Word: ipod
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With the release today of Apple's "smallest iPod Shuffle ever," the pioneering tech bellwether continues to wean us off its charismatic founder, Steve Jobs. Until recently, the new Shuffle would have been unveiled as an appetizer during a bigger media banquet - one of those wonderful little trinkets that Jobs would show off at the start of, say, a Macworld conference...
Greg Joswiak, who oversees iPod and iPhone marketing for Apple, says the non-Jobsian approach is nothing new. "We've always done a mixture" of product releases, some without a lot of fanfare or big-tent releases, he says. "For this one, it just made sense to do it this way. We've done a lot on our website to make sure customers understand how it works...
...throb of European techno music or, worse, the deafening bass of the latest hip-hop beats, laden with profane and misogynistic lyrics, issue out from iPod speakers unimaginatively arranged in the corner. The guests, deprived of any seating and crowded in such numbers as the suite common room cannot comfortably accommodate, avoid futile attempts at conversation above the musical ruckus and instead, gyrating and flailing, awkwardly imitate the choreographic styles fashionable on MTV. And alcohol, the great midwife of this mise en scène, oversees the proceedings, ashamed and self-deprecating, peering out from plastic handles before being consumed...
...would anyone ever listen to an iPod at maximum volume? Again, it's a simple misunderstanding of risk. Portnuff speculates that teens who say they worry about hearing loss but still listen to their iPods at high volumes probably assume that the manufacturer's maximum default setting is safe, or that turning the volume down to anything but full-blast is harmless. (Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From...
...Portnuff acknowledges that most iPod and MP3 users don't keep their devices at maximum volume - only about 7% to 24% listen at risky levels. But because most of us can, and are, spending more time listening to music through headphones, there is a real risk of hearing loss for anyone who plugs in. "It's a matter of how high you listen and for how long," he says. Listen for too high and too long, and you may have to replace those headphones with hearing aids in the not-too-distant future...