I’m always slightly irked when the Instapundit (or indeed any other blogger) writes about “the cult of the ipod”. It seems to me a bit of a joke really.
I’m one of those people who could justifiably wear the wonderful Diesel Sweeties T-Shirt “I had an iPod before you even knew what one was”. The early adopter who bought his 1st Gen 5 gig iPod the moment they hit the shelves. Back when analysts were umm’ing and ah’ing and Slashdot’s CmdrTaco was busy typing up the quote that would plague his reputation forever more: “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”
It seems a little silly to start proclaiming a cult based on an a product that already had a very strong following before you joined. It’s a bit like all those fairweather fans who attach themselves to successful football teams.
Waxing Lyrical about the Blogosphere is similar and a practice I try to ignore. Yes blogs are important but they’re strongest not as reporters but as pundits.
However I do see fit to post about one subject regarding the iPod in its current incarnations. I was given a new 30gig iPod Photo for my birthday and noticed to my dismay that there was no Firewire cable shipping with it.
Now admittedly I was being a bit thick, I remember having read something about it on the ever-hilarious As the Apple Turns, but it still made me stop and think.
One of the pioneering values of the iPod was its auto-syncing. You plugged it into your mac with one wire and your songs were transfered across at blinding speed. During his ‘Special Music Event’ unveiling keynote, Steve Jobs explained that the Firewire cable was also transferring power too. One wire was pushing a tremendous amount of data and powering the device at a high recharge rate. Watching it I felt an excitement that can only be expressed by Bill Waterstone’s 6 year old comic marvel, Calvin:
“Oh my gosh! This is so cool I have to pee!”
Firewire was the medium that made that happen (plus Apple marketed the IE1394 standard with a really cool name, which is always important). When I first began taking a real interest in video editing Firewire was this amazing technology that let me transfer my DV footage without having to spool it in analogue through an on board video-card (such as I had in my first mac, an LC630 which was a belated birthday gift when I was 11). Firewire is one of the coolest standards around and so opening the box of my brand spanking new iPod, I felt a twinge of sadness at it not being included as the cable of choice.
Sure I can understand that the iPod’s user market is now mostly PC users who generally have USB 2.0 ports on their computers and fewer Firewire ports (Firewire is for creative machines with fantastic video editing software, not beige boxes that run the laughable Windows equivalent) but it’s kind of sad that the amazing synergy between two products, one Apple made and one Apple co-developed, is now pushed to the back of the queue.
Firewire is still the undisputed king of digital video, in actuality that’s what it was developed to do and what it continues to do better than anything else (any medium capable of matching Firewire 800? I thought not) but it’s kind of sad to see it left out of the product it made possible.
I’ve ordered a firewire connector from Amazon.co.uk and it ought to arrive in the next few days but it’s a bit of a shame that I won’t be able to geek out as I did 4 or so years ago, at the coolness of lifting my pristine iPod out of its box and plugging it straight into my computer (Trevor the iBook was then the machine of choice), watching it hoover up my music library to satiate its voracious appetite for data to fill its cavern-like capacity (5 gigs then, 30 gigs now).
I guess I’ll have to console myself with the fact that my crystal clear backlit colour display will look rather nice with all my album covers on it.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at March 29, 2005 02:08 PM