This Christmas, my good friends surprised me with a wonderful present. Being a SINK(SINGLE-INCOME-NO-KIDS), Christmas is a filled with holiday cheer with the closest of my family and friends, but for the most part, presents are sparse. Not that this bothers me. I make up for my own shortcomings by shopping for myself.
I was surprised to open a gift bag and see the little Ipod box with Bono cranking out a verse of Origin of Species and the look of surprise wasn’t one of those lackluster responses, I was truly moved. I’d thought about buying an Ipod some time ago, but I have Mp3 players, recorders, dats, computers, TIVO, etc and never considered it lustful – despite it’s sexy package.
For the past several days since the holidays, I’ve been searching the Itunes store, downloading videos and music, looking for hacks and even purchased a new case and home dock from Best Buy. I am completely amazed with how far they have come with this brand and Apple has to be near their second big MAX as they continue to dominate this market. What impressed me the most was the depth of their accessories and how they have built this into an impressive and noteworthy product of our times.
Podcasting has taken a different perspective in my mind too. When the word first became a ‘buzz word’ back in the summer of 2005, we made a few podcasts and were impressed by the little effort it takes to broadcast and syndicate audio content. The name ‘podcasting’ as a medium is a bit unfair since you don’t necessarily need an Ipod to hear ‘podcasting’ but the name itself does owe its definition to the fact you can listen to podcasts and download them with ease.
This is a truly wonderful device. Black, sleek, cryptic and sci-fi like – I’ve managed to download over 5,500 family photos, search and sort them with ease and it’s amazing to watch my friends look at their faces and our memories on this thin gadget. I guess it was a good thing to switch to Iphoto to handle all my photos back in 2002. Now I carry around the past three years of my life in my coat pocket – amazing.
If you see me, there’s a good chance my Ipod is on tow with my cell-phone and I still long for one device, but I’ve never been so geeky and it feels good.