This week saw the passing of the legendary Steve Jobs. I am quite prone to using the word legendary in a fairly haphazard way but in the case of Steve Jobs I think it's fair to say that the term is entirely appropriate.
Apple didn't really exist for me until I was given an iPod as a present. The logic behind this fantastic gift was that I'd be able to upload my CD collection onto one piece of kit and get rid of my CD's. This would mean that Mr WorthyOnTheWeb wouldn't have to put up with me leaving them all over the house. Unfortunately his logic was flawed and owning the iPod didn't affect my beloved collection of CD's or the vinyl and cassette collections that preceded it. Despite exasperating my husband and costing him a large amount of money, the iPod is for me the best present I have ever owned. My children are the only thing I have been happier to accept into my life.
Everything about my iPod was gorgeous, even the packaging. In fact the packaging was so wonderful that I have only recently thrown it out. There were layers of specially shaped polystyrene, making a box which had a sleek black sleeve around it. Even the carrier bag felt luxurious. The iPod itself has twice the depth of the current classic model and feels much heavier than it's modern counterpart. It was shiny on the back, glossy on the front and came with a docking station and associated wiring. It was the most gorgeous piece of technology I'd ever seen and I loved it instantly. In fact I loved to so much that I bought a Mac Book. I didn't need one, I just wanted one. It was also sleek and glossy. In fact it was so sleek and glossy that I totally ignored the fact that it didn't do any of the things I actually needed it to do. I had to go out and buy the iWork suite of apps because despite costing me almost £800.00 I couldn't use it for spreadsheets or word processing. Garage Band and Comic Book are all well and good, but at the time I didn't want or need any of them. I still don't if I'm honest. I can count on one hand the number of times I've used Garage Band and the only reason I've ever used the other is because it's there. Granted they are both pretty cool but it's like paying over the odds for a car with a snowboard carrier when I don't snowboard and then having to buy a steering wheel and headlights.
My love of the iPod formally became a love of all Apple products. I have an iPhone and a MobileMe account. All of which works well unless you attempt to use any of it with anything that wasn't created by Apple. Unfortunately in my experience it doesn't play well with others. Write a page on iWeb and upload it to MobileMe and it's all happy days. I wouldn't recommend writing a page on iWeb and trying to host it elsewhere and I would strongly advise against writing your own web pages in HTML and CSS and trying to host them on your MobileMe web space. My iPhone only tolerates sending emails from my mobile me accounts, attempting to send emails from my other accounts generates sniffy messages about receiving accounts not accepting relayed messages. If I turn off my WIFI, say the magic words and do a special dance it sometimes works, but it's generally easier to just reply from an Apple email address because that just works.
Essentially the problem is that I loved my first iPod so much that I assumed that every member of it's family was just as wonderful. I now know that they aren't. My Mac Book is still awesome but newer versions of the Mac Book and the newer feline operating systems have rendered it almost obsolete, despite it working perfectly (so far) The realisation that not everything I buy from an Apple store is entirely lovable has changed my view a little and taught me to be more careful about the brands I fall in love with. It was an expensive beautifully designed lesson.
When my iPod eventually started playing up and subsequently died I was practically distraught. I had a genuine sense of loss. The pain must have shown because Mr WorthyOnTheWeb bought me a new iPod Classsic. It's technically superior to the first one, but it's not as gorgeous and although I love it - the attachment isn't as emotional as it was with the first. Luckily I still owned the original CD's, which justified my crazy hoarding tendancies, but there was something different about the new one, almost like replacing a cherised family dog with a new puppy. The first one was so fantastic that even it's replacement can't compete with it. I opted for a black one this time. The back is still shiny, but the front finish is matte instead of the glossy finish I was expecting. It has a slightly different shape and has lost a lot of the weight. Environmental concerns have transformed the packaging. The polystyrene casing is a thing of the past. It came in a cardboard box a quarter of the size of the original one. It's a good looking box but there is a lot less drama to unwrapping it. I was almost disappointed when they put it on the counter. Thankfully the carrier bags are still quite luxurious and when I got it home and started using it, I got over myself. It's only a music player for goodness sake.
I still have my original iPod, I can't quite bring myself to throw it away. Maybe deep down I'm hoping there is a way to fix it. At some point I'll probably buy an iPad to join my Apple collection but no matter how gorgeous it is, I doubt if I'll love it in quite the same way as I did my very first iPod.
The legacy of Steve Jobs is bigger than the technologies he created. The ability to create a piece of technology that people not only find useful and functional but also become emotionally attached to is undoubtedly not only marketing and commercial gold but genuine genius.
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