Weighing in on popular depates: iMania

OK, is it just me or has western culture gone more than a little iCrazy? If Apple can’t win on the computer front, it definitely stands on top of the world on other fronts. Stick an “i” on the front of it and just wait for the hordes to arrive, willing to spend big bucks just for the name.

Now I’m a rebel when it comes to noncomformity. Just ’cause it’s cool is usually a good reason for me to avoid it. I’m too practical for the mindset that says, “why buy something cheaper that works as well when you can have the cool thing with the “i” in front of it’s name and the trademark white earbuds.” As dearly as I’d love to be the techy geek that always has the lastest, greatest and coolest gadget available, my wallet keeps me behind the times, and I can quite honestly admit to never buying an i-anything. Instead of an iBook, I have a quite nice (if over a year old) Acer Aspire. I have a Sony Erikson cell phone, and I’m still using a hand-me down Sony Walkman CD player for portable music–though it usually stays plugged into my car with a cassette adapter. The 4+ gigs of music stored on my computer harddrive only goes where my computer goes.

On the other side of things, you can’t blame Apple for trumping everyone else when it comes to portable media. With their software staples of iTunes and Quicktime (and yes I keep my free versions up to date), they have a corner on the market when it comes to spreading music and video around the world wide community. Subscribing to and listening to the wide variety of available podcasts has put me in a whole new frame of mind when it comes to electronic media. Podcasting may even be the impetus that will make me eventually shell out the big bucks to have my very own iPod–though not any time soon. As much as I like the seamless intergration of Windows Media Player with the Windows XP Pro that I currently run on my laptop, iTunes is the program that hardly ever gets closed. There is so much that it offers that WMP doesn’t have a chance: network sharing without breaking license on copyrighted material, a podcast aggregate that allows you to stay subscribed and get regular feeds to any number of interesting programs–and, it’s available for Windows as well as Mac, and it’s free. What more can you ask for?

But has iMania gone too far? I have to say that I was getting a bit tired of it and when I heard that it had made a list of banished words for 2007, I couldn’t help but agree. It was great when it was a new concept, but Apple, you’ve abused your own trend. Please, come up with something new before we all fade from boredom.