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True (iPod) love
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Dean Mortlock
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19.12.06
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To start the ball rolling here, I thought that I’d share my first experiences with an iPod. It was several years ago now and I was writing a ‘round-up’ style feature for an Internet and technology magazine – which was basically a cheap excuse to get a load of MP3 players into the office.
Slowly they dripped in (a Creative Zen here, a Philips there…) and, being the stubborn fool that I was, I was convinced that, among all the players I had in front of me, there would be one that would wipe the floor with the iPod. You see, the problem was that I couldn’t quite afford an iPod and the prospect of a free Zen would be much sweeter if I thought it was a genuine iPod-beater. But could it really defeat Apple’s newly released MP3 player in a head-to-head?
I had to wait a further two weeks for the iPod to turn up, so I had plenty of time to get my head around the other players. The Philips one looked great and sounded impressive, but the awful accompanying software and clumsy interface made it a quick non-starter in this race.
Then it came to the Creative Zen Xtra… the software was better (but not outstanding) and the sound quality was certainly good enough, and the 30 Gb hard drive was capacious enough for me. Sure, it looked and felt like a house brick, but I was happy – I even went so far as to happily brandish it on the train and proudly wave it around. I’d reached MP3 Nirvana. Or so I thought…
Then, finally, the iPod arrived in the office and an uneasy silence swept around the room. After a few head-scratching moments, we finally worked out how to unwrap the thing and then I picked it up… and that, my friends, was when the affair began. I knew we had a winner even before I’d turned it on.
The minutes slipped into hours, as leads, docks and software discs were unpacked, installed and attached in the correct places and ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ filled the air. Within minutes we’d burned a CD in iTunes, retrieved the tag information from the Internet and synced it all to the iPod. Can it really be that simple? Is the iPod really that easy to control? Can something so perfectly designed really have an equal? And is this the start of a wonderful relationship that will see me through three further iPods and the launch of a dedicated website?
Needless to say, the iPod won the group test and although I had to eventually have the test iPod surgically removed from my tear-stained hands, it wasn’t long before I’d managed to scrape together enough money to buy my own iPod, though (by selling grandparents/children/kidneys) and that was the start of a beautiful friendship. Sure we’ve had our disagreements and odd breakdowns, but every relationship has its ups and downs, right?
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