doodledee

A month or two ago I finally caved and bought an iPod. I went back and forth about which one to buy about 100 times - including probably 10 "final" decisions in the minutes leading up to the actual purchase - but I ended up pulling the trigger on the 20GB model. I'm still convinced it was the right one. Score one for careful deliberation.

Unlike that stupid Palm Pilot thing I bought back in the 90's, I'm actually getting a ton of use out of the iPod. That said, I have yet to experience the life changing epiphany that so many others have reported after they started carrying a stylish white jukebox in their pocket. I'm not even sure I understand *how* it's supposed to be such a big life changer. Prior to having an iPod, I spent many nights downloading music and burning it to CDs. If I wanted to listen to that music at another time, I would have to haul my clunky CDs around and try and find a "cd player" to play them on. What a bitch. Or not. Now, however, I get to spend my nights downloading music and copying it to my iPod, a process that takes approx 4-times as long as the "old way" but results in a much more portable end product. Fair trade? I vote yes. Life changing? I vote "huh?". What type of lives did these people have before?

And then there's the fact that [out of the box] you can't bring your iPod to work and sync your music library onto your workstation. Guilty until proven innocent, I guess. And totally lame. When copying music between two devices is outlawed, only outlaws will have music on two devices.

Finally, I have to comment on the "iPods are ruining the universe" theory that's all the rage these days. (Less than a week after I clicked 'confirm order', for example, Andrew Sullivan wrote a piece declaring that "society is dead".) Well, I don't see it. I've been walking the skyways and streets of Minneapolis for the last 2 months paying special attention to the people around me and, other than the predictable hipster crowd, I hardly ever even see anyone wearing headphones. And guess what? I also don't see people stopping to have casual conversations with strangers. Mostly I just see people who appear to be thinking "why the hell did they put an Applebee's in Block E?" I know that's what I'm thinking, headphones or no.