iPod at 10
Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the iPod, and while most writers are looking back to the innovation of the day and where it has lead, I’m thinking about how far we’ve come in those ten years. Friday night, my church opened it’s annual haunted house. I was scrambling to get all of the sound set up. I had an assortment of iPhones and iPod Touches, each with an ambient track or a cued sound effect, along with one iPod Classic. I turned it on, and without thinking, tapped the playlist that I wanted to play. Of course, nothing happened. Once I had navigated to the desired track using the dial, I needed to set it to repeat. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember or figure out how to do it. I had to go find the owner of the device. You have to navigate to “Settings” and find it in the options there. I was trying to do it from the screen where the track was playing. The iPhone’s touchscreen has allowed for much more intuitive and direct interaction, a fact made starkly apparent when compared with ten-year-old technology.
