Yesterday it finally happened. For the first time since the iPhone was released, I actually listened to an iPod. Glancing at the calendar I was stunned to find that it had been two months to the day since I last plugged earbuds into an iPod and used it to listen to music. Seeing as how I own seventeen of them, that’s a little bit shocking.
So what great failing of the iPhone drove me temporarily back into the arms of the iPod? Eh, more like a failing of mine. I was headed out for a morning walk and realized I had forgotten to charge my iPhone’s battery the night before. Feeling compelled to take my iPhone with me but not wanting to use up what little battery life remained by listening to music, I also took my red nano with me in order to fill that role.
It’s the compulsion part that’s caused me to leave my vast collection of iPods gathering dust for the past sixty days. It’s been at least five years since I’ve felt particularly comfortable going anywhere or doing much of anything without my cell phone on my person or at least within fetching distance. While I’m out and about I might not always be able to take your call, but I don’t want to have to wait until I get home before I know you called. So for better or worse, my cell phone is pretty much with me non-stop, and this was even when I owned cell phones that I despised.
And for the past few years, the same had mostly held true when it came to the iPod. Except in rare circumstances, it just didn’t make sense to leave the house without taking one of my iPods with me. But now that Apple has been kind enough to roll my cell phone and my iPod into one, I just haven’t had occasion to carry both an iPod and an iPhone. And since the latter is always with me, what would also carrying the former accomplish? The only reason to carry a nano or a shuffle would be the smaller form factor, but if I’m also carrying to an iPhone, why not just listen to that? The only reason to carry a video iPod would be its larger capacity, but I learned awhile ago that confining myself to eight gigabytes in order to avoid carrying extra bulk is usually a worthwhile tradeoff, and carrying both an iPhone and a video iPod is quite a bit of combined bulk. So I carry the iPhone and only the iPhone – and I honestly don’t miss having an iPod with me.
Don’t get me wrong here; I’m not done with the iPod as a platform. Not by a long shot. But realizing that none of my current iPods seems to serve much of a purpose anymore has me thinking if indeed next week’s Apple Event includes the next generation of iPod, it’ll likely be the most important day in the product’s five year history. The iPhone is so far ahead of the iPod, and so sufficiently a replacement for the iPod, that even iPod geeks like me are left concluding that we don’t need to carry an iPod. That doesn’t work for Apple, which has sold more than a hundred million iPods but likely hasn’t sold more than a few million iPhones. It may well be that we all end up carrying iPhones someday, but we’re nowhere near there yet and the iPod is still going to be the bread and butter of Apple’s digital music division for awhile.
This isn’t the first time in the iPod’s history that this has happened. Two years ago Apple released the original iPod nano which rocket-launched the mini-sized iPod so far ahead of the full-size iPod that a number of users (including me) suddenly found themselves much more likely to reach for the smaller of the two given the choice. But just over a month later Apple engaged in a game of self-one-upsmanship by releasing the video iPod which immediately put the full-size iPod back on equal footing (most notably, for what it’s worth, by giving the video iPod a number of cool features which the nano didn’t have).
And now the company finds itself in largely the same situation. While using my nano yesterday I was stunned at how its interface, which I had always considered to be pretty darn good, now suddenly felt ancient and almost toy-like. Nevermind those few incredulous seconds I spent staring at the nano trying to remember how to use it to check the weather; the real problem isn’t that the iPod doesn’t do all the things the iPhone does. It’s that the iPhone is a better iPod than the iPod is.
Given the current disparity between the iPhone and iPod platforms, I suspect Apple will once again upstage itself by doing something radical – and awe-inspiring – with the iPod lineup come next week. At least I hope they will, because it’s vital. It’s not that someone on a limited budget, who couldn’t afford an iPhone anyway, is going to buy an iPod knockoff instead of a nano simply because the nano’s interface is lame compared to that of the iPhone. But Apple has to do something to get iPhone users like me to want to race out to the store and buy an iPod that’s so spiffy that we’ll want to carry it right alongside our iPhone.
I have no idea how they’ll do that, but based on past performance I suspect they’ll be able to. I’m not going to speculate on just what needs to be done to the iPod to put it back on equal footing with the iPhone; I’ll leave such things to Apple. But as someone who’s been an iPod user since 2001, I’m sure glad a new iPod that’ll make me want to actually carry it around with me is apparently only a few days away.
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