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    The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness
    The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness
    The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness
    Audiobook (abridged)4 hours

    The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness

    Written by Steven Levy

    Narrated by Anthony Rapp

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The iPod has become a full-blown cultural phenomenon, giving us a new vocabulary (we shuffle our iTunes on our nanos), revolutionizing the way we experience music and radio through the invention of podcasting, opening up new outlets for video, and challenging the traditional music industry as never before. The design itself has become iconic: there is even a shade of white now called iPod White.

    Steven Levy has had rare access to everyone at Apple who was involved in creating the iPod -- including Steve Jobs, Apple's charismatic cofounder and CEO, whom he has known for over twenty years. In telling the story behind the iPod, Levy explains how it went from the drawing board to global sensation. He also examines how this deceptively diminutive gadget raises a host of new technical, legal, social, and musical questions (including the all-important use of one's playlist as an indicator of coolness), and writes about where the iPhenomenon might go next in his new Afterword. Sharp and insightful, The Perfect Thing is part history and part homage to the device that we can't live without.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateOct 23, 2006
    ISBN9780743561259
    Author

    Steven Levy

    Steven Levy is editor at large at Wired magazine. The Washington Post has called him “America’s premier technology journalist.” His was previously founder of Backchannel and chief technology writer and senior editor for Newsweek. Levy has written seven previous books and his work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Harper’s Magazine, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker, and Premiere. Levy has also won several awards during his thirty-plus years of writing about technology and is the author of several previous books including Facebook: The Inside Story; Insanely Great; The Perfect Thing; and In the Plex. He lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for The Perfect Thing

    4/5

    11 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Steven Levy’s new book on the iPod is not necessarily just for fanboys only – though it is glowing in it’s portrayal of iPods. The DRM in iTunes is dismissed as an inconvenience and not given much weight. He has written it so that each chapter can be read out of sequence as though in shuffle mode.Neat things in the chapters:PERFECT has an amusing description of Bill Gates seeing an iPod for the first time.IDENTITY discusses the intimate nature of exchanging iPods with someone – you may be revealing more than you wish.ORIGIN discusses the people who were building digital music players and stores before Apple but couldn’t do what Apple has done.In COOL he talks with Jonathan Ive the designer responsible for the iPod’s look.In PERSONAL he discusses amateur inventor Andreas Pavel – inventor of the first portable music player in 1972 and the social issues that have concerned people regarding personal music players.DOWNLOAD has some interesting insights into the politics of getting labels on board with iTunes.APPLE on the impact of Steve Jobs and the turnaround at the company. At the time he rejoined Michael Dell [Dell computers] said “I’d shut [Apple] down,” he said,”and give the money back to the shareholders.”On Jan 13, 2006 Apple’s market capitaliztion became greater than Dell’s.PODCAST finds the roots in CB radio.It’s a quick read. It talks about what Apple does right. Does not really get into the wrong. It is enjoyable especially the bits I mentioned above.
    • 4/5
      Book offered good background on the iPod and Apple's turn-around. Good cultural context.
    • 1/5
      Very disappointing. The chapter on history was mildly interesting, but the others were pretty much fluff, and errors were not infrequent. Dude, you're writing a marginally technical book; would it kill you to have someone technically qualified read it before publication?
    • 5/5
      Steven Levy is the chief technology correspondent for Newsweek magazine and knows many of the people he talks about, especially Apple's CEO Steve Jobs. If you have an interest in Apple or technology in general, you should enjoy this book. It is well written and engaging, and contains information and insight only a person close to the tech industry could have. An interesting gimmick, Levy wrote the chapters of the book to be self-contained, stand-alone essays. All copies of this book have the same first and last chapters. The rest of the chapters are randomly ordered or as he says, shuffled.I just want to comment on a few points Levy brought out in the book.1. Integration - Yes, the iPod is a sexy device but the real winner is the integration between the iPod, ITunes, and the iTunes Store. Everything works and so simply a parent can use it. (Just a side note: Having used iTunes on both a Windows XP PC and a Mac, I have to say it works better on the Mac. I don't know if Apple made it that way or if it was just the PCs I had but iTunes was...painful. It worked, just slowly. I get much better performance from the Macs.)2. Devotion - He has stories about people giving their iPods a kiss before turning out the lights or grieving because their iPod wore out. You wouldn't think people could get so attached to their devices but they do. I went for a follow-up with my doctor last week and he was lamenting the fact that his iPod had given up the ghost. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though. I felt that way when my Mac laptop was in the shop a couple of weeks ago.3. Ozone Factor - I don't know what else to call it. It's like people talking on cell phones: the body is here but the mind is elsewhere. He compares peoples reaction to iPod listeners with their reaction to the Sony Walkman and it's ilk. He doesn't really draw any conclusions about it, just puts it out there for you to think about. I honestly had never thought of that aspect of it. As I mentioned before, people zone out on cell phones or in front of video games or eating a hamburger. Beam me up, Scotty!All in all, an excellent book.
    • 4/5
      I read this as my first iPod was in transit from China to my house. (I had to wait from early morning until 5:30 for FedEx to arrive with it; it seems to me in this age of cell phones, texting, Internet, GPS, and computers, it should be possible to have a better handle on arrival times. But I digress.)It was a good introduction to he history of MP3 players in general, Apple Computers and iPods from someone who had access to the major developers as they were creating things. He made me worry about the contents of my iPod and what they say about me before the thing even arrived. He found the simplicity of the object marvelous; I had trouble getting it unwrapped or figuring out what to do with it because of the minimal instructions. A few pictures of the various incarnations would have been nice. I appreciated his realization that his book could mimic the functionality of the iPod by having the publisher "shuffle" the chapters. Nifty!