The rest of that section, Personal, is similarly devoted to the iPod's capacity to isolate. It comes to the predictable conclusion that this is fabulous, not dangerous, and that commuters in cars already enjoy the same kind of privacy zone. It's just that a car weighs a lot more than 6.4 ounces (for the jumbo iPod) and does not require wires in the user's ears.
The Download chapter is one of its best. It describes the anti-download indignation of record companies that are otherwise “spotty on the morality thing.” As Levy nicely puts it: “their history was an unbroken litany of publishing credits pilfered from artists, unpaid royalties and envelopes stuffed with illegal payola. Their plea against downloading came across like an etiquette lesson from the Green River Killer.”
The Identity chapter is similarly lively as it outlines the extreme forms of music snobbery in a world of dueling playlists. The Shuffle section is mathematically interesting, since it examines the complaint that iPods' random song shuffling favors certain artists over others. As Levy discovers, true randomness is likelier to produce repetition than a chain of totally unrelated selections. As Apple tries to fix this, “we're making it less random to make it feel more random,” Jobs says.
This book's chapter shuffling is occasionally trounced by chronology. It's odd to get halfway through the book and then read: “A thousand songs — an entire record collection — in your pocket? It sounded like a dream.” And its Coolness section is fawningly uncool. Is the iPod's bright white really reminiscent of Moby-Dick?
It's even less cool that the Apple chapter sounds like advertising. It takes the reader to “the trippy world of Apple, where productivity, great design and fun are in a constant group hug.” Levy does his share of hugging, too.
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