{"id":369,"date":"2006-01-11T21:17:28","date_gmt":"2006-01-12T02:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=369"},"modified":"2006-01-11T21:17:28","modified_gmt":"2006-01-12T02:17:28","slug":"care-and-feeding-of-the-ipod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2006\/01\/care-and-feeding-of-the-ipod\/","title":{"rendered":"Care and feeding of the iPod"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I admit it: I own one of the fetish objects we call iPod&reg;  Normally I&#8217;m not a fan of Mac technology.  Yes, yes, I know: the MacOS is much more stable, much less susceptible to virus, Trojan horse, and spyware-based attacks than Windows. (Have we ever thought that perhaps this is because there are about three-dozen people in the world actually using Macs?  I digress&#8230;)  In the case of the iPod&reg;, however, I must admit that the good folks at Apple got it right.<\/p>\n<p>The gizmo itself is like a little gold brick in your hand, all sleek and rounded corners and elegantly functional in a way that makes your eyes narrow and your mouth make that little O of pleasure.  The interface for the iPod&reg; itself is sleek and easy to use, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.itunes.com\/\">iTunes<\/a>, the software that helps you load all of these glorious musical interludes onto what is essentially a dressed up hard drive with a minimal operating system loaded on to it, is even easier.  But what Apple does that is so revolutionary has more to do with the purchasing of music than anything else.<\/p>\n<p>Apple has taken chunking &#8211; the basic principle of writing for the web &#8211; and applied it to media.  Gone is the <abbr title=\"Yes, I am *that* old\">album side<\/abbr>.  Gone is the idea of a sequential album that needs to be listened to from cut #1 through the end in order to get the full story contained therein.  Music has been broken down once again (for I truly believe that this is not a <abbr title=\"OK, so I'm old enough to remember the 45\">new phenomenon<\/abbr>) into tasty, bite-sized chunks that now, thanks to digital technology, you can arrange in any order you like.  TimeLife Music&#8230;this is your wake up call.  The beauty part, though, is the way they haul you in.<\/p>\n<p>Every Tuesday Apple offers a free download.  They give away one of their base units of commerce as a <abbr title=\"something a merchant uses to draw you in to make more purchases\">loss-leader<\/abbr> in the hope that you&#8217;ll explore their well designed store and purchase an appallingly high number of those base units of commerce before you realize that holy, crap, you&#8217;ve just spent $22 on cheesy singles from the 1970s and discovered a scary affinity for neo-country music.  <\/p>\n<p>But while the iTunes store is very well organized and their Beta &#8220;recommended for you&#8221; functionality is alternately <abbr title=\"OK, so I bought Ace...I want Looking Glass\">scarily prescient<\/abbr> or completely <abbr title=\"Just because I own Janet Jackson does not mean I want Gwen Stefani\">off base<\/abbr>, there&#8217;s something I just don&#8217;t understand.<\/p>\n<p>Could someone please explain to me just what the big deal is about the Black Eyed Peas?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I admit it: I own one of the fetish objects we call iPod&reg; Normally I&#8217;m not a fan of Mac technology. Yes, yes, I know: the MacOS is much more stable, much less susceptible to virus, Trojan horse, and spyware-based attacks than Windows. (Have we ever thought that perhaps this is because there are about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-thoughts","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}