Intuition & Elbow Grease

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I guess I just don’t understand the appeal. Yeah, it’s made by Apple… and it’s umm white. And way overpriced. (oh, did I just say that out loud?) I recently went throught the process of purchasing a portable mp3 player for myself and was astonished at the number of people flocking to the iPod.

I realize that I come very late to this whole portable media player thing, but it comes down to a realization of what I want vs. what I need. Obviously no one really needs an mp3 player. It’s all about want. Now, I’ve been a big fan of Apple ever since OS X came out. You see, I’m one of those aging unix sysadmins that you hear about occassionally or see in an old Dilbert strip. Why is that important, well it gives you an idea of my perspective on technology. I have a preference for “Things That Work” vs. “Things That Are Pretty”. (read “Unix” vs. “Microsoft”) OSX combines these things so its a win-win scenario.

So when I began my quest for an mp3 player my first inclination was to head right to my local Apple Store and pluck down a reasonable amount for my new toy. Now I didn’t just run right out and buy one. I did manage to do a bit of research on price and features. I’m not going to list all of that here, its readily available from roughly a billion other sites that do “reviews” What I did quickly realize was that my needs (yes, I am aware that they are my needs and not necessarily yours) were quite simple. I have no need for some egregious amount of portable media. I do not require that my entire day be choreographed to its own soundtrack. Besides, I usually have access to some sort of radio, cd or mp3 player when I’m in front of my computer or driving down the highway. So a portable player for me needs to fill a very narrow desire to have access to media while I work out. I walk for about an hour each morning (not every morning, in fact I’ve taken the last week off due to umm… the heat! yeah, its those triple digits in the midwest that have kept my lazy butt indoors!) and enjoy being able to listen to some decent tunage or an audio book or two.

So my requirements were simple: I needed an hour or two worth of storage space, it had to be easily portable (read not a small brick strapped to my waist) Expandability would be quite nice and a radio tuner would just be spiffy. I found that the local Wally World was dicontinuing a bunch of the older players in favor of the newer models. For a paltry sixty five bucks, I picked up a Rio Chiba with 256 meg of flash memory, sd card expansion and a radio tuner. I’ve had the unit for about two months now and I can say that it’s a great fit for my needs. It’s light weight, has enough memory (and then some) to carry enough music to get me around my walk (twice) and has been hassle-free!

I could’ve bought a nifty iPod and been able to read RSS feeds on it, but if I really want a portable reading machine, my *discontinued* Sony Clie works great! I am waiting for the next generation iPod that will hopefully feature a larger screen, built-in 802.11G, handwriting recognition, full PIM functions and an external keyboard. (you already see where this is going if you know me at all…) Yeah, that’s right, I’ll buy it when it’s an iNewton! But for simple mp3 playback, please! I don’t need 60 hours worth of music at my beck and call every minute of the day. I have other devices for text and organization that quite frankly, do a better job.

Apple, I love you. But you’re just no good for me right now. I hope you understand.