I Hate ipods 02/09/2012
 
I have to make a confession...I don’t own an ipod. I have another confession to make...I don’t want to own an ipod. No... it’s not because I bought a company that manufactures portable CD players on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s because I find them simply to be very overpriced mp4 players with bells and whistles.

Think about it. Who really needs 16 gigs worth of memory in a music player? Before you say you do, understand how much 16GB worth of memory is. A sixth generation (whatever that means) 16GB ipod Nano holds about 4,000 songs. 4,000 songs? Who on earth has 4,000 songs that they want to hear? Hell, while I was researching the numbers for this article. I found out that they also have 32 and 64 gig ipods out as well that hold around 7,000 and 14,000 songs respectively.

Then I found out how much they cost. WTF? I will never pay $200 for any portable device that isn’t a phone. Instead I’d go get a plain ol’ 4GB mp3 player from Amazon for $25 plus shipping; however, I am in the minority on this one. The ipod sales have been off the charts, making Apple billions of dollars in the process. As a matter of fact, I’m the only person I know (besides my wifey) that has never owned an ipod. The road less traveled, I guess.

In the spirit of my precious NBA ending its lockout, I’m going to try something that may or may not work. I’m going to compare the ipod's entry into the market with the year Magic Johnson and Larry Bird entered the NBA.

Behind baseball and football, the NBA was a distant third in the world of American sports. Fourth if it was March Madness time, and it could've been fifth if the big names in boxing could have gotten their bodies to be able to fight once a month. Magic and Bird changed all of that with the 1980 NBA draft going to the Los Angeles Lakers (The greatest franchise ever!!) and the Boston Celtics (Busters on all levels) respectively. Playing on so many levels (Black versus White, East versus West, etc, etc), the NBA rose to pop culture status.

In much of the same way, only at a super accelerated pace, ipod became pop status. In no time, it has become the accepted brand of the masses...

...Now that I think about it, the two don't really have many similarities.

Even though Magic and that other guy from the team that I didn't really like blew into the league and took it over, most nationally televised games were still tape delayed until around 1984 because the ratings weren't there. Ipod's impact on the market was so fast and so immense that the music industry still hasn't caught up to and completely figured out how to get the most out of downloads. In fact, it all but sent CD's into obscurity. NBA hasn't managed to overtake its two counter parts as of yet.

Whatever meaningless contrast that I try as a means to show how happy I am that the Lakers are going to have a chance to avenge that lashing that we got by Dallas Mavericks in the playoffs, the one thing that is obvious is that The ipod changed the game. It is to portable music players what Starbucks is to coffee, Kleenex is to tissue, and Pampers is to diapers. It turned the industry on its ear by guiding the next evolution in music with itunes, and without it, i wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be here talking shit about it right now.

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