Christmas Podding
Benet Simon can resist the latest wonder from Apple — but only just
The spirit of Christmas this year belongs to Apple. The new iPod has just hit UK shops and every teenager in the country who doesn’t find one under the tree on 25 December is going to be inconsolable; understandably so, because the new iPod looks and feels groundbreaking. It’s as light as an empty teacup, pencil-thin, of a sleek, minimalist design, in black or the trademark white. And as well as being a music library with a formidable memory, the new iPod will soon be able to download TV.
At present, British owners of the new iPod are limited to watching music videos, but although Apple is keen to stress that iPods are still primarily about the music, sometime next year we’ll be able to tune out the world on the way to work and watch episodes of The X Factor on iPod. The screen is just 5.6 inches diagonally, but for the younger generation, who’ve spent hours looking at happyslapping photographs on mobile screens and staring at GameBoys, this shouldn’t be a problem.
It certainly hasn’t been in America, where owners of the new iPod can already watch shows the day after they’ve been on TV. Tens of millions of people regularly download their favourite programmes illegally from the internet, with variable picture quality, lots of nasty viruses and huge enjoyment, because at long last the customer has a fun, easy, portable way of watching TV without arguing about the remote or, more importantly, suffering through interminable advertisements.
As far as I can see, the new iPods mean that ads as we know them, as the financial linchpin of TV, are on the way out. Viewer control is the future, and who wants to watch ads? It may not happen immediately, not next year or even the one after that, but my prediction is that, slowly but surely, Apple will kill television advertising.
To a certain extent, television ads have been their own worst enemies. Confident that they’ve got you trapped, they ratchet up the volume in the breaks between programmes and shout rubbish at you. They don’t even try to be clever any more: repetition is the key. On Sky One, it has reached the point where drama forms less than two thirds of an hour spent watching. The rest is commercial breaks and the closing credit sequence, itself squashed to the side on a split screen, allowing the other half of the screen to advertise future shows.
So roll on the new iPod. I’ll be able to watch the same show in 50 minutes, and three hours of old-style viewing will fit into two. And if I get home and haven’t quite finished watching The Simpsons I downloaded that morning, I can plug my iPod into the TV and finish off watching it on a big screen, or take my iPod round to a friend’s house and watch it on theirs.
With an iPod, there are none of the complications associated with video, the endless wires and rewinding. There are no fines for late return or any of the frustration when the pay-per-view channels or Lovefilm.com fail to send you what you want to watch.
Of course, the demise of one advertising medium in the past has always heralded the birth of a new and more invasive way of selling us things we don’t need, can’t afford, or aren’t biologically equipped to make use of. For centuries we’ve felt that it can’t get any worse until it does — most recently with the internet’s loathsome pop-ups and spam. Even so, I remain optimistic about the possibility of advertising in an iPod world, because the customer is in control. What I hope for in terms of iPod advertising is a world of total product placement, where you can buy everything you see on the TV that you’ve downloaded on to your little screen. Ladies, imagine you could watch Sex and the City and buy the clothes. Gentlemen, imagine being able to buy Bond’s car or dinner jacket or his Walther PPK. You just point an arrow at the dress/BMW/firearm on your ’Pod and find out the price and size.
There’s another revolutionary aspect of the iPod — video podcasting. Podcasting is the fastest growing source of entertainment on the planet, with more than seven million subscribers. To podcast, you make an audio or video file of your opinions and thoughts — a mini TV or radio show, in effect — and put it on the internet for other users to download on to their iPods. It’s like an audible blog, interspersed with a selection of your favourite songs, chosen from your iPod. The software that allows you to podcast is available online, it’s easy to use and very much the latest thing. Comedy podcasting is what really grabs everyone’s attention. Video podcasts will soon allow us all to make and distribute our own reality TV. We can then watch our shows rise or fall on podcasting charts.
That’s for the future, and I’ll enjoy it, but right now I won’t be buying the new iPod. Even though I have dreamed of owning this device since I saw something similar in a comic as a small boy, even though my fee for this article would neatly pay for one, I’m going to wait. Although it’s only £220 and wonderfully sexy and the picture quality is superb and you can watch it anywhere, I’m scared of being mugged. In the inner cities, at least, this is the hidden cost of high-envy luxury goods that can fit in your, or anyone else’s, pocket. Until more people on the street have iPods than not, they’re too risky for someone like me who lives in South London and travels on public transport. Muggers already target iPod users coming out of Tube stations by looking for the white headphones. Changing headphones won’t save me if I’m keeping bus-stop boredom at bay by watching Lost. I might as well stick £50 notes in my ears.
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