+

Wow, can I judge things any worse?

In the dark days of Apple, the late 1990s when WIRED had the “Pray” cover, Steve Jobs came back. I felt a brief glimmer of hope for the company I loved—let alone the computing platform on which I made my living as a graphic designer—until I saw a picture of the first Bondi-blue iMac.

Last nail in the coffin, I thought.

A bit wrong on that call….

Flash forward to 2001, when Apple made the “monumentous” announcement of a new consumer electronics device.

Yawn, I thought. It’s an MP3-playing Walkman…so what?

As stated before, this is why Steve Jobs gets GulfStream jets, and I struggle to figure out how to pay for the next bag of cat food.

In any case, the final proof of my errors of judgement came with the gift of a 5G iPod a few months ago. After using it for the past few months, I can say, FINALLY, that I absolutely get it.

Yikes, this is genious technology. Something I must say right now: Thank God the battery is NOT replaceable. A common complain about the iPod is lack of that feature. Let me explain why, to me, this is a benefit:

I have had a number of Sony Walkmans throughout the years, all with doors, hinges, battery compartments, screws, ill-conceived pull-out compartments for cassettes (remember cassettes??), and a gazillion other features that all had ONE THING in common:

They eventually broke.

Give me my hermetically-sealed, solid-state, one-moving-part-only (hold switch) iPod. This is a machine that doesn’t even feel like a machine. Granted, mine has an HD (unlike Nanos), but despite the irresistable urge to dance around like an iPod sillouhette commercial (thank God for drapes), this feels all the world to me like a single, solid piece of steel.

Those who know me here know, aside from boasting about my laser-optic producing day-job company, I also talk about my eight beloved cats. Now, thanks to the iPod, I get to carry them with me wherever I go, in digital picture format.

Much like when the Mac introduced itself in 1984, I didn’t care about the iPod until years later. Count me in now as another true believer. And at the same time know that all of the complaints registered against the iPod merely speak to its strengths.

Yes, it has the best interface. Yes, it lets me carry around 30GB of music plus photos of my beloved cats. Yes, the sound qualiy is great. Yes, I can watch videos on it, too (which I do),

But the #1 reason why I love my 5G iPod, again, is what no one else is saying:

This is a solid piece of technoloy, and unlike a gazillion Walkmans before it, it’s not about to break.

Glad to finally make it to the party….