Steven Levy is a technological beat writer for Newsweek, who happened to fall in love with one of the very products he had to write about. Apple’s iPod, now a life changing digital music player and my personal favorite gizmo, has come a long way since its release in 2001, but for Steven Levy to call it the “perfect thing,” I must disagree. Though he does state his criteria for perfect, specifically saying that it does not need to be flawless, the mere fact that the iPod has a myriad of flaws, such as battery life and its ease to collect scratches, does not allow me to believe the same way as him. Levy believes perfect can just be “making a dull day suddenly come alive,” (Levy, 2006). I understand in a spiritual sense that listening to your favorite album wherever you want, on a portable device will brighten the day, but so can many other things. His main reason for iPod perfection is the success that came along with its creation. Mac sales went through the roof and a new era of Apple users came into existence thanks to the newest technological craze. Does success imply perfection though? I listened to CDs and saw movies that no one has heard of that I consider to be perfect. Defining something as perfect is all about one’s opinions and viewpoints. I think that the iPod itself was the perfect marketing tool for Apple. It brought them back to the top of the technological world. The iPod’s creation and the hype surrounding it was the main reason for the sudden rise in sales for Apple. Without the creation of the iPod, Apple’s stock does not go up 700%, and sales in Mac do not increase, (Levy, 2006). I also believe that the iPod commercials and the marketing of the iPod itself was genius. The silhouetted people dancing with there white iPods in the foreground will forever be an iconic 21st century image.
Throughout the first chapter in his novel Levy looks to the iPod as one of the main reasons that he and many others got past the tragedy that was 9/11. He states that, “I wasn’t exactly forgetting about 9/11, but I was getting excited…about technology and its power to transform the world,” (Levy, 2006). People’s ability to walk or run with their own digital libraries in their pockets made life simpler. In a time that people all over were scared, it relieved them to see the world was still moving forward. The iPod can be thanked for that. It allowed people everywhere at any time to put in some headphones and listen to all the music that makes them happy and life seem grand. One iconic image, the iPod, momentarily allowed for the other 21st century image, the towers falling, to fade away.
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