Dylan Jones is a self-admitted and unabashed iPod lover, but his devotion to the iPod is a major shortcoming if you are looking for a book that is more than a fanzine for the iPod. He misses the opportunity to analyze many of the issues around the iPod that are being debated throughout the press. Can Apple continue to rely on its edge in the digital player market, or will it soon be just another brand among many? Has Apple become too dependent on the iPod from a financial standpoint? Will the new CD encryption technologies and Apple's refusal to work with the record companies to make encrypted CD's compatible with iTunes doom the iPod? Did Ives devotion to aesthetics contribute to the iPod's major design flaw: preenting users from replacing the battery?
What about the social impact of the continued personalization of music and its accompanying isolationism? Music used to be a tool for socialization with others. Now we all listen in our own private worlds of music. While recently on a boat skimming across Peru's Lake Titicaca, I looked around to see half of the passengers sitting with eyes closed and ears covered with iPod-connected headphones, missing the sights around them and losing the chance to talk to other travelers from around the world. If there are any iPod addicts in your life, then Dylan Jones' iPod Therefore I Am will make the perfect stocking stuffer this Christmas, but for anyone else it will probably hold little interest.
