“The iPod is a great product, and I am delighted that it has kept Apple from the morgue slab. I have no wish to get into one of those holy wars about which type of computer is better; if you like your PC, good for you. On the other hand: If your machine is useless because you somehow contracted malware / spyware / adware, and every time you try to use the Internet your machine sends you to sites that would make the Marquis De Sade think well, that’s different, you might want to look at a Mac. It’s not like changing religions or political parties, after all. More like changing both at once, and buying all new clothes, now that I think about it. But it’s still worth it,” James Lileks writes for The Minneapolis Star Tribune.
“[The problem of iPod haters] will only get worse as the new iPod sells a billion units. It’s not the iPod they hate as much as the cachet, the hype, the sheer joy some people get from carrying around a nifty little piece of ingenious engineering,” Lileks writes. “The conversations usually go like this: That thing sucks, dude! You have to manually edit the ID3 tags! So? It looks cool. Yes, but you’re locked into Apple’s proprietary format for downloaded songs! No support for other obscure formats whose very existence validates the rebel worldview of geeks like me! True, but who cares? The iPod looks so cool. And did you know I can tell where you scratch yourself because there’s orange Cheetoes-dust smears. But this Sanyo FG4983 MP3 player has a Marine Band tuner and a GPS module that lets you listen in to Pacific Ocean shipping chatter, and you can overclock it so it runs Warcraft in emulation mode! Sorry, I didn’t hear you, I was listening to a song a FEMALE gave me. Oh, did I use a cruel word? FEMALE? Yes, I know several. You’d meet some, too, if you came to the secret iPod parties. Directions are included with every model.”
Full article, highly recommended, here.
