My co-worker just ordered an iPod (the $250 video ipod) for her son's 9th birthday present. It amazed me that a 9 year old would ask for this, but my first reaction was to wonder how long it would last in the hands of a boy that age. As I was imagining all the ways he could find to abuse - or lose - an ipod, I remembered Louise and Tom's experiences.
Tom barely had his ipod a year when he treated it to a walk in the pouring rain. That was the beginning of the end of his hard drive. Fortunately we were able to salvage the ipod with a replacement hard drive purchased from ebay.
Later that year he borrowed my ipod shuffle. That went missing in the space of about two weeks, but happily turned up under his bed. Not before he'd been all over town looking for it, though.
Then there's Louise's ipod nano. She sat on it within the first four or five months of ownership. It seemed totally dead, but once we replaced the screen it lived again. Not unscathed, however. There's still only one channel of sound coming from the headphone jack. It's enjoying semi-retirement connected via a dock to our kitchen stereo, a setup which allows full sound output.
Last but not least, there's Louise's experience with my shuffle. It went all crazy on her when she attached it to her iMac and couldn't be used again until we found and applied Apple's ipod shuffle reset utility. But that probably wasn't her fault.
So if these 20-somethings have such a hard time keeping an ipod in working order, how much worse can a nine year old be? I'll be watching with interest - and probably helping her do ipod surgery before too long.
