yeah, mostly one of them "let me do something on the first of the month so that no one who may care, no matter how remote that idea or concept is, doesn't think i am no more" posts to mark, if not celebrate, the commencement of March.
whilst as a geneal rule i do not, look you see, get all teary eyed and concerned about corporates or brands (except Marlboro), the fall of Apple has always been quite a sad thing. yeah, sure, they're wallowing in piles of coins of money, but they tossed aside their soul to get it. the ipod is the single greatest portable, or if you like mobile, music player what i have ever experienced (outside of my first walkman in 1981 or thereabouts). what a shame they not only trashed that design, but then made their greatest product pretty much obsolete with all their other, lesser stuff.
i was engaged in further unpacking adventures, if you are wondering where this is all going or what this is about, and i found this - the 512MB ipod shuffle "stick" that, if memory serves right, my (considerably) better half got given as an enticement to sign up for a mobile, or if you like cellular, phone contract.
that above is indeed the ipod shuffle "stick" sat upon my shiny copy of Spectre. no i have not watched it yet. yes i did only pay £7 for it, or if you like £007, but not from the heavily advertised Tesco promotion. Morrisons were selling at the same price, they just elected not to make a song and dance about it.
once upon a time, say 15 or so years ago, mobile phones were an indulgence, a nice but unnecessary luxury. the service providers new this, and so waved shiny things at you in the form of gifts for signing up. these days, of course, the world has become so dependant on them (Apple in part to blame for this) that it's not so much that they don't give you gifts as it is they hold you to ransom over contracts and access to the devices.
today, of course, this particular ipod shuffle does not seem that shiny or impressive. back then, however, it was pretty awesome. 512MB was an awful lot of space on such a small device; at the time a USB memory stick had, as a standard, an impressive 128MB of storage space on it.
what i quite like about this ipod shuffle is the user friendly, user focused and very handy features it has. number one of these would be - and even the most ardent Apple apologist must agree with me here - an off button. yes, fancy, an Apple device you can actually switch off so as to conserve the battery.
also, it has a built in USB, as in you can connect it directly to a computer or charger. as in, any computer or charger that has the standard USB port. see, once upon a time Apple thought it was important to let people who gave them coins of money actually use their products with relative ease.
beyond being in storage for two years or more, i think it could well be seven or more years since i actually used this last. i for some reason have a distinct recollection of loading The Stone Roses onto this and listening to it as i washed my car. as i gave up on washing my car not long after that, i would like to think that this was the last time i used it.
quite impressive, then, that it was still in working condition. well, kind of working condition.
whereas the red netbook could see the stick and indeed itunes could see that i had named the device Mr Vibes (yeah, i am that cool, folks), it was having none of me accessing whatever music was on it. on the summary screen, it said that half of the ipod (more or less) was taken up with "other" files.
a really nice touch was that there was a new ios operating system thing ready to apply to this stick. i duly applied it, for as we all know hardly anything ever goes wrong when you update the ios of an Apple product.
is there some sort of nostalgia market for this once off generation, long since discontinued model of ipod? not really. whereas brand new in box models can command a price of just south of £100, used ones - even with all the bits like i have - sell for north of £5 but south of £10. not that i would sell it.
why have i bothered to plug it in and get it working, if it does indeed work? i thought it might be nice and easy to carry on strolls around the grounds where i live. also, the novelty factor i suppose. i happen to quite like gadgets. as i write this i have absolutely no idea if it works or not. it's sat next to me, plugged into the computer, and i can only assume that the orange not green light on it means to tell me that it is charging.
of course i had to "factory reset" the device to get rid of the 200+ MB of music that Apple now sees as "other files". i've renamed the device Mr Vibes Redux (yeah, amigos, i am that cool), and itunes reckons the music i added from purchases on their store (some obscure Bowie singles, bit of Stranglers, bit of Sputnik, a lot of Mental As Anything) is on the device. but itunes has lied before.
well, and there we go. in terms of memory stick shaped music players, you can (and i indeed do) get ones with a much higher capacity - some go to 4 or 8 GB. none, however, have ever had the awesome quality playback that i have found to be the case with the Apple ipod. what a shame the company treats their best, most widely loved and praised concept of a product with such contempt and disdain, then.
where does the waterproof, or water tolerant, part of this all come in? right now.
i had, it seems, either neglected to empty my clothing pockets of items before putting them in the wash, or had otherwise elected not to care. in either eventuality, this ipod shuffle went on an adventure in the washing machine today. yes, my most beloved washing machine that features here from time to time. also it ended up in the tumble dryer for a little while.
despite all common sense and experience to the contrary, i am somewhat surprised and happy to inform you that it remains in perfect working order. nice one.sorry, that's all there is to the waterproof element.
so, in short, or in millennial speak tl;dr, if you want a waterproof Apple product best you get one of these shuffle sticks.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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