Age is a blessing — but it surely’s additionally fucking terrifying. Particularly after I realized it had been 20 years for the reason that iPod was launched.
As soon as I finished hyperventilating, I understood this was okay. Why? As a result of the iPod modified my life. And, to this very day, I imagine it’s the best gadget ever created.
It didn’t start that manner although. Earlier than I bought my arms on an iPod, I believed MP3 gamers have been silly.
The 12 months is 2005. I’m about 16 and I’ve been constructing a CD assortment for a number of years (one I truly nonetheless have, shout out the Marantz CD6007).
I’d given up on transportable CD gamers a number of years beforehand, primarily as a result of they skipped on a regular basis and have been too massive to hold round — particularly as I did handbook labor on the weekends.
So, round 2001, I saved as much as get myself a teeny-weeny Panasonic MP3 participant.
It was a terrific system — and forward of its time — however there was a severe situation: storage. It performed music off an SD card and the one which got here with it was solely 64MB.
In actual phrases, this meant I may get simply over an album’s price of songs on it. Not best for somebody with cabinets buckling beneath the load of CDs.
Proper now, I can hear you saying “JUST BUY A BIGGER SD CARD, CALLUM!”
And I attempted, I actually did. However SD playing cards have been fucking extortionate again within the early 2000s, particularly for somebody with solely a Saturday job. It’s arduous to search out precise figures, but it surely was widespread for an SD card to value round $3 per megabyte in 2001.
Which means a 128MB SD card set you again roughly $384. A number of money for not a lot music.
So I did the one logical factor and switched to the way forward for music expertise: minidisc.
As ridiculous as that sounds, there was a certain quantity of sense to my resolution. A single minidisc value round $3, might be filled with 320 minutes of music, and you would switch music from a pc to it.
For a number of years, my backpack jangled with sound of a minidisc library.
It was at this stage in my life that I first noticed an iPod. It appeared pointless. What profit may I, a minidisc prince, take from an MP3 participant like that?
In fact, this modified after I truly bought my arms on one. It’s a second I’ll always remember…
I used to be on vacation in Spain with my household. My sister had simply bought an iPod for her birthday — and I couldn’t care much less. My minidisc obsession was in full swing and I’d already tried this entire “digital music malarky.”
The longer term, I knew, was all bodily.
After a number of days of being across the iPod although, I bought curious. I ought to have an understanding of why this dumb white field isn’t for individuals severe about their music, proper?
So, I sat on the chilly stone ground of the condo, plugged my headphones in, and my life modified.
This system — which was about the identical measurement as my Minidisc participant — overflowed with music. Utilizing it was so… elegant. Moderately than the array of bizarre buttons and small screens on virtually each different music system I’d come throughout, the iPod appeared wonderful.
And thus started my love affair with the {hardware}. The iPod Picture got here out that 12 months and I by no means appeared again.
The outsized function the iPod performed in my life is advanced and nuanced.
On the flip of the millennium, I grew to become fully obsessive about music. I consumed documentaries, books, magazines, or no matter I may get my arms on, actually — and spent each single penny I had on CDs.
After I bought an iPod, for the primary time in my life I had full entry to all my music, irrespective of the place I used to be.
It was not solely a conduit for me falling in love with artists, it was a machine that was by my facet for a few of the most tumultuous years of my life. Irrespective of my psychological well being struggles, music — and my iPod — have been at all times there.
The system was greater than a instrument, it was a companion.
In fact, there’s an argument to be made that that is unrelated to the iPod itself. However I attempted out a number of completely different MP3 gamers and, to me, none had the iPod’s magic.
Whether or not it was its stylishness, the ingenuity of the clickwheel, or the pure readability of the interface, no different system may contact it, not to mention be as magnificent as Apple’s MP3 participant.
Technically, I do know it’s only a bundle of wires and metallic, however the iPod was a lot greater than that. It was a lifeline, a supply of pleasure, and even twenty years since its launch, I nonetheless miss that magic little rectangle.
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