Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"A clever feature is that the book's chapters are 'shuffled,' so that one person's copy of the book will have chapters ordered completely differently from another's." Library Journal
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Over the course of twenty-two years of teaching, Steven Levy has taught every grade level from kindergarten through college. He has been recognized as the 1992-93 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year and honored as the Outstanding General Elementary Teacher by the Walt Disney Company ion 1994-95. Levy has also received the John F. Kennedy prize for the teaching of history, and his project Lexingtons, USA, was chosen by the American School Board Association as one of the hundred best curriculum ideas in the nation.
Table of Contents
Contents
iPod Timeline
Perfect
Identity
Origin
Cool
Personal
Download
Shuffle
Apple
Podcast
Coda
Afterword: iPod, iSaw, iConquered, iPhone
Notes
Acknowledgements
Index