is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
Here’s some quick, back-of-the-envelope math to tally my recent Apple-related purchases: US$99 to renew my .Mac subscription for another year, US$79 for the iWork suite to get my hands on Keynote 2, US$79 for iLife ’05, US$19 for an extra iPod cable and US$29 for a Contour brand iPod case — both to complement the king of my recent Apple acquisitions, a brand new 40GB iPod photo. That last one goes for US$499 retail, which brings the total value of my spending to US$804, before tax.
Below: Picture this. An iPod photo as evidence of an addiction.
When I was a kid, I would spend exorbitantly (for an allowance-based income, anyway) on comic books. When I got older, I started to squander even more money on compact discs. I’ve largely left both hobbies behind, at least in terms of being an active consumer, but really, they’re dwarfed in dollar value by this addiction I have to all things Macintosh-related. And this list doesn’t even take into account many periodic, impulsive software registration fees — programs like NetNewsWire, OmniWeb and SnapzPro X. I guess admitting the problem is the first step.
Did Somebody Say iPod photo?
That’s right, I finally got around to replacing the second-generation iPod that I, stupidly, left in the back seat of a taxi cab late last year. For a long time, I resisted buying myself a new unit, even holding off on picking up an iPod shuffle, because I felt that, by losing mine, I had clearly demonstrated that I don’t deserve a new one. Yeah, I have some issues.
But I found a way around that. As a gift to me, my mother sent me three US$100 gift cards from Best Buy, which she got as a kind of perquisite from her job. I immediately took all three of them to my local store and cashed them in for two-thirds of the 40GB model iPod photo. I paid the balance on my credit card, a cost I wanted to avoid by buying a plain ol’, color-free iPod, but every Best Buy in the city seems to be out of stock of those models.
Initially, I found the iPod photo a kind of silly idea of limited use and entertainment value. But when I hooked mine up to my television with the included cable and had a slideshow of all my photos going in less than 30 seconds (backed with a soundtrack from my own music library, to boot), I changed my mind entirely. This is a pretty great piece of engineering. I’m hooked on it, you could say.
Just as a note for the future, you might look elsewhere for the .Mac subscription – I got mine at Amazon for $79, and it works for both new subscriptions and renewals.
Funny thing – I got my 2G iPod over a year and a half ago in large part because I needed a portable hard drive on which to store photos, and at the time, Belkin had a decent compactflash reader for the iPod. I’m quite jealous that people can now actually view the photos stored on their iPods. 🙂
i got an ipod photo for christmas from my husband and i joked with him that he was much better to me than i would be to myself! i really wanted to replace my second generation ipod and thought that i would just buy a non-color one as well.. ahh, gifts are great.
but my total in apple purchases lately surpasses yours as it was finally time to replace my powerbook g4 400MHz. yesterday, i plunked down $3k for a brand-new one (and an airport extreme base station.. and a griffin itrip… and a monster headphone splitter.. ugh, i have such an addiction. i feel your pain.)
Raphy
Ste Grainer
Could you please provide a link to an Amazon page where I can purchase a .Mac account? I did a search but couldn’t find it.
Thanks!
Ian
I’ve got a theory as to why Macs typically don’t suffer viruses – it’s because the Macs themselves are a virus!
I don’t know a single Mac user who only owns one Mac. Once you start buying Apple, it’s impossible to stop the spread…
You have to add it to your cart to see the $79 price. (I can’t guarantee that the price will always be $79, but it has been pretty consistent since at least fall 2004 as far as I know.)
I picked up a 20GB iPod for Christmas. Then grabbed a$20 protective case the other day along with the new iLife suite.I love my mac stuff . We have 2 G5 systems here at the house. I am stopping short of purchasing the iPod sock however. Ridiculous little item.
Apple has been incredibly succesful with the iPod and I have to say that the gadget’s design and usability are great. However, most of the functionalities are redundantly duplicating older gadgets with specific functions: the mp3/walkman, the photo camera (with persistent storage), the external harddrive, the PDA organizer (which itself was an aggregation of agenda tools).
Aggregating (a subset of) these gadgets into one sleek and small player is nice, but to my taste doesn’t warrant a price tag close to that of a laptop. Sadly, it marks the end of innovation when the only application of technology is to re-tool and re-package the same goodies with a different interface and a higher price tag. Unless Apple can figure out unique applications for their mobile devices, I am skeptical about their future growth in this area.
Eduard, while I somewhat agree with you, I think it’s obvious that a whole heck of a people do not. But to be honest, I’d rather pay a higher price for things that work as well as Apple stuff does. Would be neat if Apple did a PDA…
While I can’t compare my Apple purchases to anyone else yet ($0.00), I am currently planning to buy a 15″ PowerBook G4.
Here’s some quick, back-of-the-envelope math to tally my recent Apple-related purchases: US$99 to renew my .Mac subscription for another year, US$79 for the iWork suite to get my hands on 
The only thing that stopped me tonight from purchasing a new 20″ Apple Cinema Display was that CompUSA was closed. I think we’re in the same boat 🙂
Just as a note for the future, you might look elsewhere for the .Mac subscription – I got mine at Amazon for $79, and it works for both new subscriptions and renewals.
Funny thing – I got my 2G iPod over a year and a half ago in large part because I needed a portable hard drive on which to store photos, and at the time, Belkin had a decent compactflash reader for the iPod. I’m quite jealous that people can now actually view the photos stored on their iPods. 🙂
i got an ipod photo for christmas from my husband and i joked with him that he was much better to me than i would be to myself! i really wanted to replace my second generation ipod and thought that i would just buy a non-color one as well.. ahh, gifts are great.
but my total in apple purchases lately surpasses yours as it was finally time to replace my powerbook g4 400MHz. yesterday, i plunked down $3k for a brand-new one (and an airport extreme base station.. and a griffin itrip… and a monster headphone splitter.. ugh, i have such an addiction. i feel your pain.)
Ste Grainer
Could you please provide a link to an Amazon page where I can purchase a .Mac account? I did a search but couldn’t find it.
Thanks!
I’ve got a theory as to why Macs typically don’t suffer viruses – it’s because the Macs themselves are a virus!
I don’t know a single Mac user who only owns one Mac. Once you start buying Apple, it’s impossible to stop the spread…
.Mac on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002HTDUO
You have to add it to your cart to see the $79 price. (I can’t guarantee that the price will always be $79, but it has been pretty consistent since at least fall 2004 as far as I know.)
I picked up a 20GB iPod for Christmas. Then grabbed a$20 protective case the other day along with the new iLife suite.I love my mac stuff . We have 2 G5 systems here at the house. I am stopping short of purchasing the iPod sock however. Ridiculous little item.
Apple has been incredibly succesful with the iPod and I have to say that the gadget’s design and usability are great. However, most of the functionalities are redundantly duplicating older gadgets with specific functions: the mp3/walkman, the photo camera (with persistent storage), the external harddrive, the PDA organizer (which itself was an aggregation of agenda tools).
Aggregating (a subset of) these gadgets into one sleek and small player is nice, but to my taste doesn’t warrant a price tag close to that of a laptop. Sadly, it marks the end of innovation when the only application of technology is to re-tool and re-package the same goodies with a different interface and a higher price tag. Unless Apple can figure out unique applications for their mobile devices, I am skeptical about their future growth in this area.
Eduard, while I somewhat agree with you, I think it’s obvious that a whole heck of a people do not. But to be honest, I’d rather pay a higher price for things that work as well as Apple stuff does. Would be neat if Apple did a PDA…
While I can’t compare my Apple purchases to anyone else yet ($0.00), I am currently planning to buy a 15″ PowerBook G4.
In case this hasn’t crossed your screen yet:
http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/details/0,,4,00.html
You’ve got some time to save up the cash though:
“The Motorola E1060 is expected to be available in the Q4 of 2005.”