This post was written while listening to music and, chances are, some of you are reading it while doing the same. There’s this inexplicable vitality in having the eardrums coated in these tantalizing sounds. Stop that thought and rewind: twenty years ago those sounds gained a new personal rhythm as the original iPod was being born.
It wasn’t the first machine to put a library of sound in your pocket, but it’s the tool that accelerated its democratization, iTunes be damned. My first iPod was the nano, scratched and dented by now, it was the rectangle that made me understand that memories with music are more colorful, deeply etched in a life with its own soundtrack.
I remember, however, seeing the original iPod for the first time whilst on a bus, white earbuds turned fashion statement visible to the world to see and covet. I wanted to meet that person; to ask him how it was to live in the cool lane. It was never about musical taste, but about that convenience, that isolation from the sea of voices and car horns.
My nano, then, was not just the reliable ascension when the dull world of noises was muted, but me listening to what I wanted, when I wanted. Gone were the finicky, analog limitations of my first Walkman and the unpredictable jumps, skips and cuts sponsored by my Discman.
With the iPod, Apple revolutionized one of our senses.
And if you are thinking that sentence sounds like marketing lingo ready to be printed on the side of a bus, the iPod also triumphed because of that, the art of selling you something and shaping the overall feel you have with it. But here it’s not detrimental, because it was a good product when the world needed precisely that solution.
I hope this thread has two parallel muscles in the comments. The first is about these two decades; it’s my honest invitation for you to celebrate the machine that through the years was polished and adjusted, transformed, engulfed by the smartphone. And what better way to start by looking at this prototype, iPod’s inside disguised in an ugly, oversized plastic shell. It was to hide its final design and it existed really close to the official unveiling.
The second muscle is your trajectory with music products. Which ones did you use until the point where the ear (1) became part of your daily routine? My only request is that you also bring to this thread the memories and the feelings you have attached to them.
My favorite product can be a terrible one, that’s fine; and your heart may hate the iPod, that’s fine too. This is about your walk of life, about what you utilized and what those products left behind in you. Do you think the ear (1) will have a place in your personal hall of fame or is the tech consumerism nothing more than a revolving door, product in, product out?
