Dan Chiappini01 June 2006, 3:05 AM
It's not that I hate iPods. Hell, mine was one of the fifty million Apple have sold. It's just that accessory manufacturers have lost all sense of proportion about how big the iPod craze really is... when will it all end?!
Tech has gone through a bit of a mid-life crisis over the last few years. Although it took decades to break that magical 1GHz CPU mark, the subsequent leap from 1 to 3GHz happened almost overnight. When the unattainable goes out the window and speeds and feeds take a backseat, people look for something else to hype in its place.
PC case modding cropped up and beige boxes went the way of the dodo. Component and peripherals manufacturers saw the trend and it didn’t take long before every new product being released was covered in strobing LEDs and gaudy fluro plastic housing.
Times change and people have come to their senses (somewhat) and we’re now back to a fairly normal state of play. Tech is fashionable, but not as tech, it’s fashionable as stylish knick knacks that can actually do something. If you’re the kind of person who has to kit their home out with all manner of kitch retro objects then SpeckProducts has just the thing for you.
Merging retro with the fabulously trendy, you can now listen to your Alan Parsons Project and Barry Manilow MP3s without that horrible aftertaste of needing to update to the latest technology… oh wait, you just did.
I’m not hating on iPods; hell, mine was one of the 50 million units Apple has sold since its original release. I understand people want to look cool with their iPods, since they’re as much about being seen as they are playing music and the seas of white earbuds and death of conversation are testament to the fact. But it doesn’t end at the device. The accessories market is out of control. Look here, here or here.
I’ll admit, it’s tough shopping for furniture at the best of times, so it was with great excitement that I came across the mother of all party tables. Behold, The Concerto Table! (pictured at the top in the strip of three pics). No longer must you put up with go-nowhere conversation with in-laws, endless diatribes of how Billy at work closed the day three points up on the stock market, or the finer points of how Ernest really saved Christmas.
Of course, maybe you’re into the dinner-party scene and regularly have people over. If that’s your thing, you’ve probably got your mood music down; if not, Lovegrove and Repucci also cater to the novice party throwers, linking you directly to the iTunes Music Store where you can purchase their favourites mealtime tunes.
With no foreseeable end to iPod‘s strong sales, when will the madness that is the after-market accessory end?! Did the world learn nothing from the dot com boom? When did it stop being about the music and start being about fluffy purple muffs and grand piano tables?
Expect more whacky creations to surface. But there's going to be a garbage disposal boom any time now, as retailers hire armadas of dump trucks to take unsold iPod accessories off their hands.