The iPod Family

(photo: courtesy apple.com/iPod)

Last weekend our family celebrated Mother's Day in an unusual way: we bought iPods for everybody. That's right - four people, four iPods.

Joshua's wanted an iPod for at least a year. We hadn't gotten him one before now because we've been paying for his upcoming trip to Europe and his new trombone. We finally relented, however, when we realized that it will be much easier for him to take the iPod to Europe than it would have been to take a walkman and a pile of CDs. He'll be gone for 16 days and he can only take one large suitcase, one backpack/carry-on piece and his instrument.

As far as I know, Dave hadn't really thought much about getting an iPod until Joshua took him to the store last weekend and convinced him to listen to one. He was hooked instantly. We bought the iPods on Saturday evening. As I write on Thursday morning, Dave has already uploaded almost 2,500 pieces of music (but only a couple of dozen photos) onto his iPod!

I initially thought about getting an iPod for storing photographs. I've uploaded 166 photos so far, but they are not full resolution, which would take up more memory. They're reduced and optimized for display on the iPod. I have to admit, I like the way they look. Instead of using the iPod to back up full rez photos, I'll probably buy a second hard drive that plugs into one of my USB ports. I've been using CDs but I've accumulated so many photos that the CD method has gotten cumbersome. I also realized that full rez photos will fill up the iPod fairly quickly, so I'll need another hard drive anyway. Therefore, it turns out that I'm using the iPod primarily for music. I'm way behind Dave though, I've only uploaded 936 musical pieces. Still, it's nice to walk on my breaks and have a large music library in my pocket. And I thought CD walkmans were cool. iPods are way cooler.

Jonathan never mentioned the idea of an iPod to me. I still have no idea if he had ever wanted one. I was at the counter paying for the first three units when I asked him, "Are you sure you don't want one?" His answer: "Who's paying for it?" My reply: "Dad and me." The words had barely left my lips when he said, "Yes."

Since we all preferred the black model rather than the white one we bought four identical black iPods. On Monday night, I had just gotten a foot in the door when Dave proudly showed me the nice brown leather case he had bought just moments before. His reasoning: "I want to be able to tell my iPod apart from all the others around here." Not to be outdone, I went shopping immediately after supper (literally, Joshua was still loading the dishwasher when I left) and bought a spiffy black leather case for mine! Jonathan and Joshua are still using the soft velvet cases that came in the boxes with their iPods. If they want new cases they'll have to get their own - I'm out of money!