the barrel over at the New York Times. Nothing else to write, what about writing on something that’s been a phenonemon for decades and pretend it’s something new? How about that? The writer wants to pretend the isolation is very different from that of before simply because of the amount of time you can listen to your music? Well, I certainly remember carrying cassettes and CDs, and it was no different. More than that, I don’t walk about 8 hours a day just exhausting the batteries and seeing how long I can wait before having to hear the city.
I found this article strangely deceptive. It really singles out the iPod for attack, and tried to find every construction possible to put its capabilities in bad light. Again, all the while pretending it’s something really new. Maybe, just maybe, the thing that is really new is the fact that you are enjoying your day more because you have access to what you like, rather than the small subset that you could carry. Not to mention, of course, the community feeling of being fellow iPod users, or the music sharing via iTunes, and all that. Strangely absent.
This is exactly the kind of article that the anti-Apple crowd have been reduced to writing when confronted with Apple’s multi-pronged success. Demean the cost (eMac, iBook), then the speed (G5), then the proprietary software (Panther), then the DRM (iPod and iTunes), then the dangers to socializing when you share your music (iTunes), and now the societal impact of the success of the iPod. They just take a different form now that you have no arguments about quality, size, workmanship, reliability, or even viruses!
Remember the Cnet article about the irrelevency of the Virginia Tech supercomputer?
Beware the Microsoft media machine. It’s more pervasive than you can imagine.
I agree that the story does not do justice to the iPod culture. I think that the writer is mostly concerned about people living in thier own world and not interacting with others as they normally would. Im a college student and I can be seen all over campus with my white wires. More than one person has commented to me about not seeing me without it, what can I say? The other people I see with iPods we all nod to each other, a sign of respect I guess. Other people dont understand.
if i see someone with an ipod i interact more, i start pawing and asking whats playing. that’s just me
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Oh, come on! I’m from a small town, and the first time I went walking around Manhatten, the first thing I noticed was how everyone else just looked at the ground and minded their own business. There was no interaction, there was no acknowledgement by anyone of anyone else. Just look at the ground and keep moving. I must have looked like a real tourist when I actually caught someones gaze and acknowledged their existance. It kind of freaked me out. So I guess it makes sense that iPod owners, sharing a knowing glance, might seem odd to everyone else.
if having fewer people ask me for change on the street is a cocoon, call me Mr. Butterfly
I was walkaing around Manhatten yesterday with my wife, and thus did not have my iPod deployed as usual. My interaction with others than my wife consisted of:
1) Having seven fake Rolexes stuck under my nose, where usually these idiots leave me alone when I have headphones on.
2) Being annoyed by panhandlers–another group than generally leaves the headphone enabled alone.
3) Stopping by Academy Records and being bowled over three separate times by the extreme body odor of three different fellow customers. Can’t say headphones would have helped me with that.
Meanwhile, I noticed multiple iPod users giving each other small nods as they noticed each other’s white headphone cords.
My conclusions:
1) All in all, having an iPod on apparently made for more pleasant interaction.
2) Any lab wishing representative samples of the range of offensive body odors existing in New York City need only stop by Academy Records on 18th Street.
Michael:
I think we need to lighten up a little here!
If Apple have developed a Walkman for the 21st century and a new paradigm for creating a personal audio universe, the maxim should be that any publicity – no matter how cynical or sneering – is good publicity.
If everyone’s shooting at Apple because their products are disrupting the marketplace (as per Virginia Tech) or creating new marketplaces (as per iPod), they must be doing something right.
I personally wouldn’t sweat about it.
I listen to porn audio on my iPod. It’s quite an interesting score for walking through downtown, visiting shops and such… “excuse me, do you have these in a large?” *pant-pant-pant-screeech* “yes we do have a large –i’ll have to dig it out of the back for you” *uhhh-uh-u-u-pant-grunttt*
The article is pointless, useless and totally soulless. What is your point Warren St. John? Is this the only thing you could come up with? Truly pathetic.
One question to you Warren: How much M$ is paying you for writing such pointless articles?
Articles like your have emptied the souls and minds of a lot of individuals in NYC and other western cities. Don’t hang your shit on one of the best selling music product ever made.
Your article has made your name less credible Sir.
Peace
This article is bullshit. You can tell this guy walks from the front door to the taxi, and that is it.
Maybe this guy is a microsoft shill but the rest of that stuff Michael talks about is true. This is the first thing apple did in a long time that was done right the first time. All they did before was make more expensive crap than the other guys. Lots of guys with macs think they are idiots for buying them but make like they are too cool anyway. Anyway most c0omputer guys are losers anyway.
people are strange. they wanna be different so they can all be the same.
I live in the Village, am zealously pro-Mac and love my iPod. But I do have to say that this article ran the day after I was walking down the street, slowed my pace (seeing a car was about to drive up close to the curb) and was run into forcefully from behind by a guy listening to his iPod. He apologized, and we both continued down the street, whereas I slowed again to cross the street and was again run into – same guy!
Never happened with Walkman listeners – I’ve lived and walked in NYC for 20 years. I think we’re just much more deeply into what we’re hearing and do need to – pay attention! Gonna get run over!
These PC loving idiots are really trying to come up with a way to discredit apple from their recent success. and morty in hamhattan needs to look at the costs again. i mean comon you cant compare costs from a small car with no features to a limosine and expect prices to be similar. first and formost the os has always worked. pc’s sorry but no deal! then the accessories work. apple may not have 10 trillion programs but when you figure half of ms’s programs are the same and dont work for crap and the other half, the ones that work, are viruses made to crash your computer. so pc using trolls just ran out of excuses sorry but apple wins again!
Some of you need to lighten up. An article like this comes out every once in a while. It’s purpose is to mourn the passing of the good ol’ days when men tipped their hats to parasol-twirling ladies. Or whatever days are good and ol’ and missed by the author.
It is hip to use the hot-seller of the day as an example of how we are being boxed-in by society. An article like this was written about the Model-T, the television set, and the walkman. Now one has been written about the iPod. No big deal, except that it’s proof-positive that iPods are here to stay, in one form or another.
Macs and their users are generaly segregationists when it comes to computers. They indulge in an attitude of superiority and are generally motivted by negitive views rather that positive insights. Take for instance the price and availability of Mac products and the attitude of the Mac world. Why would I want to pay more for a product with less compatibilty and a general attitude that states Mac’s and their users are in a world of their own. I want to be integrated with the rest of the world, not seperated in a cultist group(Macs).Think how Apple would take off if they released their computer parts to the public, so that we are able to build our own Macs. I don’t trust anyone to build my computer or even open the case for me. That is why I am and always will be a PC USER. Unless Apple changes their ideals along with the entire Mac community.
okacalla who said it was a contest. apple gets no sales because it cost too much. The regular stuff sells because it is cheap. Hard for you to figure out? I guess i am not really writing this because I have a virus?
I hear apple has a new os. is that the one that always worked or the was it one of the last 5 they had. Glad you like the one you bought, too bad it costs so much to be the smart guy that has to argue ab0ut it.
Z, don’t blame Apple users for the Mac being a relatively closed system–that’s a company determination, not the users. The hard core Mac heads just absorb corporate memes well. If IBM hadn’t come out with the 970 line and Jobs had appeared at the next major Mac event saying, “Motorola is permanently in the crapper, luckily we’ve been keeping a parallel compile of the OS ready to go on Intel and…ta dah…here is the new 3 Ghz Pentium 4 Mac!” it would have taken about 3.5 hours for them all to fall in line.
Looks to me that the guy just dug out a 1980 article on the Sony Walkman and did some search/exchange in the text.
What’s the difference to the classic Walkman in terms of interaction with the world? It’s just that iPods are very conspicuous and they’re sold more than any other mp3 player. So they have become synonymous of the mp3 players. Just like the Walkman. Remember? To have a Walkman knockoff by Aiwa was so uncool. You had to have the real thing. I see this article as a sign of the iPod’s success.
robiWan wrote:
I listen to porn audio on my iPod. It’s quite an interesting score for walking through downtown, visiting shops and such… “excuse me, do you have these in a large?” *pant-pant-pant-screeech* “yes we do have a large –i’ll have to dig it out of the back for you” *uhhh-uh-u-u-pant-grunttt*
I JUST HOPE YOU BOUGHT THOSE PORN SOUNDTRACKS FROM A LEGITIMATE SOURCE, LIKE THE iTMS! EACH YEAR, THOUSANDS OF PORN ACTORS AND ACTRESSES ARE HAVING THE FOOD (OR WHATEVER), RIPPED OF THEIR MOUTHS FROM INSENSITIVE PIRATES LIKE YOU! REMEMBER KIDS…BUY, DON’T STEAL PORN SOUNDTRACKS!!!!! (Brought to you by National Porn Soundtrack Commitee. Give generously!) ;D
“That is why I am and always will be a PC USER.”
Well ring-a-ding-ding, Z. So why are you lurking on a Mac site? I’ll always be a Mac user, but I don’t feel the need to visit PC-related sites and spout off. To each his own, I always say. And I hate to point this out to you, but people who build their own computers are in a VERY small minority, albeit a much more tech-savvy and demanding minority. And while you may not trust anyone to build your hardware for you, you seem to be blindly trusting of a single company to build your OS (unless you use Linux or BSD, in which case I apologize). Seems to me the you’re the one who needs to get off your high horse.
“Zombies” and “pods”? Sounds like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.
Now that’s one brilliant marketing ploy by Apple making your own obedient and compliant consumer population. Who the heck cares if they�re not wholly human as long as they got the bucks to buy our products?
Is that “Z” or “zzzzzzzz”?
“And I hate to point this out to you, but people who build their own computers are in a VERY small minority, albeit a much more tech-savvy and demanding minority”
I love my Mac(s) but I just built a P4 3.2GHz, Asus, ATI, Corsair, Maxtor, etc etc PC. Why? Because I like to keep my enemy close. And I like to play games. And I like to tinker. But I don’t like Windows. Sure I use it, but OS X blows it away.
I am afraid that those who build their own computers are NOT a very small minority. In fact, most people I know (not the Aunt Bea’s and Granny Longtit) build their own performance machines. I was just talking to my girl the other night about how Steve Jobs’ next move should be to sink a billion or so dolars into getting EAGames and the like to start multi-playforming their games. Then I got to thinking that serious gamers like a modular system where they can add or remove any hardware they like, and that is really not what Mac’s are all about. I still think its a good idea for Jobs to try to get game developers in his corner, but a majority of gamers are PC zealots who would surely scoff at the idea of playing Battlefield: 1942 on a Mac. That is why, after all, I have a performance PC for gaming, and Mac for when I want to be productive.
morty, my mac, with the new os (which really isn’t new, unix is only about 30 years old) was under $1100 dollars. What pushed it over was adding Office, a mistake I won’t make again. I can’t believe I actually thought I’d need it! Considering I got a dvd burner in it and that was over a year ago, I’d say I did pretty well. A cousin recently told me he was going to get a dull for $500. I started asking if he could do certain basic things on it out of the box. The answer was almost always “No.” You can’t edit video out of the box? You can’t burn dvd’s out of the box? You’ve got a third child on the way! Wouldn’t your folks like to see videos of the kids? Why waste tons of film on stupid stuff when you can edit it all on your computer? Oh yeah, wouldn’t want to waste money on a useful computer, rather waste other people’s time with unedited home movies. Sounds like fun to me. Fact is morty, I, and most of the people here, use windoze regularly due to work. We know what m$ offers, and we like something better. If that ticks you off, it’s your problem, not ours.
Oh, and Z still remembers how to use Copy and Paste. Let’s all give Z a big round of applause!
PC home-builders are indeed a minority. But they know other PC-builders, giving the a skewed view that it’s more common.
I don’t know a single person who builds their own PCs. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun in a way–it’s a hobby I respect and a valid choice to save money, if you can tolerate your OS choices.