I Really Am Cool Now ; )

Hi!!!

Guess what!!! I really have joined the 21st century now! Not only do I have a digital camera, but I recently received an iPod for my birthday!!! It looks like this:



Mine is black (of course).

So why does this little portable hard drive with headphones and a video screen make me cool? I'm not sure yet.

As most of you know, I'm a Mac person, and we (Mac people) know that the product we use is just better. It looks better, it feels better and it helps us communicate better. It's hard to explain why and I don't really argue about it. It's like arguing about faith. Either you believe or you don't. You're either a Mac person or a PC person. I'm a Mac person. I'm sure that PC people believe their products are better. That's what belief is like. It's about having opinions, making choices and standing up and being counted. So, as a Mac person, I wasn't surprised when the iPod was released and started dominating the market for portable music devices.

I've never been a huge fan of MP3 players or 'Walkmans' etc. in that they tend to isolate individuals from society. Without delving too deeply into society's ills, far too many people are isolated and we do not form the same kinds of communities which helped to foster our social fabric. People don't even make eye contact much anymore; when they are isolated further by their intimidating headphones, communication is even less likely. Everywhere you look in public lately you'll see people with headphone wires trailing out of their ears and down into a pocket or a bag. These are young people and old people. More and more of them are the trademarked white iPod headphone wires which indicate to everyone else 'in the know' that the wearer is cool and using an iPod for her or his audio entertainment. Frequently, you can hear some of the music coming from the headphones too if you're close enough to the person using them (iPod or not), and that's just not good for your hearing in the long run.

Having said that I've never been a big fan, I've become a convert. Not just because I got one for my birthday. The iPod is cool because it's a toy with which you can have hours and hours of fun; if you consider listening to music, creating and changing playlists etc. fun. It's also cool because you can listen to podcasts, you can download movies and tv shows and watch them, and you can download videos. I think the best part of the iPod for me is that I got a docking station that can be connected to my stereo system so that I can play the music from my iPod on my sound system at home and I don't have to change CDs. I think that's cool.

So, I know all of you PC people will say I'm silly and that you can probably get all that functionality from other devices, but I ask you: what are they? Why haven't I heard of them? Are they even remotely as easy to use? I doubt it. I've used PCs for years and they are not user friendly. The add-ons are almost never user friendly. New software is almost never easy to install. I am capable of doing all of this, but the average user has a somewhat difficult time with these things. With a Mac, setup is literally as simple as plugging it in and turning it on. The iPod is like that too (as least with my Mac).

In summary, I'd like to point out that I am now a part of the iPod generation and am totally cool! Okay, I know I'm not really, but it's nice to dream isn't it?

Drive safe peeps,