The Iconic iPod
The topic of ubicomp came up over dinner tonight. The conversation started when we noticed that the restaurant’s sophisticated sound system was being fed by an iPod, circa gen 2.
The ubiquity of the iPod is revealed at times in the oddest places. I recently traveled jetBlue and was going over the safety card (for laughs, of course) when something caught my eye. In the midst of the masterful iconography illustrating devices not to be used during take-off/landing was an unmistakable stylized iPod.
At first I admittedly went conspiracy theory, wondering if Apple paid even a little bit to do some unlikely product placement. But I quickly let go of that idea. The point of using icons is to communicate ideas purely visually. It is a credit to Apple that it’s device is so popukar as to warrant its own icon on the safety card. It also says a lot about the style of the iPod that it could not be captured by a more generic icon representing digital music players in general.
I’m a little curious how the uninquness of the iPhone will be treated as an icon. It certainly has a unique aesthetic. If it never warrants its own icon will it be a simple lack of market penetration? Or will it be that the iPhone, for all its hype simply isn’t the revolution to the phone industry (in neither design nor technology) that the iPod was for the music player industry.
