October 31, 2007

"Complimentary use of iPods (pre-loaded with 1,000 classic to contemporary music selections)."

A strange hotel amenity. Who doesn't have their own iPod? Who wants 1,000 songs loaded by the hotel? Maybe if you lost your iPod...

24 comments:

Unknown said...

Why wouldn't people want that? I have an ipod, but I rarely carry it around with me. Maybe it's easier for women, who have a purse, but I carry my cell phone and wallet. I don't have room to carry my blackberry or take it to a hotel when I'm travelling. And don't tell me to get an iphone, I need to have a blackberry for work and an ipod wouldn't be compatible with our network.

Ralph L said...

One day I'll get a cell phone. What's an Ipod, and does it involve alien life forms?

Jim Hanson said...

I don't have an I-pod.

Cordially,

Uncle J

TMink said...

I could see using it if I forgot mine at home. Listening a bit before going to sleep is great, especially when I am away from home.

Trey

Ruth Anne Adams said...

Waxy earbuds. Yick.

rhhardin said...

Barthelme :

``And all this is the best that has been thought and said, in my opinion, or ever will be thought and said, for the only thing worth a rap in the whole world is the beauty of women, and maybe certain foods, and possibly music of all kinds, especially 'cheap' music such as that furnished at parades by for instance the St. Pulaski Tatterdemalion Band of Orange, New Jersey, which can reduce you to tears, in the right light, by speaking to you from the heart about your land, and what a fine land it is, and that it is your land really, and my land, this land of ours--that particular insight can chill you, rendered by a marching unit. But I wander...''

nina said...

I don't have an iPod. I find the prospect of loading songs... daunting. Could someone please do it for me? Like a hotel or something?

Revenant said...

I have an mp3 player, but not an iPod. Apple's commercials are too irritating for me to buy one of their products.

Having a portable music player with your hotel room seems pointless, but having a stationary one in the room that had a ton of songs on it would be nice. Beats the heck out of the radio, and it would be a good way to get exposed to new music you hadn't heard before.

KCFleming said...

Just imagine the last user, the sweaty guy holding it in his waistband while doing sit-ups.

Different types who wear the dayglo
Sweatpants with stripes and cutaway T
Perfect fits
Puttin' on the Ritz

Geared up with a hundred dollar iPod
Trying hard not to be a tripod
Get your own blog

Come, let's mix where sweaty fellers
Jog with music under boxers
or in their pits
Puttin' on the Ritz



(Best sung like Peter Boyle.)

Ralph L said...

Trying hard to sound like Alice Cooper

reader_iam said...

Just imagine the last user, the sweaty guy holding it in his waistband while doing sit-ups.

This pales--almost into obscurity--as against the a whole number of experiences I had in my road warrior days. Or my husband's. Or our colleagues. Or the people who ... .

Oh, nevermind.

Steve Donohue said...

I don't have an iPod, mostly because listening to proper music on it in public areas is about as difficult as trying to watch television with a piece of colored wax paper stretched over the screen. The sound quality production of the downloads is low, and it is lowered still by the devise itself, and then any crowd noise will make it even more difficult to hear details. Fine for three-chord detritus, but the next counter-melody I've heard on an iPod will be my first.

Bob said...

Many of us in the working class don't have Ipods. There's probably some in the leisure class that are Luddites and don't have them, either.

KCFleming said...

reader_iam
WHAT!?
You can't introduce that and leave!
I feel cheated.

dick said...

Wouldn't have one on a bet. I prefer to pay attention to what is going on around me. Life is too short to waste it on listening to bad music when there is a whole world out there to enjoy.

Mutaman said...

"Life is too short to waste it on listening to bad music when there is a whole world out there to enjoy."

Of course there is always the option of listening to good music.

John Stodder said...

This hotel where I'm staying now -- the Hilton in St. Louis -- has a better idea. You can plug your mp3 player into the clock radio, which is a compact stereo that fills the room with sound.

I always travel with my mp3. What I can't afford are the noise-cancelling headphones that would make my plane flights so much more pleasanty.

Oh and I'm with Rev...I am irritated beyond words by iPod triumphalism. I know Ann disagrees, but I think the Rhapsody subscription model makes so much more sense. What I'm listening to right now, a live version of Talking Heads' "Take Me to the River" is a track I don't own. I've downloaded it from Rhapsody as part of my monthly subscription. I only need to pay for it if I intend to download it onto a CD. I've got more than enough CDs already. But as long as I carry this thing around, the song is for all intents and purposes mine. And I can listen to the whole thing on my computer, whole albums, whole symphonies, whole operas -- not iMusic's pathetic 30-second samples.

/anti iPod rant

Unknown said...

I was in Denver in the spring and stayed at a boutique hotel downtown. It offered the same Pod setup. Not my taste of music so I called and complained to the desk. Yes the Pod was decked into a Bose system.

The desk thought I was joking. I assured them I was very serious. It took several hours but they appeared with a new Pod with my tastes.

Eggs soft or hard scrambled?

MadisonMan said...

The willingness of iPod wearers to withdraw from the world, not to interact with their fellow humans, just so they can listen to their music, is something I think about.

I don't have an iPod, or an mp3 player. But back in 1981, I had a tape-playing walkman.

John Stodder said...

MadisonMan said...

The willingness of iPod wearers to withdraw from the world, not to interact with their fellow humans, just so they can listen to their music, is something I think about.


I think that part of it is a fad. At least I hope so. When I first got an mp3 player, I wore it when I was walking around town, shopping, etc. Then I started to feel like this was a rude thing to do. Not as bad as yakking on the cell phone in a public place, but in the same realm.

Now, I tend to use it most often when I can plug it into a speaker -- in my car, at my desk. I use earphones (ear "buds?), but only when I'm exercising, in bed or on a plane: The same places I used to listen to the radio, tapes or CDs on earphones.

The magic of the mp3 player is the ability to carry around a lot of your favorite music. The social isolation isn't intrinsic to the product, and although it's used that way, I think before too long the novelty will wear off for all but teenagers.

You can make big mistakes in your electronic cocoon. I saw a guy almost get on the wrong plane yesterday because he was deeply involved in a phone call. I told the guy at the gate he should've let him keep going, just to teach him a lesson.

TMink said...

Steve, low quality mp3s suck. But in the iPod 9or other devices I imagine) you can store the files as either uncompressed or compressed with lossless compression. To that you can add a fantastic pair of headphones. To that you can add a fantastic outboard amp and digital to analogue converter. To that, well, you get the idea.

Most of my iPod listening is at the office. Right now for instance, Pete Townsend is on, "Time Passing" from Who Came First. It helps when I am doing paperwork, and makes life more fun when I am avoiding paperwork as I post! At home I put the iPod output through a nice little tube amp for the headphones. It works very well, even with three chord trash.

I guess I look on my iPod as primarily a storage device, and I can decide what music to store as high bandwidth and what to store as low.

Trey

Unknown said...

I'd rather listen to Pandora anyway. And tell me you're just being ironic, Ann, when you ask, "Who doesn't have their own iPod?" If you're not being ironic, you're being insufferably arrogant.

Chris said...

I have an iPod. It's been gathering dust on my bookshelf for three years. I tried the thing for a week and hated it. It cuts me off from the world and takes my mind off work.

reader_iam said...

Sorry, Pogo, but I never made it back to this thread last night. And now it's dead.