• by Amanda , January 15, 2007

Since its 2001 debut in the gadget marketplace, I have made it a personal goal to protest the iPod whenever possible. Believe it or not, I have lived for the past several years sans the characteristic white headphones hanging from my ears. I griped about my friends who pretentiously took out one earphone when carrying on a conversation. I railed against those who matched their various iPod armbands with work-out attire in the gym. I was taking a stand against “big business,” overpriced electronics, and conformation.

I gave in.

My sixteen year old brother upgraded his Nano to the new and much larger video iPod and I received the hand-me-down. After spending most of the following afternoon converting my MP3s to iTunes, reading the Nano manual over and over again, and buying off-brand headphones (taking my last stand against Apple!) I proceeded to listen to my new device until it died.

After charging my iPod the next morning, I trotted to my first day of Spring clases happily listening to Outcast’s “Hey Ya,” and CCR’s “Fortunate Son.” Between classes, I turned on my iPod instead of checking my phone for missed calls and listened to music while running errands instead of pulsing music from my car stereo.

I am sure some astute media analyst could find a reason for such a drastic attitudinal change in the course of two days. As I am no such thing, I can offer only humble assumptions. To me, buying a product is not so much about the “cool factor,” quite the opposite in fact. A product has to fit into my lifestyle logically. Long walks to and from class become tedious; listening to the same CDs can become boring- and my clumsiness tends to scratch them 10 minutes from being in their case.

After finding a place in my life, a company needs to answer questions before they are asked. Problems with usability and convergence are answered with car adapters, working-out accessories, and in-device gaming/video-watching/podcasting abilities. When it comes to the iPod, marketers have so saturated the market with their answers to questions that I knew the products I could buy before I even owned the product. The difference is I now have a reason to pay attention. Maybe this infatuation will fade. But as I sit here listening to The Darkness’ “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” I am pretty sure this iPod thing will be in my life for awhile.