« Wireless Communications Alliance Meeting and Expo Tomorrow   |   Main   |   Competing free classes at Stanford on Wednesdays »

Girl Vs. Ipod Shuffle

I’m a pc user. I’m a pc user who wears black and attends art stuff, maybe a bit cooler than others, but not much. For some reason, probably innate stubbornness, I’ve retained the view that Mac users are (outside of the arty types who do it because they have to) people who enjoy paying more for some cult product. It’s lame and petty, but the whole Mac fad has triggered every contrarian instinct in me.

But I have been taking a closer look at Macs lately, spurred by the encouragement of hacker friends and by my desire to have a consumer-usable Linux install (I covet multiple desktops with separate themes, a la Enlightenment). But I’m not there yet - Mac hardware is still clunky, and the default interface has too much squish and distraction, and it still seems like a fanboy thing. I’m still hoping I’ll get rescued by some sleek japanese toy or else maybe a no-name whitebook.

Tonight I’m sad to report that my personal rapprochement with Apple took a giant step back. I was presented by my thoughtful boyfriend - in the form of the flying-off-the-shelves cool iPod Shuffle. I love presentings, but this didn’t go so well.

I looked askance at it at first because I’ve been thinking big. Like the adorable (and festive) Creative Zen might not be big enough. So right away there is a disconnect, but based on Mike’s enthusiasm, the accolades of the Macheads, etc, etc, we persevered.

The box said to make sure you install the iTunes software first, so we tried. My ultraslim Japanese laptop has a dvd thing… but that sits in the office, so we tried the install on another winlaptop (laptop2), which went ok. Not great. Being a Mac newbie, you’ll have to forgive my naivete when I confess I was astounded that the damn software demanded the serial number of the device to install. I’m personally surprised that I made it past that point - this stuff is not Adobe’s Creative Studio, that demand is ridiculous. But putting that objection aside, the install went ok — although by that point I wanted to handle this already DRMy toy with tongs — but the now iTunes-ready-laptop2 failed to see the device. Nobody home.

Then I said: “Der, this is a USB drive! Just like my dumb Duex from 3 years ago (128 mb - $99)!” I plugged it in to laptop1 and it was recognized immediately. I moved over some songs (SF industrial band Gridlock, perhaps my current favorite), which worked. But gosh were we ever stumped when the files wouldn’t play.

And what could the device tell us? Flash flash orange green. Which the manual translated into error error error. I’m almost as baffled by the lack of a LCD display (think calculator here guys) as I am the totally anti-viral approach of the iTunes install (newsflash - you want random people to install your software - they, poor souls, might like it).

Now, I’m no consumer electronics maven, and I don’t want to come off as ranting. 90% of the people I know probably have iPods. Deep, deep down, I’m a joiner — I want to love all things Mac just like all the other cool kids. Help me get it. I know I probably shouldn’t have been as stumped that it wouldn’t work without iTunes - but I was. What’s the rationale here? I’m really curious because if there’s value here, I’d like to understand.

I’m on a pc (for the foreseeable future), use MP3, have prob a 30GB store of files, a large assortment of playlists, and want to stay in that mode. I don’t buy songs by the song, but by the CD (and it’s pretty fringe too - there are no hit songs on albums from the likes of Winterkalte, Boards of Canada, and Casino vs. Japan — I just plain like most of the songs anyway). One application where I would have considered iTunes (actually my mind turned to a temporary subscription to Rhapsody) was during my seasonal craving for U2’s Boy and October albums - but a trip to Rasputin’s used bin before the geek dinner in December fixed that problem for a cool $16. Maybe it would behoove me to pick up some more normal music, but hey - the pricing structure and strings-attached don’t swing the balance in Apple’s favor here.

Sell me, guys. It’s got to be about more than iconic advertising.

So I’m left here, feeling more alienated than ever, and just plain puzzled why I would much rather dig out this lame little Duex (which was pretty buggy itself - but which I’ve seen reincarnated as a thing called a Rover) rather than deal with manipulating some software from Apple. One consolation from a market efficiency standpoint is that I was obviously on the right track in coveting the Creative devices, rather than attracted to the mainline iPods. It could be said that I’ll buy anything in bright orange though.

One thing I will be interested to find out is if their emphasis on ‘chance’ in the Shuttle ad campaign links to a more effective randomizing algorithm. Someday I need to dig into that for Winamp.