The iPod is ten years old. I am pretty surprised it is so young, which is no doubt a testiment to how completely it has integrated itself with the world, to the point of being the ubiquitess device on which music is played.
I didn't get one for ages as I had commited pretty whole heartidly to Mini-disc. I still have 2 draws full of mini-discs. See, with mini-discs I could record my records straight onto the same device I would carry around with me. I could also plug it into my computer at work and record radio shows off the internet... especially if I recorded it at half quality, as that would double the recoardable time to 148 minutes... So I didn't need an iPod... I'd just have to spend all my time recording records to a computer and then trimming or splitting the recorded stream and saving it as mp3 etc. Chore.
But it seems that the rest of the world didn't really have these concerns. The idea of recording your music from one format onto another is pretty much gone now to the general public. iPods fueled the increasing availablity of music as a computer format - mp3, m4a, aac, flac. Initially people would see an iPod as a way of carrying around their cd collections, which they would load up on to their computer, and then shift on to their iPod. Then as the iTunes store took off, people found they didn't need to buy the cds anymore. And then also people found that everyone was giving away music files all over the place which they could grab easily.
So then lo and behold, ten years later how people buy and consume and store their music collection has completely changed to become the organising of computer files. You don't need to construct a home made musical compelations by playing the music into a recording device. You have lists of your music in clear pixels on a screen, and the ability to create spaces for you to drag the titles to, and re-order them how you want. Or even create 'smart' folders, which can be populated purely by recognition of artist name, title, style any particular tag you choose.
"Nobody thinks of albums anymore, anyway. People think of playlists and mixes. We'll still sell albums as artists put them out, but for most consumers of popular music, we think they'll more likely buy single tracks that they like. And then they'll organise them into cusomized playlists in their computers and on their iPods."
Steve Jobs 2003
But I'm begining to think that iPods themselves are nearing the end of their time. Smart phones are standardly used as portable music devices for all who have them. These are only going to get cheaper and more used. And in doing that, the need for iPods as a stand alone portable music player is getting unnecessary. Yeah they can make them smaller for exercise usage, but the development potential there is pretty limited, so they just become cheaper and tackier. Then eventually all your computer files will just be available in the 'cloud' or wherever, so all you'll need is some connection device to be able to access all your music, and then carrying around a box full of music files will become too much.
iPod, your days are numbered.
I do look back with fond nostalgia at having a bunch of tapes or mini-discs in a your bag. You know four TDK-D90's or 5 mini-discs was always enough music to venture outside with.
