Pourhadi Perspective: iPod Confusion

by Dan Pourhadi • 09/21/2007 at 11:59 AM

“I think I’m going to buy an iPod.”

Really, which one?

“The black one.”

Right, but which iPod?

“The new one.”

...Which new one?

“The new one that plays video!”

They all play video!

“What?!”

Huh?

“The new black iPod with the big screen that plays video!”

Ah screw it.

Decisions, decisions...

I went to the store the other day to buy a new iPod nano. I picked it up, turned it around, closed one eye and measured its thickness, compared it to my current iPod, felt its curves and texture—all the standard stuff you’re supposed to do according to the Apple Product Purchasing Manual. It passed the test, and I was about to ask the logo-shirted iPod-pusher to get me one to go.

But from time to time I’m visited by a ghostly shadow of a figure, no discernible identity or structure, but which exists almost sub-atomically...maybe even only mentally, in my disorganized machine-gun-like tornado of a mind. It’s brief flash of thought and idea merging into one, a synapse explosion leading to a moment of pure, unfettered enlightenment.

It’s a rarity, this ghostly figure, and I’ve taken to calling it ad iudicium, or to some: Common Sense.

I put down the nano and thought hard about my next move. I felt for my pockets. An 8GB, black 2G nano in one, and an 8GB iPhone in the other. Both storing relatively the same amount of music, with the iPhone accompanying me literally everywhere I go (social norms dictate that I be reachable by voice or text wherever, whenever, despite the growing evidence that people are unknowingly complete idiots when using these mobile communicators).

Ad iudicium spoke: “Why, Daniel, would you purchase yet another 8GB device? What good will it do you, what purpose would it have? How would it make your life more complete, more satisfying?”

I could not answer. I thought of all possible situations in which a new iPod could be used: in the car, on a plane, in the subway, walking down the street. The street and subway are taken care of by the iPhone, which sits in my pocket anyway. The car and plane, however...my current nano currently fills those roles, but with limited ability: it can’t play video—and even if it could, I have to sync only a small subset of my music library as it is. I need more media, not less. Something that will let me bring everything, everywhere I go.

My eyes shifted right. There, ignored by the crowd of enthused iPoddists gawking at the more-prominently-placed fatty nanos and smudged-up touches, sat The iPod Formerly Known as iPod.

It’s a classic.

The name is practically insulting. The iPod classic.

“Which one did you get?” asked a friend.

A black 80GB classic.

“The classic?! The old one?”

Right. The old one.

It feels embarrassing just saying the name. “Where’d you get it?” I imagine a brainless Zune-using dolt (yes, I know, repetitive) asking. “An antique shop?”

Instead of unleashing a series of clever remarks questioning the legitimacy of whatever intelligence he claims to posses, I’d point at the Zune in his hand and say no more, making my point quite clear.

But you can’t really blame the fool: “classic” hints at “aged”; a relic from the past. An out-dated symbol of a preceding generation.

Or, at least, that’s how it sounds.

Oxford does my work for me

“Classic” doesn’t mean aged, of course. In fact, the Oxford Dictionary’s first entry for “classic” makes it seem a perfect fit for the new HD-based iPod.

classic |?klasik|
adjective
“judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind”

Now it sounds like Apple’s just bragging.

Oxford explains the discrepancy between “high quality” and “aged”:

Traditionally, classic means ‘typical, excellent as an example, timeless,’ and classical means ‘of (esp. Greek or Roman) antiquity.’

It’s not the iPod classical. It’s the iPod classic.

But it still doesn’t sit right.

Where’s the damn iPod?

The lack of an actual “iPod” adds an unfamiliar feel to a very familiar product. It always stood as the base, the foundation for which all other iPods were constructed.

The mini, the nano, the shuffle—all took from the iPod, but were identified by their differentiated suffixes. At the top still stood the pure, unhindered “iPod.”

Now, there is no base. There is no foundation. They’re all independently defined by their names. They’re all separate, at least perceptually, and all but one have mostly the same functionality.

Talk about disorder: not only now do you have people imagining the iPod classic as the old, outdated iPod, but you have the absence of a “regular iPod,” the standard large-storage ‘Pod with which everyone was familiar.

Instead you have the iPod shuffle, the iPod nano, the iPod classic, and the iPod touch. And whole a lot of iPod confusion.

You’ll get used to it

Honestly, that’s been bugging me since the announcements. It just seemed like a whacky move—why couldn’t Apple just keep the iPod the “iPod”? It’s still the same form, the same HD-based concept, and still is visually and marketably different than the rest of the new iPod line. No one would’ve been confused with just “iPod,” and it wouldn’t have such a misconstrued stigma. And now all of Apple’s music products (except the iPhone, which is in what I consider a different category) have two words in their name, excluding “Apple.” Which is just weird. There is no more “Apple iPod.” There’s “Apple iPod nano” and “Apple iPod classic.” It’s confusing; some people have given up even trying to get the names right: my boss, probably out of principled rebellion, refers to them all as “uPod.”

But if you take a step back and analyze Apple’s entire product line, the switch doesn’t seem at all unusual: Apple has the “Mac,” but there is no “Mac” computer. There’s the Mac mini, the iMac, the Mac Pro, the MacBook, and the MacBook Pro.

(Hold on, lemme guess: “Wouldn’t ‘iMac’ be equivalent to iPod thus voiding your argument?” Uh, no, because Apple’s music product isn’t the “Pod.” The iMac still has an addition to its name that identifies it in the “Mac” line. Question: do you own a Zune?)

I complain about it now. I’ll probably complain about it two weeks from now, too. But eventually it’ll grow on me; probably when the 2G iPod classic arrives (assuming we’re not now calling the classics the 6G iPod). It’ll become just a fact of the iPod’s existence, giving Apple all the room and flexibility it needs to make any sort of iPod it wants, without worrying about infringing on the “baseline” iPod that we’ve all gotten used to. Without a perceptual baseline, you have unlimited potential for differentiation, which is exactly what Apple wants.

We’ll get used to it. And like the Mac, it won’t be so confusing.

***

“I think I’m selling my Dell and buying a Mac.”

Really? Which one?

“Oh shut up.”