Favorite Things Friday - Dare I Say It?? Gulp! The iPod!

The Apple company and I have had a rocky relationship over the years. I'm not sure why this is, and I just plain old can't seem to figure out how to make it a stronger, more meaningful relationship, but we just can't seem to communicate with each other.

The relationship started back in fifth grade. Now, youngsters, I am one of the generation known fondly as "X" (though I'm really not all that sure why... Check out this Wikipedia link for more information, but be careful. It is Wikipedia, after all...). This means that my first real interaction with a desktop computer was in fifth grade when each classroom had the option of one computer. My teacher, a progressive young woman in her first year of teaching, was the only one who accepted a computer in her classroom, so we got to do math programs and the occasional spelling game. I had the advantage of being a patient kid who did her work quickly and accurately, so I got to "tutor" the new kid from an Asian country who did not speak English. My teacher found that he knew about computers, so we spent lots of time "tutoring" at the computer. He taught me about computers, and I taught him about English terms for the educational information that we were learning. This was my first and (until now) ONLY positive interaction with an Apple product. That computer was an Apple II-e.

Now, it is clear that the rest of my Apple interactions and use of iThings has been overshadowed not only by my lack of understanding of such iThings but also by the influence of my father. He is a straight up PC guy and has been ever since we dinosaurs called these types of computers "IBM-compatibles." He brought home our first family computer when I was in junior high (about two years after my only real successful Apple interaction), and we were a computerized family! That was that. It was IBM or nothing in our home.

I have tried to develop a relationship with various and sundry Apple products over the years. There was the Mac during my stint as a graduate teaching assistant - the one the changed the file on my thesis disk so that I couldn't transfer the file onto my computer at home, leading me to completely retyping my Master's thesis. There was the laptop iThing that our misguided presenter tried to hook up to our only-PC network last year. She neglected to bring an adaptor and wasn't able to hook up to any of our technology. She simply assumed that everything we would have would hook up to her Apple stuff. She was VERY wrong (The IT department at my facility has the same opinion about Apple things that I do - eh, no thank you!)

If you are still reading through this thinly veiled rant, let me tell you that I have come around to the Apple way of thinking on one device - and one device only. 

My iPod Classic

 Last year, when I was facing the fact that I was going to be an itinerant therapist and not have a permanent music therapy clinic. I panicked a bit. How was I going to keep using the recorded music that my clientele responded to, craved, and required? Then, I started looking around.

I chose an iPod after much consideration. The first thing that sent me into that direction was the size of the storage on the old iPod Classic - 160 GB! The second thing was that iTunes has given me so many fewer issues on the work server than either Windows Media Player or the utter fiasco that is known as (shudder) Zune. For both of those music storage programs, I couldn't find the music that I needed. I could on iTunes, so I leapt.

I submitted my request and the IT department immediately denied it. They suggested I get an Android instead. I quickly changed their minds when I pointed out that I did not want an iPAd, but an iPOd. Once they knew exactly what I wanted (just something that I could hook up to some external speakers and use to play music, NOT apps), they were fine with ordering the technology.

Since then, that iPod has done most of what I wanted it to do without too many problems. We still tend to have some disagreements from time to time - sometimes the database has been entered wrong, so I have lots of songs that are mislabeled on the little device. Occasionally iPod just stops working, and I have to completely reset it, but for the most part, we have been able to just hum along.

My iPod has the name of my department etched onto it. It holds my ENTIRE music library (currently about 22 thousand songs), and it currently has 80 television episodes (just for me - kids don't use the iPod to watch television - I use the sound to do my documentation rather than music). My stereo has an iPod dock and charges the device very quickly, so all-in-all, this has been the most successful iThing relationship that I have ever had! I hope it will continue for a long, long time.

My favorite thing this Friday? My iPod Classic.