5 Years of iPod

Today's one of those days that my brain never really turned on at work.... so might as well blog.

Dara posted about the 5th anniversary of iPod today, and I thought, yeah, that's a good thing to post about.

What I want to talk about is the big question.... Is an iPod worth it?

I've gone back and forth on that topic quite a bit. When iPods first came out, I was quite anti-iPod.

Here's the thing. I didn't feel the need to put all of my music on an MP3 player at once, and I had this little Bantam MP3 player. Only held I think 128mb or 256mb or something, and the software was a pain to use, but I liked it because it was (still is, really) one of the smallest MP3 players I've ever seen.

The iPod, at the time, seemed like a monstrosity to me. I'd never want to take one to the gym, I thought... And who cares if it holds 30 gig, or whatever they held at the time, I don't need all that.

It was around this time that I talked Dara out of an iPod.

It was probably less than 6 months later that I bought an iPod and pissed Dara off.

Why the quick change of heart? In a word, iTunes. I started pretty much buying all my music on iTunes. Since an iPod would sync it automatically, and play Apple's MP4 format, or whatever they call it, and I was seeing more appeal of mass storage, I decided to bite the bullet.

I bought a 2nd generation iPod, and I bought it used on eBay, so I knew I was taking a risk. Still, it came and worked fine. The iPod became a major part of my life for a year and a half or so. I took it everywhere, had tons of music on it, easy to sync with my computer, etc. I didn't know how I ever lived without it.

At somepoint, however, my iPod listening habits changed, and the mass storage was unneccessary.

What happened? In a word, iTunes. When iTunes introduced a podcast subscription thingy, I subscribed to a bunch of podcasts, and pretty much became instantly hooked. So much so that I rarely listened to music anymore. And that meant I didn't need mass storage, as I really only needed about a half gig to hold the podcasts and the little bit of music I really wanted on there.

This summer, I got a laptop, which led to another issue with the iPod.... You can't really sync between two computers. It's difficult to take music off the iPod when it's on there. And if you automatically sync, it erases everything, unless you set it up specially, which is a pain.

After about a month of that pain in the ass... my iPod just plain broke and wouldn't fine music files and play them. I still think it might be fixable, but the few quick fixes I tried didn't work, and as I said, it was becoming a pain anyway.

So I looked for new options. I found a little flash MP3 player, that, despite having to deal with manual transfers, is much easier to use. It holds 2 GB, and, get this (Apple, I'm talking to you....), you can take music ON and OFF the thing! As much as you want! With ease! From as many computers as I want! From my desktop, my laptop, my girlfriend's laptop, my work computer.... And I bought the thing for $45, including shipping!

Granted, who knows how long it will last, but so far, it works like a champ. So much cheaper, and so many fewer kinks than the iPod. Granted, the menus aren't always perfect, and it doesn't have the graphic display like an ipod, but it's tiny, easy to use at the gym, works as a flash drive for any purpose I need.... I'm quite satisfied.

If you do want the mass storage, I still don't think I'd recommend an iPod. Look into Creative Zen and other products before jumping head first into the Apple cult.

Granted, if I do buy another iPod, Dara knows where to find me.