Daring Fireball: Rhymes With Ditty.

I recently had a conversation with my sister about MP3 players. She wanted to know why iPods were such a big deal, and was considering other players that were less expensive and had voice recording capability. Somehow, her take-away from our conversation was that iPods were popular for superficial reasons, and concluded that MP3 players with more features and lower prices were obviously a better value. And if iPods are a hype-driven fad, they must be resisted.

The point I was trying to make was quite the opposite: Aesthetics are a major component of a user's experience with a product. Sparkly shiny shine provides genuine value with a device as personal, as intimate, and as immersive as a portable music player. Any music player manufacturer that believes their player is better just because it has more features doesn't know what a good product is.

I don't have any strong opinions on which music player is best for a particular person. If you have a genuine need for a portable music player that's also a low-fidelity voice recorder, by all means get one. (You can buy an attachment that makes an iPod a voice recorder.) And if you're really short on cash, an iPod may not even be an option, when other players are. You pay as much as $50 just for the sexy. But the sexy has value, and it may be worth the price.