The iPods In Our Lives

On November 10th of 2001, Apple introduce the 1st generation iPod, commonly called the "scroll wheel" model. It was $399 for the 5Gb model, and $499 for the 10Gb version! Even at that, it was pretty obvious that this device was going to be a world beater. If you didn't covet one, you're probably either delusional or simply lying! Everyone wanted one, despite the ridiculous price...... However, by 2004, with the arrival of the 4th generation model price at $299 for a 20Gb, and $399 for the 40Gb model, the word "competition" in the marketplace was almost a joke. In those sizes, these devices put the concept of putting an entire collection of CDs onto one device was within reach. This became the killer concept for me, and I began to truly contemplate acquiring one of these. A year later, when the smaller (30Gb) of the 5th generation iPods were out at $299, I pulled the trigger and a nice black one became my wife's Christmas present. 

Is that it!?! How you came to acquire an iPod? No, that's just the beginning, so bear with me. At the time of the arrival of that one lone bastion of Apple-ness at our house, I was not only happily entrenched with Minidiscs, but had and had gone through any number of personal listening devices, many of which sounded better than that iPod......any iPod! Then why are we even discussing this device? Well....at the risk of sounding all philosophical about this; it isn't all about the absolute sound quality. What is this coming from a vinyl record listener!?! First of all, I'm a big believer in using the right tool for the job, meaning that when on the go, I LOVE being able to tote my entire collection of music. And don't let anyone fool you; a car is no place to judge absolution reproduction capabilities. Secondly; I love devices that can do more than one thing! In this case, the capacious storage of 30, 40 and especially 80Gb leaves plenty for random storage such as dumping digital photos while away from home on a trip. The was verified in spades when we took our Alaska cruise and Taiwan/Hong Kong trip where I used my music player (80Gb iPod) as the backup photo file storage. It's been so useful I now have 2 portable external hard drives that sit in a drawer, unused.

....But that's still NOT what this post is about. It's really about how pervasive these things have become in our life! Let me start by going ahead and admitting that we now have 7 of these things!!! Ok, 2 are ones that I've picked up for basically nothing in attempts to repair a broken 3rd inherited from a family member, but still: 7! And that's not the half of it. Most of you are aware that there is a huge industry devoted to making all manner of accessories for these things, right? 

Let me start by saying that; NO, we do not own the more ludicrous of them such as the above, which by the way is listed in an article of the 10 most useless iPod accessories.

But we do own both the Logitech MM32 and the very highly rated MM50 speaker docks above. Actually we have 2 of the MM50s. There's a black one in our office and a white one in my classroom. I bought the first one for just under $50 refurbished off of eBay and my father-in-law liked it so much, he got one too. Two months ago I picked the white one off of eBay for $15 and it matches our second 5th generation iPod perfectly that was found on Craigs List for about $80 years ago. It lives at school. The MM32 was an after Christmas Walmart clearance that I got for $12 which I use as computer speakers at school. I can't even tell you how many times it has save mine and other teacher's bacon over the years!

One of my favorites though is the Griffin TuneDock. About a year or so ago, these begin to appear on eBay as "new/unopened" stock at anywhere between $10 and $20 in bunches. So I bought two (one is still in the closet). One is connected to my main A/V system and essentially allows me to use the iPods as giant jukeboxes. They even output a GUI for navigating the menu system. I'm eventually going to attach the other one to the secondary system that powers the outside speakers, which will give me separate sound capabilities. 

Then there's this.....the iCruze by Monster. A couple of months ago, I was in California, for my Mom's 90th birthday. In all my brother's cars, were these things. So I asked what it was: the answer was the iCruze that allows an iPod to integrate with the factory radio. It makes the audio system think that there's a CD Changer connected and allows for the onboard controls to access it. Pretty slick! My brother said he thought he had another one stashed somewhere (of course) and he'd send it to me if he could find it. A few weeks later, a box showed up..... So before we go on our long car oriented vacation this summer, guess what's going to get installed in the Honda!

Last year a pink 5th generation 16Gb Nano came to live with us. My daughter was most pleased to have it and has an iHome alarm clock/dock speaker that it live on which functions as her computer speakers as well. 

Is there more? You bet! I've got those broken iPods that I'd like to fix up, a 3rd generation and a 4G. No so I can have more of them, but just so they work. Is there room for even more? Well.....maybe, if one of those interesting U2 versions happens to fall into my lap; I don't think I'd throw it out!!!