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Goodbye Sweet iPod Shuffle, I Hardly Knew Ye
Date of Review: Nov 22, 2005
The Bottom Line: In which the author wonders if maybe he's just not ready for the responsibility of owning an iPod Shuffle.
My 512 MB iPod Shuffle has gone to heaven. It is now with the angels, and my dogs Daisy and Wolf, and all my cats - Jiggs, Maggie, Rascal, Smokey, Little Rascal, Pinky (also known as Slimey), Gulliver (that awful way), Oliver, and George - and dozens of cheap Shopko off-brand walkmans (for I had no driver's license until I was 26, and spent many years as a pedestrian - albeit, a pedestrian that rawked). A wise man once sang that dead puppies aren't much fun. And I may add, neither are dead iPods. But there mine sits, mummified in its own speaker wires, so full of my own personal favorite songs from the early summer of 2005, so inviting and yet, so inaccessible, like a time capsule. "Is this garbage yet?" James asks, referring indelicately to the corpus iPod, as if it were only yesterday's empty egg carton. It's not his fault, I silently chide myself, He couldn't understand.
Still, he could be so insensitive sometimes. After all, he knows that it was I who killed the iPod Shuffle. And it is I who must find the strength to throw it away. When the time comes, I tell myself, we mustn't rush grief. And who knows, maybe it's not dead after all. Maybe, someday, I'll plug it back into the charger, and it will actually charge. And we will walk together again. To Walgreen's. And Copp's, for their delicious salad bar. Listening to whatever I was listening to just before- just before-
"No!" I answer James out loud. "No, no, no! No, I'm not ready yet."
- - - - -
On some level I knew that one day, the iPod Shuffle would die. As with anything, I knew the iPod Shuffle would not be eternal, would not even out-live me. In the same way I've always known that eventually Spike the Chihuahua's frayed nerves will get the best of him, that Oscar the Pek-a-Poo will eventually poop out. But when they're curled up on my lap, nuzzling their wet, prodding noses against the book I'm reading, trying to get my attention, I deny this essential fact of life. Likewise, after years and years of discarded, short-lived walkmans, on some level, I know - have always known - that portable electronics are fragile creatures - like baby sea turtles - and it is the rare device that escapes an early death (dropped on the asphalt! dropped at the gym! eaten by a hermit crab!).
Still, the last thing on my mind when James brought home the 512 MB iPod Shuffle - a device I knew he had no use for, but had only received as a party gift from some insurance convention - was the terrible, necessary impermanence of the precious. I didn't open that bright green box thinking and this too shall pass. And even, while attempting to get it set up with my home computer (which unfortunately, at the time, ran on Windows ME, and was thus incompatible with the iPod - but, hey, there's always work!), reading the manual, I caught mention of the fact that the iPod Shuffle runs on an internal, rechargeable (but irreplaceable) battery. And that that battery would eventually stop re-charging. And at that point, the iPod would be dead. I was struck by the manual's unusual frankness regarding the finite nature of the device. And, in a way, that candor emboldened me as a user. I would use the iPod Shuffle to its fullest! I would make every day with it count!
I hardly suspected that it would be I - I who would kill this particular portable electronic device, mere weeks later.
- - - - -
It all started innocently enough. A spring love affair, if you will. I remember the day I spent loading as many .mp3's as I possibly could onto a CD, which I then took to work - arriving really, really early one morning. After a brief installation process, by way of which Apple's iTunes was loaded onto my computer, I was free to transfer all those .mp3's into an iTunes database, and then to pick and choose in the order I wished (or, if not pick and choose myself, then have iTunes pick and choose tracks randomly for me in equally random order) the songs I wanted on the iPod.
A few moments later, iPod well and truly loaded, I was all set. Except for the fact that I'd have to work until lunchtime and wouldn't get to really test out my new life companion until then. But soon enough, it was 11. And I was off for my late morning walk on the trails through the reconstructed prairie of the office park. Instead of the sounds of children playing from the nearby daycare center; instead of the sounds of birds of prey swooping down with National Geographic special mercilessness on unsuspecting fieldmice; or the tranquil sounds of, y'know, the wind and the willows and stuff - today, with the help of my newest, tiniest, loveliest friend, the iPod shuffle, I would rawk! Or, if not rawk, than at least groove to tracks off that fabulous new Blue Nile record, or Tin Huey's ironic-to-the-second-degree cover of the Monkees' "I'm a Believer", or Guided By Voice's "Girls of the Wild Strawberries."
- - - - -
Like a noble worker ant, the iPod Shuffle carries a zillion times it weight in audio data on its back (err, disc, err, hard drive, err data cell?); and, for such complex technology, it carried out its work with an almost primitive singularity of purpose. There is a single light emitting diode on the front of its plastic exoskeleton which signals when it is turned on, when it is charging, and when it's needing to be charged. On the front there's a circular play/pause button surrounded by another circle with volume up/down and track skip buttons. On the back, is a single flat switch which both powers the thing on and off, and also adjusts play mode between playlist and shuffle. No plasma displays with track lists, or artists' names. Just one small series of very simple listener choices. On or off? Louder or quieter? Random or ordered? I loved it for that. The way it made few demands on me as a user. As if it understood its place in the order of things.
The thing was no longer than my scar from when I had my appendix out, not much thicker than one of Sony's obnoxious DualDiscs, as light as a proverbial feather, and were it not for the less-than-comfortable weight of the white earpods in my ears, it was an easy device to take for granted. Some may count the iPod's negligible bulk as one the device's blessings. But it proved to be my poor, little iPod's fatal flaw.
- - - - -
I remember the day vividly. It was a Monday morning in June. My 4:30 alarm had just gone off, and with my mind on the breezy late spring air, the freshness of the newly opened buds on the trees, the sunrise already hinted by a red-violet glow over the eastern prairie, I decided to skip my work-out at the gym, and take my iPod for a three mile walk.
It wasn't the first time I'd misplaced my little friend. I'd come in from walks and set it down somewhere - on a desk, on the end table, on the kitchen counter - so I wasn't alarmed by the fact that I didn't know immediately where I'd left it. I attempted to retrace my footsteps in my head while eating my Raisin Bran, and had finally deduced that the iPod was in my car, in that little slot where I sometimes put my wallet, or cell phone. That was fine, I thought. I'll eat my breakfast, get dressed, and on my way out for my walk, I'll get iPod out of the car.
James had done the laundary the night before, and - typical - he'd left it all downstairs for me to carry up. But there was no way I was going to bother with that at this hour. I'll just go down and get my gym shorts and sh- oh no. Is that- Oh, shoooot! Maybe, it wasn't- Maybe, it didn't- Maybe, it would-
I approached the dryer warily. We always keep a little plastic container there for the loose change, pens inadvertently stolen from the office, and other ephemera rescued from our pants pockets - usually my pants pockets - or, more often scooped up out of the bottom of the washer or dryer after a load. For a moment, I flashed back to the day when my 10-year-old little sister found Gulliver in the dryer.
A glance at the containers' contents confirmed that indeed, my iPod was not in that little slot in my car where I usually kept my wallet or cell phone, but rather, that I had left it in a pants pocket. I looked at the piles of my jeans and slacks on the table, and wondered to myself if, perhaps, James had noticed the little iPod before he'd run the clothes through the washer, or if the tiny, tiny, tiny little device only revealed itself after that washer's tub had drained. I picked it up delicately, like a wounded butterfly. I held it softly in my hands, and raised it slowly, lightly to my face.
It smelled like Downy.
I flipped its on/off switch on and off. I punched its cute little buttons, volume up, up, up, up, up. But the LED remained dark. My iPod was in a coma. I plugged it into my computer to see if it would charge. Miraculously the LED blinked as if to say, "I'm charging! I'm charging!" My heart leaped with hope. But two hours later, when I removed it from the charger, the thing lay still, lifeless, and silent. I flipped its on/off switch on and off. I punched it cute little buttons, volume up, up, up, up, up. But the LED remained dark. My iPod was dead.
Six months later, I'm still in denial. Six months later, I still hold out hope that by some weird fluke, it will come back to life. But deep down, I know it's gone, and it's not coming back. "Put one on your Christmas list," James said one night, sympathetically. But I'm not ready. I'm not ready to go through that kind of pain again. But, more importantly, I just don't think I'm ready for the responsibility of an iPod Shuffle relationship. I'm unfit to care for such small, convenient, electronic things. Maybe someday... Someday.
