Here’s another one of those “luxury” purchase decisions that make one contemplate that old want vs. need dilemma.
In reality, we want a new iPod because the refurbished one we bought over two years ago no longer works. But we believe we need one because traveling cross country can drive one batty when forced to consistently fuss with the radio dial only to find the same static, classic rock, and religion. And two batty people can only take being trapped in a truck for hours a day with Eddie Money and Styx for so long.
So, we are getting a new new Apple iPod Classic 120GB MP3 Player from Best Buy. Why an iPod? Why New? Why BestBuy.com? Why Now?
To answer the latter first: Because I discovered Best Buy is having this Fall 2-Day Sale, Sunday – Monday, Online Only (Valid 9/27-9/28), and offering Free Shipping on All New iPod® Players (Valid 9/20-10/3).
And the former is easily answered not only because I am a Mac Addict, but I did my homework. I had no idea iPods even came with such great capacity now, so we need not be selective now about which music we add. And I am still upset over the short lifespan of our refurb – the one we originally had to return for another unit. The same one in which I replaced the battery without improving it’s playtime. But there I go digressing again. I also I discovered certain lesser capacity third-party MP3 players cost even more than the Apple iPod. That, and because we don’t need an iTouch.
We are considering the Ipod touch too. With that you can also get the Serius OR XM Satelite App so you could not only have your ipod songs, but also access to satelite radio, and/or apps for your favorite radio stations. It is several gizmos all in one. True you have to pay the monthly fee for the satelite radio, but it may be worth it when faced with the “Eddie Money and Styx” option. By the way, I just downloaded a Styx song for my Ipod, so there’s no escaping it! Either way, enjoy your new toy!
OK. Now I’m even more jealous. Sail Away buddy… And I’ll try, oh lord, Ill try to carry on…
Hi everybody, I’m Steve Jobs!
(billons in unison) “Hi Steve!”
Thank you all for your tithes, I mean cult fees, well done everyone cause our stock is through the roof and our company valuation higher than Hunter Thompson at a Nevada biker rally.
You folks have been good to us, you drink our Kool-aid like a bunch of beer-bonged frat boys and we owe you big for your allegiance. We here at Apple have elected to do you another favor, we’ve got a touch tablet coming out that will give you everything you’ve got but in a different package, well, truth be told, a little bit of everything you’ve already got now but combined into a fresh and cult worthy Apple package. It will hold 40,000 songs, 15,000 movies, 25,000 television shows, and Web access, I hope you’ll find the time to keep your high paying jobs so you can invest in this little treasure (let’s out a snort with a guffaw and a chortle).
Your children will be closer to their friends real and imagined. They’ll be linked in, twitter-fied, facebooked, and MySpaced out when they get this ultimate must have! This device must have a name worthy of its users, we’ve elected to call to it – iDupe.
The first model will be under powered and with limited ports, ram, disc space and so on, but man oh man will the second round of next generation buyers take Apple to heights that only NASA will be able to explain.
Oh, and we’re having a contest here at Apple, send us your best kidney and or liver and you’ll get a complementary copy of iWorks 2010. It’s really neat and will make you productive and connected and, oh, productive.
Enrico strikes not once, but twice…muahahahahahaha…..
Can’t beat the iPod. Sorry, I’ve tried.
I did not want an iPod simply because everyone else had one. So I bought a Dell DJ (which was a Creative Labs unit branded for Dell). Then a Zune and lastly a SanDisk Sanza. While I still had the Sanza in working order I was given a gift of a 3rd Gen iPod nano. I did not want it, I had the Sanza so I gave the iPod to my son Caz. After helping him set it up I was upset I passed it on, the UI is far superior to the others. When the dial on the sanza started acting up, I gave up on OTHER MP3’s and gave into the iPod wave.
Resistance is futile.
I didn’t think I needed an iPod Touch either, but now that I’ve got one I don’t know how I ever lived without it. I mean, why have just an iPod when you can carry an Internet-connected multipurpose computer in your pocket as well? It never ceases to amaze me.
OK, now I’m jealous.
I know you love macs, but have you really given any other players a chance? I mean if you are going to succumb to one evil, why pile on more evil?
About 3-4 Christmases ago, Johnny and I bought each other PMPs.Its probably over kill for you, but it was a great buy for us. We didn’t have any other mp3 players. We are actually pretty slow when it comes to buying new tech. Anyway, we love them (Cowon A2 30 GB Portable Multimedia Player) They take so many formats and acts like a regular old external hard drive. We use them like one, too. When we visit folks in stick and bricks, we can connect it straight to the A/V RCA jacks on their TV and show them movies, pictures, etc. When only one of want to watch a movie, we use them instead of a laptop. It has some features we never use like an am/fm tuner, dictation (audio recording), line in audio/video playback and recording. The internal battery is rechargeable as well.
The newer ones have solid state drives(flash) and weigh 1/3 as much. They are also touch screen and a lot smaller.
We use at least one of ours every single day. And, years later they still hold a great charge. We haven’t had any problems with them. Crap I keep going on. I should just write a blog post instead of spamming your forum. I didn’t mean to go on and on. I just been so damn happy with it.
Best of luck to you on what ever you decide to do.
Driving across Texas is the suck. Northeast Texas is nice though.
PS. If my link offends, please feel free to remove it or change it to your own :). I know its kind of treading the line on blog etiquette….
I so get it Rene as we are a creature of wants, are we not?
Yes, you want your iPod and I want you to want your iPod, why? Because small fingers in Asia are dutifully working to ensure your listening pleasure is never more than $300 away. I also love what it does for our anemic economy in addition to theirs in Taiwan, many blessings Rene for your self-less contribution to the well-being of others. But this missive is less about Keynesian economics than about access.
Now that the Web has liberated us all from the tyranny of, of, of, hmmm, I’m not sure what it liberated us from but it has given us unprecedented access as we are now morphing into an access rich population. Take the marketing tagline from Apple for example, “the iPod can hold over 10,000 songs!” That might not seem like a lot of songs anymore but when I was growing up in the ’70s owning more than 30 albums meant you really loved music and or knew enough about it to buy up to 30 albums. Sure, some folks had 100s of jazz and blues and classical and rock recordings, but these were the deep lovers of music. Are we still deep lovers of music? I guess we must be cause there’s so much of it out there.
It all comes down to content and access to that content doesn’t it? 10,000 songs on a single iPod, let’s see, at 3 minutes a song that would be 500 hours of music, that’s only 20.83 days of non-stop music, I want more and Steve Jobs knows this. I know he knows this because he tells me I want more and who am I to come between Steve Jobs and what I want?
Thanks to the forward thinking and influential tub banging of Steve Jobs I will no longer need to waste my time learning how to play the piano or cello or bassoon. And books? Get real, I’ve got 10,000 songs and countless audio books anticipating my download. With music as cheap and as accessible as it is today, it’s potency and meaning is better defined by it’s numeric accessibility than by anything else.
Enjoy your new iPod, I’m counting on it.
Enrico strikes again!
I had a realllllly hard time with this one. I kept trying to think of ways in which I could justify buying it. I mean it wasn’t that long ago that people drove cross country with just an FM radio, right? And they survived. If the could, so could we, right?
But the reality is, commercial radio really sucks now. And I’m so not into paying a monthly subscription for XM radio, even though our truck is enabled for it.
So, what are we supposed to do? Talk to eachother all the way across Texas? I don’t think so.
I’ll work harder or something to pay for it. I just gotta have my music the way I want it, which is by playing random selections, with thousands of titles at my disposal.
The damn thing better last longer than our previous one though.