Taking the plunge

Originally Written: Saturday, October 01, 2005

Well, I took the plunge and bought an iPod. Let the "I told you so's" begin in the comment section! Of course being the top of the line kind of guy that I am I went with the 60 gig and the Monster Cable tape adapter for the car. All music will be encoded with Apple lossless compression. I'll be using it as my own radio station for my commute to work, put it on random and forget about it. What made me finally decide to do it? Well this weekend I'm going on a business trip to Maine and I wanted to have some tunes. Also, recently at work I have been selling lots of highend headphones to iPod users. A number of customers have asked me if the iPod is capable of running these 'phones and I tell them that many other customers have had great results. With an iPod I can let them hear for themselves, it only makes sense. I wanted the model below but they were out of stock.

My good friend Clint is the one who introduced me to the iPod. In the same way that a crack dealer entices new customers he handed it to me and said, "just hold it" then when we were leaving to go out for the night Clint grabbed the iPod and said, "let's take my entire music collection with us." I was sold. The Stereophile reviewed sealed the deal. Some quick thoughts on my experience:

1. The apple iPod may be single-handedly supporting the American economy. It wouldn't surprise me if it has saved Apple. I wonder if we'll see more people buying Macs because of their positive experiences with the iPod.
2. The Apple store in the mall was easily the busiest store in the mall. There must have been 50 customers in the store at all times. You had to fight to talk to a salesperson. When I asked the gentleman who helped me if it was busier than usual he said that it was kind of slow at the moment.
   
3. You could easily spend more on accessories for the iPod than the iPod itself.
4. You can hack an iPod to do anything. There are even maps for transit systems in major cities that you can download onto your iPod. Now if only they could figure out a way to get pornographic videos on this thing they would really have something.
   
5. I'm amazed that you can store 60 Gig on something this small. I remember when my then roommate Duane first got a Jazz Drive and was flabbergasted* to have 1 Gig of storage space! That was less than 10 years ago.
6. They give you the coolest bag that I have ever seen to carry your purchase. No need to clutter up your hands, just throw it over your shoulder. My friend Duane must love shopping there, I know how he hates to carry things in his hands.
7. Unfortunately they were out of the charger that I wanted. There is a picture of it below.

*I spelled flabbergasted right without spell check.