When I take my breakfast in the mornings, I usually sit in front of a window looking out to the entrance of a school. Some days ago I looked at some teenagers and noticed that all of them were listening to a MP3 player, but none of them had an iPod.
As the iPod is certainly the hippest and easiest to use MP3 player on the market, I assumed that at least some teenagers would have one, while others would settle for a cheaper model. The iPods is indeed more expensive than other players, but usually pricing is not that big problem for teenagers if the device is cool enough.
I decided to ask a teacher who also owns an iPod about his view on the subject, and he gave me a very simple explanation.
The iPod is anti-social.
For teenagers, gadgets only have one function: communicating and sharing with friends. The first thing they do after downloading a song from internet is share it with their friends. And well, the iPod simply won't let them do that.
Songs on the iPod are locked up and are only accessible from iTunes on the original PC. Furthermore, to connect an iPod to a PC you need a cable and there is no way a teenagers is going to walk around with an un-sexy USB cable.
A for teenagers successful MP3 player has an incorporated USB port (usually hidden under a cap) so they can connect it easily to any PC (at school, at their friend's home,...) and it should simply work like a memory stick with the MP3 files accessible from the operating system for easy copying of files.
As you know, I am not a very social person, and therefore I am perfectly happy without an iPod.
