Yesteday, Apple announced the iPod, a stylish and stylishly pricy MP3 player that integrates seamlessly to Macintosh computers. It has an internal 5 GB Hard drive that can store about 1000 MP3 songs recorded at 160 kbps -- so for me it would be more like 2500 songs. It supports MP3 Variable Bit Rate encoding to reduce the size of MP3 files further. It also supports playing WAV and AIFF files, though since those are practically uncompressed you won't fit many onto the iPod.

The iPod has a built in 10-hour lithium polymer rechargeable battery. But it only has a FireWire connection -- no power cord. It recharges using the FireWire connection, which can also transfer 5 GB of files in a few minutes. You can also recharge using a special AC adapter that has a FireWire port. It's small and light and has pretty much the same song organization features that iTunes has. It can be mounted like a FireWire hard drive so you can also use it to store files. It comes with iTunes 2 and can seamlessly synchronize the iPod's contents to the iTunes 2 contents on your Mac. And it costs $400.

That last point has raised a lot of controversy in the discussion boards I've seen. People pointed to the Nomad and a couple of other MP3 players that have more file space for less price, though none can beat the iPod at size, file storage, and battery life. And none have FireWire -- they're all USB. There are people who will see the $250 Nomad and buy that based on some of the head-to-head features. They're some who will buy an iPod just because it's cool and an Apple product.

When I look at the iPod, I see a great addition to the digitial hub vision that Steve Jobs espouses. It's stylish, relatively high end, but most importantly it's amazingly easy to use. You just plug it in and it synchronizes to your iTunes songs and playlists. You just can't make it easier than that. I haven't used any MP3 players, but they all must have some sort of user interface to move files to the MP3 player and maybe import playlists from popular computer MP3 player applications. But that's much more work and skill than what Grandma wants to put into it (what Grandma would want with an MP3 player, I don't know).

Plug and play. Good grief, it's so amazingly simple that it's shocking. This is what Apple is about -- making electronics easy to use. Even morons can use it, or at least lazy people like me who don't want to learn how to use a piece of electronics, they just want to use it. Intuitively. Very few people get that, or at least very few people have posted that. Most everyone who posts complains about the price tag compared to other MP3 players. Guess what -- this MP3 player isn't for you. It's for every non-computer geek out there, the same kind of people who flock to the iMac and iBook for their ease of use.

Now personally I won't be buying an iPod, because I don't need an MP3 player. That's what my PowerBook is for. That doesn't mean I don't think it's a good idea or that it won't be successful -- I don't have a cell phone or a Palm Pilot and they're doing well. It's all about filling a want and the iPod does not fill any of my particular wants.

One person mentioned that if the iPod SDK is ever released, people will go nuts with that little machine. Ok, it doesn't have great battery life compared to a Palm Pilot. Then again I don't know how long a Palm Pilot works continuously. But the iPod has a 5 GB Hard Drive and enough processing power to decode MP3s in real time. It also has a little wheel touchpad interface which, although not as flexible as the Palm Pilot touch screen, may be good enough for other projects.

All in all, I think this is a bold step for Apple. Consumer electronics that seamlessly tie into your Macintosh, making the Macintosh the digital hub of your digital lifestyle. That's vision. May not work, but it's a clear-cut direction for Apple, one that sets it apart from other computer companies. In any case, even if this product dramatically fails it won't kill Apple.