Tempers Flare Around the iPod

Kooperman · February 20, 2004

Tempers Flare Around the iPod

By David Pogue

The feedback from last week's "State of the Art" column, which reviewed alternatives to the Apple iPod music player, contained some of the rudest personal attacks I've ever received. I already knew that a huge population of Windows bashers, and a huge population of Mac bashers populate the Internet — but now I've met the iPod bashers.

Now, I welcome opposing opinions, and I'm certainly not unique among columnists - in his most recent column, Daniel Okrent, the first public editor of The New York Times, described his own personal hate-mail squadron. But what's with the flaming personal attacks?

Reading them requires more than a thick skin; it also requires awareness that at least some of them almost certainly come from trolls. Trolling, as Internet veterans can tell you, is when somebody deliberately makes an inflammatory remark, just to get a rise out of you. If you join a gun-control mailing list, for example, and you "innocently" post a message that says, "Why are you guys against guns? Guns don't kill people, people kill people!" — then you're trolling. Your knowing aim is to get the other members all heated up.

In any case, despite the risk of giving the trollers just the response they were hoping to get, I thought I'd address the chief complaints people seemed to have about the iPod, which I maintain is still the best hard drive-based music player. Didn't I realize, they wrote, that the iPod's battery is permanently sealed inside and lasts only 18 months — a blatant scam by Apple?

It's not actually true that you can't replace the iPod's battery yourself; plenty of Web sites sell replacements and offer instructions. But the real point here is that the iPod's rivals use precisely the same battery design — you can't easily change their batteries, either. (The one exception is the Creative Labs Zen Xtra, whose removable battery I praised in the column.) In other words, a sealed, rechargeable battery is not unique to the iPod; so far, it's part of the fundamental definition of these pocket music players.

As for this "18 months" business: That statistic came from two disgruntled brothers who got a rude brush-off from Apple customer service when their iPod battery died after 18 months of use. They retaliated by spray-painting "iPod's unreplaceable battery lasts only 18 months" all over Apple's posters and billboards in New York City, and then posting a QuickTime movie of their deed on the Web (www.ipodsdirtysecret.com).

Shortly thereafter, Apple introduced a battery-replacement program: If your battery dies, they'll replace it for $100 (or less, if you order before the fact). Coincidence? You decide — but as far as I know, Apple is the only company that offers such a replacement.

But here's the thing: The typical iPod battery does not, in fact, die after 18 months. That's possible, but not typical; I have two, and they're still going strong after about three years.

The iPod literature makes clear that the battery can be charged between 300 and 500 times. So to burn out the battery in 18 months, you'd pretty much have to charge and deplete the battery (eight hours of playing) almost every day. That's probably not how most people use their music players. (Much more on this topic at http://ipodbatteryfaq.com.)

But never mind that. The real point is that you'll have the same problem no matter which player you buy. They all use the same lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.

There's no point in engaging people who are rude in e-mail; you can't change their minds, any more than you can change Rush Limbaugh's or Al Franken's mind. But that's totally fine. Nobody has to buy an iPod. After all, the whole premise of the column was, "What music players can you buy if you DON'T want an iPod?"