Apple iPod noise pollution irks those nearby

“Dave Legeret silently fumed as the man seated beside him on the plane blasted techno music on his iPod at full volume,” Erin Carlson reports for The Associated Press.

“‘It was kind of rude,’ recalled Legeret, 38, a jewelry designer from Sandy Hook, Conn., who was forced to listen while flying from New York City to Disney World with his wife and 8-year-old son,” Carlson reports, “‘Listen to it at a level that just you can hear it and everyone else doesn’t have to be subject to it.'”

Carlson reports, “Apple Inc.’s ubiquitous iPod is best known as an instrument of solitude – unless the user ignores standards of etiquette by invading the eardrums of fellow commuters, officemates or other innocent bystanders. Then it starts to get annoying. Especially when you’re stuck in close proximity.”

Carlson reports, “Anna Post, an etiquette instructor at The Emily Post Institute, said she’d heard a story about a woman who asked an iPod-using subway rider to turn down the volume, only to have her request ignored. So she used another tactic: Singing along to the music. ‘And, all of a sudden, boy, did that iPod get shut off,’ said Post, who stressed that ‘a little social shame can go a long way.'”

“‘I got to the point where I’m like, ‘You know what? You really can’t beat it,” said Aimee Wendt, a 27-year-old web designer from Madison, Wis.,” Carlson reports, “‘If you look around, there are so many people with iPods – you might as well join ’em.'”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jim – TIV” for the heads up.]
Punk on bus: [plays loud music on a bus with boom box]
Kirk: Excuse me.
Punk on bus: [doesn’t listen]
Kirk: Excuse me. Would you mind stopping that noise?
Punk on bus: [turns it up louder]
Kirk: [louder and firmer] Excuse me! Would you mind stopping that damn noise?
Punk on bus: [flips him off]
Kirk: [looks at Spock]
Spock: [gives the punk the Vulcan nerve pinch, knocking him unconscious (his head hitting the boom box turned it off), with much applause from fellow bus passengers]

[Thanks MacDailyNews reader “ChrissyOne” for the refresher. (below)]

54 Comments

  1. The guy really wasn’t talking about iPods, he was talking about MP3 players in general. It’s just that iPod so totally dominates the market that “iPod” has become a generic term like Kleenex for tissues or Coke for cola drinks.

    I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, but it is.

  2. Funny me, I thought iPods had NO speakers. ???? Maybe the noise from the ear phones was SO LOUD that it overcame the HUGE drone of the jet engines???

    But then again, I guess the shreeking coming from the other mp3 players was a pleasent relief. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />

    Still, from the article above, I am not really sure what this guys complaint was??

    en

  3. I do realize that this is the iPod generation, but it’s not like portable music players were invented yesterday. Teenagers with Walkmans used to do the same thing. Before that, it was transistor radios. Sometimes you just have to get in somebody’s face instead of blaming the poor music player!

  4. And in other news… When you are trying to sleep on a Greyhound bus or an Amtrak train during the night, people like to tell everyone about their entire lives ALL NIGHT LONG.

    STFU already! No one wants to listen to you while they are trying to sleep, you stupid dee-dee-dees.

  5. It was twenty years ago that I asked someone on the train to turn down their WALKMAN, not their “portable personal cassette player”. (He did. Smiles all ’round.)
    The interesting thing is that, as pieter De Becker pointed out, no-one complained about SONY back then, but there was lots of irritated rattle about “Walkmans”, even though other companies also made personal cassette players.
    Do you think Sony minded that the word “walkman” was being used, even though Panasonic, Toshiba, and Aiwa all eventually pushed their own devices, not named “walkman”, onto the market? ( Walkman Wikipedia:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkman )
    I wonder how upset Apple’s marketing department is, that the common term for an MP3 player today, is “iPod”?

  6. I’m sure a similar article was written when Sony’s Walkman was all the rage. And before that, the transistor radio. The real news here is that for the popular media, the iPod is no longer a specific product, but the general device for (in this case) listening to music too loudly and bothering nearby people. Go iPod…

  7. Back in Mozart’s time, you had these powdered punks in purple breeches screeching away on their violins (in 5/4 time!) on public carriages giving ladies the vapors and irritating true gentlemen. They were usually beaten unconscious and left in shallow graves.

  8. This is another example of Apple trying to get away with paying us less than what is rightfully ours! Those individuals on the plane and elsewhere were PIRATING our music in “sharing” it with bystanders without authorization – and the people who were hearing it were also pirating it as they didn’t own (er – license) it.

    We demand that Steve Jobs immediately:

    1) issue a software update to disable the iPod volume from being turned up past 25%

    2) implement audio “leak detection” DRM in future iPod revisions that will detect audio squirting out from around the headphones and will automatically bill both the iPod user and the bystanders at a per-minute rate based on the popularity of the song being played

    3) Pay us $20 per iPod sold, just in case the above measures fail (we know that users will find some way around them, being the sneaky, theiving, no-good little cheats that they all are)

  9. Why are people acting like this is a new phenomenon? I remember the same thing being said when the Walkman came out in what, ’82 or whatever.

    Anyway, I have to agree that it is rude. Get a pair of canal phones so you can blast your choons as loud as you like, while not disturbing those around you. If you have the means, I recommend the Etymotic ER4P’s. Absolutely amazing sound. Worth every single penny.

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