“If you were one of the hundreds of people who e-mailed me this time last year to tell me how wrong I was about Apple’s most fruitful invention of the past decade, you were right. My rant, er, opinion piece — which ran with the headline, ‘All I don’t want for Christmas is an iPod’ — was genuine. But I now know it was also genuinely hogwash. The iPod portable music device (as if I even need to explain what it is anymore) is the greatest gift to music lovers since Garth Brooks went into retirement. Mine hasn’t left my side for more than a day. I’ve even slept with it more than a few times,” Chris Riemenschneider writes for The Minneapolis Star Tribune.
“But my contentment isn’t good enough for Apple. No, Steve Jobs & Co. wants me and the 28 million other current iPod owners to think that in some way, the iPods we have now just aren’t good enough. For starters, they want us to spend all kinds of money on things like car-radio adapters, which go for $30 to $80… Of course, those extras are all just the side bets to the big gamble Apple is hoping we’ll make: Buying a whole other iPod. Case in point: the iPod Nano and the iPod video player, both recently launched for heavy marketing this holiday season… In all seriousness, the iPod Nanos that I’ve handled seem too small and fragile. I’m afraid I’d sneeze and break it… The iPod video player is the dumbest invention since clear beer… I know I won’t be sitting at a bus stop thinking, ‘Oh gosh, it’s been 15 minutes since I last saw Bono. Thank God I have my iPod video player with me.’ But U2 ultimately can’t be blamed for why I think the iPod video player is a bad idea. And neither can the fact that — outside of when I’m in the bathroom or outdoors trying to do something other than watch TV — there seems to be a TV set everywhere I go. You know, the bigger kind that you don’t have to hold up to your face. No, the real reason I think the video iPod is a stupid invention is, of course, that I just don’t want Apple to get me to bite. Not again. This time I mean it,” Riemenschneider writes.
Full article here.
We look forward to bringing you Riemenschneider’s annual mea culpa again next year.
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Related articles:
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CBS News: New iPod shows ‘Apple will continue to dominate portable digital media player market’ – October 21, 2005
USA Today: Apple’s new iPod + video: world’s foremost portable music players have gotten only better – October 20, 2005
Comprehensive review of Apple’s iPod 5G with Video – October 20, 2005
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NY Times Pogue: ‘watching video on new iPod’s 2.5-inch screen is completely immersive’ – October 19, 2005
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