Argue and Agree

This is amazing.

This is ridiculous.

First of all, I don’t own an Iphone. I wish I did, but I do have an Ipod Touch, which is basically an Iphone without said phone and the camera. This is due to the fact that I have a Blackberry for work (that work pays for) that has the phone and the camera on it. I still carry two devices just like I did pre-Ipod touch.

My Ipod Touch is the single most amazing “thing” I have ever purchased or owned. It is really that incredbile in many ways, and as the open plaform for development comes on line (in the very near future) this little device will continue to blow minds for a long time to come.

Still, I am unsatisfied, and the reason that I am unsatisfied is this: the fucking headphones suck. They suck incredibly, both in terms of quality, but more so in terms of design. When I say design, I don’t mean to imply that they don’t look nice (they do). What I mean is they that they fall short of delivering on what people want and need from headphones.

Point blank: There is no reason in the world that the mandatory counterpart for a device as amazing as the Iphone should be a wadded up pair of cheap earbuds, just like the ones I had in 6th grade.

Here is the situation that I deal with nearly every day. I reach in my pocket to pull out my Ipod and the earbuds clumsily wrapped up around it. I try to get the earbuds untangled, and into my ears. What I end up with is a mess of wire of such magnitute that it oft makes me laugh out loud. I find myself thinking that God must be cruel, creating a world where a cord can, without any human intervention, tie itself into such a web of knots that it will take minutes to untangle, yet if I had ever a need to tie a cord into such knots there is no chance that I could ever get it to hold.

Also, earbuds are shaped exactly like fishhooks, and work just like fishooks, catching on everyting in their path. I am always yanking and jiggling the cord trying to get the buds uncaught from some piece of clothing. Why? My ears aren’t shaped like a fish mouth. Are they?

As a company I like Apple. I like Apple a lot. I like their products. I like their emphasis on design and design ethos. I think it is because I hold Apple to this higher standard that I can’t believe the scope of their miss here. They didn’t pay attention to the entire user experience. They were too focused on the technological wonder that would be the Iphone itself.

So, as to be fair about this let me put out a few quick ideas for what could be done here to make this better:

1. Wireless headphones. You can get wireless speakers and even wireless T.V. these days. Surely there is potential for small wireless headphones. There are plenty of larger wireless headphone solutions out there.

2. Incorporation of a small “dock” for the earbuds themselves would be nice.

3. A small recess in the body of the Iphone itself to serve as a cord manager

4. Retractable solutions

5. Coiling solutions (similar to the Sonys I used in 6th grade).

6. Bluetooth? How is it I can get an entire phone in a package not that much larger than my earbuds?

In 6th grade I was a Walkman fanatic. I had one of those super-tech mini Walkman cassette players (which was amazing) and the Sony coiled headphones, and I was stoked. Today, my headphones are basically the same (minus the coiling case) the the size of the Iphone is comparable to that of my Walkman. Sure, the Iphone does 10 times more than old Walkman, but in it’s primary function as a portable music solution it still has a lot in common with it’s old analog cousin from the ’80s. There is still much work to be done.

Don’t even get me started on the Apple laptop docking station issue.

[r]