The iPod is what made me a Mac user. I am, and always have been, a music lover and collector. When digital music players first started coming out, I tracked them closely, but none of them were good enough for me to take the plunge.
Until the first iPod came out. I was a user research intern at IBM when it was launched, finishing up my MS degree. I coveted the iPod deeply. I finally bought one to celebrate my conversion to a full-time employee a few months later. At the time, I was running Linux on my ThinkPad, a configuration that had absolutely nothing compatible with an iPod. I had to buy a FireWire card for my ThinkPad, install Windows (!!!), and then install a third-party app to make it possible to read and write to my iPod because Windows compatibility wouldn’t come for another few months. I jumped through all of those hoops and more to use that iPod. I was so excited to have 1000 songs in my pocket. I carried it everywhere, I used it all the time.
The ease of use and attention to detail in the iPod is what convinced me to switch to a Mac. I already knew that OS X was really *nix under the hood, but I hadn’t really considered it before that. I finally bought an aluminum MacBook Pro a few months after that and never looked back. Being a Mac user and a user researcher is what got me recruited by Microsoft to work for what was then called the Macintosh Business Unit. I took the name of this blog from the first t-shirt that I got from that team (and, in fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve still got that shirt).
I haven’t used an iPod since I bought the first iPhone. Listening to music and podcasts is still my single largest use of my phone. Even though I haven’t used one in quite awhile, the announcement that Apple has discontinued the remaining iPod in its lineup makes me a little bit sad. Goodbye, old friend.
It’s interesting how small things lead to larger decisions eh? I made a similar journey to Mac land after getting an iPhone 3GS (the first one officially available in NZ). That started a transition from a Linux workstation with Windows VM (largely for iTunes) to an old iMac we had at work. That lead to me turning my home Linux workstation into a hackintosh which eventually got replaced by a refurbed Mac mini. Moving from GNOME to Snow Leopard happened with very little friction and I loved having a bash shell just a click away.