Hard Drive Dressed up....what we call as an Ipod....

When somebody in the future would want an example of the perfect marketing gimmick, the unanimous answer would be the Apple Ipod…..

I don’t own an Ipod, don’t foresee buying one in the near future either, but more about that later….

Right now I am surrounded by Ipods!!!! Why? Because I work in Cognizant Technology Solutions, the company that just became the youngest company in India to reach the Billion dollar mark and as a commemorative measure gave away an Apple Video Ipod to every employee that have been with them for more than a year….which meant of course that I wasn’t to get one with me joining the company in September right from my campus in DCE (Delhi College of Engineering)….we got strolleys instead….

Anyway, so that meant I was literally surrounded on all sides by Ipods and the Ipods which were supposedly of the more expensive (which in our society usually translates to better) variety…..so I got a close look at them…..

Must say I was pretty befuddled….in the end I just blurted out to one of the new proud owner…”it’s just a read only hard drive with a USB port!!!”….I mean, once you download the songs from the computer (and you need a computer preferably with the latest USB port ie USB 2.0), you cannot delete anything from the Ipod….you cannot arrange the songs as you want, you cannot play in them in customized order easily (like drag and drop) and what is perhaps the worst feature of all…you cannot search songs…..I mean if you have 30 GB worth of songs (which literally means thousands of songs!!!), you have to go through the whole list to find the song and god forbid if your songs doesn't have proper ID tagging, you are in for it!!!!!!.....and if you want to charge it (it has pathetically low battery strength for a device claiming to be a music lover’s delight) without a computer, you need to buy a special charger, which costs a 1000/- more….

As I said, it’s just a godamn hard drive…..albeit a pretty expensive one with a very nice metal cover….

However the guy to whom I told this heard me and looked at the shining state of the art device at his hand……shrugged and said “ah well, people look at me when I carry it around”….so I guess that’s what it really comes down to…a very visible status symbol and unlike, the mobile phone (am not talking about the +20K models here), its going to remain so because it doesn't really have too much of a daily use……

Its seriously amazing to think about the guys at Apple who conceptualized this….wrap up a simple hard drive in a shiny metallic cover, sell snazzy accessories and market it as the next revolution in the music industry….and lo and behold, it worked….guess those guys had really understood our consumerist mind and our craving for status differentiators in a society that has an ever lower attention span and which thus gives more attention to visible possessions (read material ones)….Bravo!!!!

And of course its not difficult to see why it has supercharges Apple’s fortunes…the whole package cannot cost more than 1/3 of its marketed price…the gap in price is due to the status symbol price that we have put on it….

Now as to why I wont be fooled (atleast for now)….well for one, I like music that is searchable and editable…so my computer is pretty good for that….now we are only a couple of years away from a home network by which the songs will be put in a common database in our homes and will be accessible to every room in the house and yeah it will be all remote controlled with great customable features (like specific songs for evenings etc)….where will a Ipod feature in that?

Yeah you would say, what happens when you go out of your house….well, with laptops becoming the norm rather than the exceptions and with slim speakers, which can be carried around in the laptop bag, I can setup my music system anywhere….ah now you would ask, what would I do if I have to listen to songs on the move….well to that I reply, I do need a break sometimes from music no? I can do some other things too….like sleep or read a good book....

And no, this is not a rant because Cognizant didnt give me an Ipod:)