Who should you follow?

It's no secret that I am fan of Apple, but I can assure you that it was not always this way. Well, it was, but it's not like my first computer was an Apple and I did not jump onto the iPod bandwagon when they first hit the market. In fact, my first iPod was/is a Shuffle and that came out just over a year ago. I have a 4.5 year old ibook that is my primary portable and is running strong; I replaced the battery on it last year. I also have a mini that I use as a cool "any-purpose" machine that has a ridiculously small footprint. I should get a medal for swapping out the ram stick in that thing...Let's just say sandpaper and a putty knife did the trick; no case damage occurred either.....Anyway, we have established that I enjoy Apple's products and many people do which gets me to the main situation of this post....So many people (maybe even readers of this blog...hint, hint) make noise about the iPod and how overrated and expensive it is and that people who buy them are just following the crowd with no reasoning and without reservation; sheep, if you will....I find this amusing if you flip the script on them and see if they use a PC as their computer of choice. Is that not the same argument that can be used? Let me answer that. YES, it is! I have 6 year old HP (works fine; replaced the HD 2years ago) and a 3 year old PC that I built; runs Photoshop like a champion. I am not a gamer, therefore, I look for the PC to really handle Office tasks, Photoshop, Web Dev (testing), misc prog use and some other not so processor-intensive tasks. I am in no way a PC-hater, but given the choice, the Mac destroys the PC in terms of user-experience and just overall cool-factor. Oh, I have never had ad/spyware or a virus on either of my macs.

This post is more about the whole digital music scene and the platform or music playing device of choice. I prefer the various versions of the iPod. No question of it’s superiority in terms of UI, durability and plain cool factor.

I’m an open minded person though and I actually have this Creative Zen Xtra that I bought 3 years ago due to a great deal amazon had that it came out to like $120. At the time, getting 30GB in music player was NOT cheap and I wanted to be able to say that I knew what the “other” side of the music player world was like. 30GB is a large amount of storage. The quality of the music is fine assuming the proper encoding occurred in the first place, but the navigation on that thing is junk. The small plastic “wheel” on the side is junk. The software Creative used for that thing is junk. It really did confirm to me that the iPod is king and everyone else is a pretender. I am not someone who buys every new gadget that comes out, therefore, the next time I get a music player will be different than the first time I bought one, but unless I get the same experience as what Apple and the iPod give me, then on the shelf will stay those other products.

Without further ado, I leave you with a link to a site that provides motivation to look for alternatives to the iPod. I think the ad campaign is fairly decent; I don’t agree with it, but there will be a segment out there that likes it and will try to dethrone the iPod. People should keep things in proper perspective as they use their PCs like the rest of the sheep out there.... :p