more iPod

from the Guardian.

Some good points, some bad ones.

I think he undersells the technofetish appeal of the iPod's design, for one.
Far from being "much the same as that of a dozen rivals" it's light years better than anything else on the market, in terms of look and feel and interface(always an Apple forte).

Play around with the mp3 display at Best Buy or wherever and the iPod's almost unfair design advantage becomes clear...comparing an iPod to an offering from Creative is like comparing a Ferrari with a Yugo. They both play music, but the similarites end there.

The iPod is just an outgrowth of the way the internet has changed music, albeit mutated to serve Apple. Usenet and more recently bittorrent have opened up the availability of genres and artists outside the conception of the major lables to anyone who cares to search them out. Combine easy digital availability with savvy review sites like Pitchfork et al and you have a consumer in large part liberated from the whims of record executives and mainstream marketing.

That sea change informs some of Apple's iPod culture.
They prefer their own proprietary format, and they make getting music off your iPod a pain in the ass, which is counerintuitive to say the least....but they have to mollify the dinosauric record lables to some extent. I see them walking a line between giving their customers what they want while maintaning plausible deniability with their record company content providers.