Ten Years of the iPod: A Personal Retrospective (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | The iPod's 10th anniversary is on Thursday. It's hard to believe it's been so long. In honor, here's my account of the first iPod I ever bought, which turned out to be the first of many generations of iPods to come - and why I wish I'd kept it.

Sometime around Christmas of 2001, I splurged on myself and bought a little white music player called an iPod. It was clunky. It only held about a thousand songs. It used a scroll wheel that became time consuming when I wanted to hear a certain song. It had buttons to push: play, menu, previous, next. But at the time, there was nothing like it! That clunky little iPod was the coolest thing I'd ever bought myself.

Being a lifelong music aficionado, having the ability to keep my music collection in my pocket was like a dream come true. I'd always been one to keep lots of music in my car. Countless CD's were lost, scratched and ruined over the years due to that habit. But with this new little iPod invention from Apple, a name I already trusted, I could finally leave all that other stuff at home. Admittedly, the device was too big for my pocket, but it fit in my purse just fine. That was the year I stopped using my Discman. It's lived in a box ever since.

That clunky little iPod was only compatible with a Mac. That turned out to be a little disappointing since I couldn't trade music with friends on their computers. Most people I knew had PCs. Nevertheless, I felt like it was a great investment. And it certainly was.

I can't remember how much I paid for that first iPod. I remember it costing what I felt was a decent-sized chunk of change. But in the end, I coughed up whatever amount that was. And in the years since, I don't think I've lost or damaged a single CD. Then again, I no longer have to drag them around everywhere I go.

Two years later, when the iPod shuffle came out, I splurged again on a new one. I gave the "old clunker" away. The smaller, touch sensitive control was appealing and so was being able to put more songs on it. Had I known that the original was going to become a sought-after collector's item, I would have laid it to rest in that box with my Discman instead of just giving it away. But at the time, I just thought newer was better. I certainly wish I'd had the foresight to not throw away the old with the new. Clearly, they both had their respective values.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111111/us_ac/10403441_ten_years_of_the_ipod_a_personal_retrospective

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