Goodbye iPod!
As a child I remember being blown away by technology that now seems quaint and ancient. I will never forget the exhilaration I felt when my dad brought home a VCR for the first time.
It was a game changer. Now I could seemingly watch ANYTHING whenever I wanted, not just what was in theaters or on television. And the microwave! You could bake a potato in just six minutes.
How is that even possible? Is witchcraft involved? Human sacrifice? The Dark arts? Cable television similarly struck me as a modern marvel, as did even the most primitive video game systems.
I was legit gobsmacked by the graphics and gameplay of Atari 2600. And computers! You better believe those fuckers impressed me as miracles as well, and you know how us Juggalos feel about miracles.
I still remember how I felt when I discovered the iPod. As a rebellious teenager, I only took my headphones off to shower, sleep and go to school. My walkman might as well have been part of my body; that’s how essential it was to my life.
Now the geniuses over at Apple had created the perfect walkman, one that could play literally THOUSANDs of songs in a sleek machine small enough to fit into the palm of your hands yet powerful enough to hold a vast library.
I was so excited! It’s no exaggeration to say that having an iPod raised my daily quality of life.
I had a beloved ritual. Every morning I would plug my iPod into my laptop and it would instantly transfer all of the latest episodes from my podcast friends along with any music I recently downloaded.
I was similarly impressed with the laptop with an internal CD burner and DVD player. What a miraculous contraption! How unbelievably useful, particularly if your life and career revolve around watching movies, listening to music and writing about entertainment.
Then Apple did something maddening but unsurprising. They took something that was perfect and fucked it up for no goddamn reason at all.
Who needs a laptop that’s also a DVD player and a CD burner when you can have one that’s pointlessly thinner and more breakable and can’t do much of anything at all?
Now if I want to buy one of those perfect old laptops I’d have to pay a fucking fortune for it.
On a similar note, Apple perfected the iPod with its classic model. It was powerful. It was convenient. It seemed to have the perfect amount of storage. It paired perfectly with all of my other Apple products.
Apple didn’t stop with the iPod classic, however. Just as it felt the need to mess with perfection by removing the DVD player and CD burner from their laptops, they changed the iPod to make it either too small and powerless or too big and powerful.
The rise of the iPhone was disastrous to the iPod because it could do many, if not most of the things that an iPod could do and a lot of other things as well.
I don’t remember the last time I had an iPod, and at one point I went through literally three iPods a year because they’re magical and amazing but also fucking broke all the time.
I mention this because Apple has announced that it will stop making iPods. That seems simultaneously very sad and the end of an era and long overdue.
There doesn’t seem to be a place for the iPod anymore, although, honestly, if you have a classic and you want to send it to me I will happily accept it, just as I will happily accept gifts of all stripes.
You know what that means: it’s finally Zune’s time to shine!
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