By way of contrast, our new Made By Masters series celebrates the best in electronics design. For the first contender it would almost be perverse to ignore the mighty iPod. Since its release in October 2001, it's shaped a whole market, whether in Classic, Shuffle, Nano or now Touch variations.The challenging question becomes: If you could place just one iPod in a historic pantheon, which one would it be? It isn't just a question of appearance, but the form factor in terms of the functionality packed into that design, and also the price, too (we are talking about a consumer item).
This sounds a bit like a topic for dinner party conversation, once property prices have been exhausted (not that I go to any dinner parties, but I read about them in The Guardian)...
I am half-tempted to say the Nano - I suspect this represents the greatest triumph in terms of packing functionality in the smallest form factor. And yet, I feel it would be falling between two stools - not the best for video, and not the best for music storage.Maybe the best tribute to Apple's design is the constant improvement, with the latest - the iPod Touch - topping what has gone before - great screen, touch interface, huge storage capacity, and Wi-Fi support. The iPod keeps getting better. And yet, picking the very latest iPod as the best of all time, seems a bit provisional.
Maybe, for this historic pantheon, we should go back in time, to the very first Version 1 of the iPod classic. It was almost like inventing the MP3 player wheel...
Yes, the original has it. That was the game changer. As a Mac expert said to me, the design, software, etc, have been improved but the essence is the same. All other iPods derive from it.
Read about the original release of the first iPod, and initial impressions from its UK debut, by my old workmate and the aforementioned expert, Simon Aughton.
A reminder of its technical spec: weighing 180g and featuring a 128x128 pixel display, around 1,000 songs could be stored on its 5GB hard disk.
Which iPod is the fairest of all? Leave your suggestions below. Indeed, what are your suggestions for electronic products deserving of a place in the Made By Masters pantheon?
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Comments (1)
Sega Megadrive
With over 29 million units sold, it became Sega's most successful console. Released in 1988 as part of the fourth generation era of consoles, it dominated over the old 8bit NES. With (now deemed) classic games including the monster that was Sonic the Hedgehog (prob one of the best platform games ever to come close to Mario), it really was the console that set the whole thing off. A contender for made by masters?
Posted by russell dawson | January 16, 2009 2:19 PM