Are iPods better than money?

January 12th 2007 | Tell us what you think [ 0 comments ]

Would you choose an iPod over a cash prize?

Zoom

I was writing a review at home a few days ago with someone watching the TV in the background. I'm not sure which digital channel it was tuned to but it was a really awful American game show, fronted by a cheesy bald man with the whitest teeth you'll ever see.

I'm not even sure what the program was called, but it was one of those daytime game shows whereby the only people who go on them are pensioners, weirdos and the unemployed, and the only people who watch them are pensioners, weirdos and the unemployed. It was probably called something like "Scroungers: The novelty game show where stupid people answer questions for money!"

My attention was grabbed when towards the end of the show the winning contestant - an obese man from Texas, shock horror - had to choose which prize he wanted. I don't recall what all the options were but one prize was $1000 cash, and another prize was an 80Gb video iPod.

To my utter amazement, the man plumped for the iPod! The idea of taking the money and spending a few hundred bucks of it on an Apple iPod, leaving $800 to spend on anything else, did not seem to enter his mind.

This got me thinking; are iPods better than money? John Doe from Texas certainly thought so. At what point, then, do iPods cease being the cool 'in' thing and start becoming 'the enemy,' Windows XP-style?

I mean, the reason why there are so many people out there who moan about Microsoft at every opportunity is because of the monopoly the company holds over so many markets. All the while, Apple has been the hip, cosmopolitan company that people have turned to in order to avoid giving William Gates any more of their money.

But what with the iPod becoming the most successful portable consumer electronics product in the history of the world, doesn't that mean that the iPod is also destined to become another icon of market imperialism?

There is already a gathering movement of people who refuse to buy an iPod out of principle. These people see through the 'cool' thing and think more about how iPods like to lock-down your music to one terminal and device for instance. And obviously, it's more about them rebelling against the norm, than anything else.

I've always thought that this process of becoming uncool might eventually happen to Apple. But Seeing John Doe on that rubbish game show has perhaps changed my mind.

It seems that most non-tech savvy people (most people) don't even know the difference between an MP3 player and an iPod (I'd be interested to hear from anyone out there who is unsure of the difference between a car and a BMW, by the way.)

Most people don't know about the fantastic products that SanDisk and Creative are producing. Those Zens and Sansas really are fantastic. That's a shame. And all in the name of 'cool.'

Damn I hate that word.

.............................................................

Go back to Rungsberry HOME

Or try these other entries...

Rungsberry: The first entry

Aeulogy for a dead MP3 player