Have you ever spent money on something somebody else told you was utterly frivolous?...when I received an unexpected check in the mail last week, one of the things I did with it was order my new car an iPod...yes, you read that right...my car has its own iPod...
Like someone who shall remain nameless, you too probably think I am out of my mind...so let me explain how practical it is...
First and foremost, it has a very large hard drive...probably the last of its design that will ever be made (I'm not just an early adopter...sometimes I'm also a late bloomer)...I use it to carry around all of the information I need to manage my business remotely...virtually...from anywhere...
It also allows me to store an encrypted back up of my desktop computer's user folder...a scheduled backup that runs every day...creating a portable backup I take offsite every time I leave my office...priceless protection for both my work and personal files...
I can also easily backup work that I create on the fly on my MacBook Air...and, yes, I could store that work on a flash drive...a drive that's easy to misplace...has no functionality except to store data...is readily corrupted if you carry it on a keychain...something I learned the hard way...
The iPod also allows me to back up everything important without putting it on somebody's cloud...somewhere it might get viewed, read, copied...somewhere there is no longer any expectation of privacy...somewhere I only put things I don't care about everyone seeing or have already backed up somewhere else...things that are not confidential...
The added bonus?...there's enough room on the iPod to also carry around the 100 gigabytes of music I have acquired over the years...my entire collection...if I'm in the mood for rock, it's there...jazz, it's there...blues, it's there...no more trying to figure out in advance what I might want to listen to...and force fit a smaller selection onto a portable device like my iPhone...
Could it get any better?....why, yes...the iPod also plugs into the adaptor in my car...so every time I start the engine, I'm greeted with my own music...played over the radio via USB...rather than power-sucking Bluetooth audio...that was draining the battery life on my iPhone...now, I never even take my iPhone out out of my bag...it doesn't need to be charged every time I go somewhere...and more importantly, I get to listen to this every time I get in the car...
So the next time you judge someone for making an unnecessary purchase, consider this...they might be using whatever they have bought in ways you have never imagined...ways that make them more productive...peaceful...and able to go anywhere on a moment's notice...
Despite a lack of features, a remarkably versatile, portable device...the iPod Classic...from Apple Inc...