Remember when you were little and you really, really wanted that toy? You'd think about it all the time, dream about it, masturbate to pictures of it, all that good stuff? It was the one thing in the world that would solve all your problems. Christmas came along and you got one from Santa. You and the toy were inseparable for a week straight. All your friends loved you. Everybody begged to play with them. They exclaimed, "Wow, that toy is so cool!" which you took as, "Wow, you are so cool!" Times were good when you were hot shit.
Soon enough, Jimmy down the street got a newer and better toy. Your friends stopped calling you, depression sunk in, and your precious action figure found its way to the back of your drawer. Optimus Prime transformed into Prime Dust Collector.
Suddenly, the answer hit you - get a better toy! That will bring your friends back and make everything perfect again. Over and over, every Christmas. Newer, faster, bigger, stronger toys. After a decade of the that, you came to grips with yourself and realized that all this petty materialism wasn't the answer. You began taking responsibility for yourself and stopped expecting pieces of plastic to solve your problems. Or did you?
Instead of continuing to question your values, I'm going to flat out say it - you don't need an iPod. They are a waste of your (parents') money. You don't need one, and you should be ashamed of yourself for being naive enough to think that you do. Every day I see people talking about how much they want an iPod. It reminds me of listening to kids on my old 4th grade playground saying, "I want a ZX Super Actionman so bad!" No, you didn't need the toy then and you don't need an iPod now.
What is an iPod? It's a little piece of metal that you plug headphones into and listen to music. I remember when I was ten we had a device that achieved the same goal - a Discman. You can buy them nowadays for... ohhh.. somewhere around the proximity of zero dollars. Discmans worked fine back in the day. Now that there is better technology, all of a sudden Discmans are worthless. But why? Discmans never got worse, technology got better. Worthless technology. The concept is to listen to music with no strings attached. Discmans accomplish this just fine.
The iPod is capable of holding ten thousand songs. Who needs that much? Of the thirteen million iPod owners in the world, how many have maxed out the space? Only 1425. Merely fourteen hundred people have successfully filled their iPod. And strangely enough, all of these kids were in the same room at the same time. It was at the annual GROTEFP (Geekiest Rejects on the Entire Fucking Planet) convention.
So you like iPods because they're smaller than CD players? That's reasonable, but how much is it worth to you to shave off a few precious inches?
The iPod ends up being ten square inches smaller than the average portable CD player. That means a total of about three inches squared.
It's only three inches. That's tiny, and for three hundred dollars? Penis enlargment pills offer you an extra three inches, and they're only forty or fifty bucks. Now honestly, would you rather have three inches less of audio player or a Discman and huge dick? Size won't even matter anymore because you can just hang the player from your enormous schlong.
Now that the size issue is settled, perhaps a Discman isn't the answer because you require more than 3 seconds of anti-skip. Oh wait! Discmans nowadays don't ever skip! Ever. That can't be what makes up for the drastic difference in money.
The iPod can hold 10,000 songs. The Discman uses CDs which hold twenty songs. Perhaps you don't want to carry 100 CDs everywhere you go. Oh wait! Discmans play mp3s now! That's 200 songs per CD! And unlike an iPod that maxes out at 10,000, Discmans have a removable source. So if we have 200 songs per CD and potentially infinite CDs, that's.. umm.. 200 infinity of songs? Let's put this into perspective.
iPods have rechargable batteries, but so does Ace Hardware store. A bunch of new technology and impressive statistics really don't mean much. When it comes down to it, an iPod isn't that great. So why could it possibly cost so much more money than Discmans, mini disk players, and cheaper mp3 players?
By buying an iPod, you're buying into a trend. You are paying hundreds of dollars to be a part of the new big thing and attempting to buy approval. This means one of two things: 1) you don't already have a big thing, or 2) you're stuck at the pre-adolescent stage of thinking having what someone want makes them your friend. Get a clue and get something else with your parent's Christmas fund.
people use their iPod for 2 weeks before throwing it in their drawer and forgetting about it.