Opinion: “Living without an iPod?” or “The Appliance-ization of Media”

Recently, my kick-butt Shure e4c headphones died. Immediately thereafter, my 60Gb Video iPod died. My daughter’s iBook died a few weeks ago, and my wife’s iBook died this past Monday.

I’m not sure what to do about all the chaos, except maybe to back up my MacBook and be glad I bought Extended AppleCare for it.

What I am sure about, however, is that all these devices, despite their mortality, are fairly important to both my life and lifestyle, and to my family’s life and lifestyle as well. We can and COULD (while they’re broken) live without them and did before we had them, but we are not planning on moving over to a life devoid of awesome headphones, cool media players, and totally drop-down-amazing wireless laptops any time soon.

These things in our household are no longer just gadgets, but have become appliances now, critical appliances, and as such will be replaced and repaired rather than discarded. So we’re off to Shure and Apple to repair the headphones and iPod, and off to the local business supply store to buy a new MacBook.

There never really was an option.

My television is a joke, an old post-Trinitron CRT jobby that bleeds to the right whenever anyone wearing red or anything coloured red comes onto the screen. We don’t have cable. Instead we have a set top antenna thing that our old furnace used to drown out whenever it went on, obscuring all the blurred, red figures in snow. Three channels, sort of. It’s mostly used to play our morning workout videos, or for the kids to watch DVDs with their friends. My youngest watches fuzzy cartoons on it after school. If it died tomorrow, I would not bother buying a new one. It is not a critical appliance. As I said, our TV viewing is spotty, and we are mostly used to watching DVDs on our laptops, so the big screen isn’t the draw it used to be.

We lived without a radio in the house for years. I dropped the last one, accidentally, into a bucket of soapy water while I was cleaning the kitchen and never bothered replacing it until this winter. As a former radio programmer, you’d think I’d be tied to the thing, but I had my fill and found I was getting my music from my iPod and my news from my laptop and if I wanted witty repartee and commentary, I’d make it myself. It was not a critical appliance. I bought the radio this winter because I got a gift certificate for a big box electronics store and couldn’t think of anything else to buy. And because our friends and neighbours have one.

My car is 14 years old and has manual everything. My bike is someone else’s discard that I fixed up and added some better brakes to.

I have really good boots though, Blundstones, because they’re worth it. And my sandals, Chacos, are the finest I’ve ever owned.

I don’t wear a watch, since my electronics all tell me the time, and other people still have watches and if you ask them they’ll tell you the time and maybe chat with you a bit after you ask. I’d like a Rolex, and if I ever buy a watch that’s what I’ll get but, until then, do you have the time?

I have two cordless phones, both hand-me-downs whose batteries are iffy and whose feature sets just barely include call display (I can’t do without call display). I have walked into various shops in recent months *meaning* to buy new phones and each time have just come out again without bothering. Too many choices and nothing compelling enough to make me want to take them home.

Portable media centres, laptops, and iPod have changed the way I live. All that other stuff? Whatever!

I’m sure I’m not typical, am fairly certain I’m not typical, but even though I did without an iPod for about four weeks while straightening out a credit card company’s extended warranty plan, I never thought “why bother.” I was going to get my iPod back and that was just that, no matter how long it took me. I didn’t fall down into a media-deprived depression. I did fairly well on my commutes and walks without listening to lectures and audio books for a while. But I knew that I’d restore that part of my life again and just went through the steps to get back there.

And the MacBook? Hey! It’s better than the two iBooks were, as fast as my MacBook Pro, and everyone has their own accounts on it so there’s no more file confusion, though we’re going to need a bit of a schedule for the kids and have to strongly establish that my wife has priority when she wants to use it. It was the easiest sell of all. When her laptop died, I told my wife I was going to get a MacBook, told her what model, how much, and where I was going to buy it from, and there was no discussion of whether we needed it or not, or whether we could just wait a bit or ask around in case we knew someone who had an extra we could borrow. Like the furnace that died this winter too, or the washer and drier we replaced, or the dishwasher, it was a critical appliance and when it went, it had to be replaced.

Our interaction with media, either through handheld or otherwise portable devices, is going to get more and more dense, rich, confusing, and interesting, and the forms that our interactions will be manifest through, the gadgets themselves, are going to blend, meld, converge, and expand. I’m sure that whatever I’m using in ten years won’t look too much like we have now. I might not even have a TV then. Or a car. If my soda maker breaks, I know I’ll have a hard time convincing myself, let alone my family, that it’s important enough to rush out and replace. But when our new MacBook finally dies, whenever that is, well, we’re just going to have to go right out and get a new one. These things have just become way too important to do without.