The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness

by Steven Levy

Book Overview

A technology columnist for Newsweek goes inside Apple Computer and into the heads of millions of music lovers to show how CEO Steve Jobs and his team of engineers, programmers, and designers created a product that has become a business and cultural blockbuster.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743285220
• ISBN13: 9780743285223
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Cool Device: search wheel, no on switch, the LCD, video, iPhones, fireware, g4, and iTune

1. iPod will encourage the creation of virtual bookselves: music, movies, and books. 2. When Apple leaders began working on the iPod they saw the project as an enhancement of the Macintosh computer. Apples G4 cube significant reduced the bulky space requirements for desktop computers. 3. iPod changed Apple from a computer company to a consumer electronics company in four years and represented 60 percent of the income from the music related business. 4. Type "iPod" in google and you'll get a half a billion hits 5. By the end of 2005, Apple had sold 42 million iPods from $99 to $599 and had capture 75% market share; iTunes sold more than a billion songs at 99 cents, representing 85 percent of all legal downloads. Apple's stock had increased 700 percent. 6. When people encounter a machine that is easy and fun to use, they like it. The cool factor. IPod is cool. 7. iPod's success is the result of an uncanny alignment of technology, design, culture, and media thrust in the center of the digital age. Ipod makes a dull day come alive. 8. iPod initial capacity astounded consumer providing a 1,000 songs in the pocket. 9. Steve Jobs initial reaction to iPod was, "I haven't picked up any MP3 player that has made me go, `Wow, okay, I want to carry this everywhere I go. OK'. Everyone is going to want to have one of these." 10. Apple dispatched a pair of couier too hand delivered the iPod to a few select technical writers. On launch day the Apple couriers reached Newsweek. 11. Jobs relied on Firewire transfer speeds to make iPod feasible. There were seven and half million Mac users with firewire. Jobs said, "iPod will be a landmark product." Five to six minutes to rip a CD into iTunes and a few seconds to load to load an albums worth of songs into the iPod. 12. Playlist represent the character of the listener. We seem to be immersed in an age of musical voyeurism and musical exhibitionism. 13. Status comes from cool music libraries. "Such libraries distinguish one as a thinking person, a discerning individualist, a lover of fun, a blender of high and low culture, and a bird dog in unearthing undiscovered gems." 14. Learning through accumulation: "The ability to easily compile one's favorite songs in one place may make it easier to accumulate a collection of dazzling obscurities but also increase the capability of those libraries that are less than stellar." 15. At iPod's download headquarters, you can find more than a hundred celebrity playlists. 16. Reformulation: iPod circular scroll wheel search interface allowed searching of large lists, fast. It made the complicated digital music collection, easy. 17. iTunes software from Macintosh was built into iPod. IPod would sync effortlessly with a music library. "It was a recipe for something, well, perfect." 18. Cool is a term that is strong linked to iPod. Levy tells Bill Gates Tablet PC, Microsoft pen-based laptop, in spite of the technical virtuosity of many brilliant people was not cool. Gates r

iPod History Lesson

I follow digital media and the iPod relatively closely, but even I was surprised how many iPod-related stories I'd either missed or forgotten. This book is an essential repository of gadget history for everyone who follows digital media. But this is not just for gadget geeks - it is also an accessible and engaging summary and primer for those who may have skipped the myriad stories about the iPod and the digital music revolution (although, to be fair, you should also read Joe Menn's book, All the Rave, to get the Napster part of the story).

Perfectly fascinating

This is the most interesting book on product innovation I have ever read, and I've read a lot of them. I went to work at Steve Jobs' NeXT, Inc., in the early 90s because I wanted to live what I'd read in the books. I doubted working for Steve could be as dramatic as the books made it seem, but the reverse was true: the authors never discovered some of the juiciest stuff. Turns out I know 4 of the most colorful characters in this story: Steve, Jon Rubinstein, Tony Fadell, and Steven Levy. Levy has great access to the best info. He loves and completely gets Apple and the iPod. If you want a fascinating read about how the stars aligned to bring arguably the world's coolest product to market, this is it. It isn't just about about the amazing drama Steve always brings to product launches...there is a perfect villain in this story, the RIAA, who everyone loves to hate. Ironically, the former enfant terrible is now the hero who must save the world from this evil force.

Unique and Fascinating!

Steven Levy has written an excellent book that I didn't want to put down. It not only traces the development of the iPod over the last five years, but the book is filled with independent chapters that can be, and in fact should be, read in any order. Indeed, when looking at multiple copies of this book, you'll find only chapter 1 is in the same place--other chapters are "shuffled" and appear in different orders. I found myself enjoying this feature as much as the iPod--first I read about Podcasts, then Downloading, then how the iPod remains so "cool" for such a wide range of people. I chose to read this book not only because of how amazed I am at how people (including my teenaged kids) love their iPods so much, but also because I'm curious about the future of music as we know it, the disappearance of the CD and along with it the album cover and lyric booklet, and the explosion of songs available for purchase through the iTunes store. The writing in this book is terrific--informative and provocative. I highly recommend it!

Excellent history and cultural analysis

I get an avalanche of technology-related books mailed to me, and it's rare when I actually try to read one. It's even rarer for me to read it all the way through with a smile pasted on my face the entire time. But that's what happened as I read Steven Levy's "The Perfect Thing." As someone who has covered the iPod (and, indeed, was at the iPod launch event in Cupertino in 2001), it was great to see Levy's mixture of iPod history with an analysis of how the iPod (and similar products, like the Walkman) have impacted our lives and the world of popular culture. Levy's book is never dry, and combines a historical account of the creation of the 21st century's first iconic product with a real attempt to analyze what makes the iPod both ubiquitous and cool. Whether you're a fan of Apple's product-creation geniuses, or just of the "perfect storm" of technology that created this particular Perfect Thing, Steven Levy's book is a fun, informative, and thought-provoking analysis of the biggest technological innovation of the past five years.