what I want in an ipod
I’ve been seeing a lot of “here’s what I want” posts from Fred at AVC, such as his FPhone post, and it’s inspired me to think about ways that I would tailor the products I use in my life.
Here’s what’s missing from my ideal ipod:
I want to be able to easily track which songs I like. I want a button so that, as I’m walking around, or sitting in the subway, when a song comes on that I think is great, I can click that button. Then I can browse through “favorited” songs either on the ipod itself, via a “smart” playlist, or see them in my itunes next time I sync the ipod. I also want iTunes to recommend songs to me that are similar to those that I’ve favorited. I want this because I often just throw on lots of music onto my ipod — stuff that I see get a good rating in the onion, or rolling stone, or was recommended to me by a friend — so I don’t usually know what I’m listening to, and I hate having to pull the ipod out of my pocket to see what the song is (and I usually forget later on what it was, anyway).
I’ve started listening to old episodes of Loveline and I’m feeling that the ipod is weak for listening to long-form audio. The Loveline episodes are all generically titled (”2002-05-20″, “2002-05-21″), and — see my previous comment about not knowing what I’m listening to — I’m not usually checking to see which episode I’m listening to, so I am never able to tell at a glance which episodes I’ve listened to and which I haven’t. And I end up listening to the first 20 minutes of a lot of them, because that’s how long my subway ride is. So now I’m stuck with all these episodes where I’m not sure how much of them I’ve listened to, and I have to go tediously scrolling forward and backward through the file to try to get to a place to listen to a new part of the show. Plus, since these aren’t genre’d as “audiobooks” on my ipod, it doesn’t remember my place when I come back to an episode if I listen to anything else in between.
The iPod’s podcast/audiobook support is a little better, I think, because it can handle chapters and saving one’s place there, but even if I could get the iPod treating these loveline episodes in that way, it would still leave a lot to be desired.
This has all got me thinking about how great it would be if the iPod were an open system that people could develop plugins for. I would certainly be into building some sort of plugin that would help me manage these loveline shows, and if I’m having this thought now, I’m sure someone else had it a while ago, and if the ipod were open I bet someone else would have built it for me a while ago.
This has all got me thinking that, awesome as the ipod is, there’s serious room in the market for an open-source competitor to sweep up some market share. Let’s see it.
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