Podwired

A friend of mine who attended Macworld last week brought me home a souvenir – a Belkin smartwrap-type iPod cord organizer (sorry about the inadequate reference, Belkin; as far as I know there is no generic name for Sumajin’s seminal Smartwrap, and I am at a loss; it’s like trying to describe the color green to someone blind since birth). A smartwrap. I tell people My friend went to Macworld, and all I got was this lousy… Nah, it isn’t really lousy. It’s just that I have a bunch of smartwraps already. The nice thing about the Belkin version is that they cut holes in the body of the wrapper in which you can snugly slot the earphones themselves, not just give you a place to wrap the wire around.

Which brings me to a couple of issues I’ve always had with the iPod’s wires.

Aside from being too long (man, it’s nice you can shrink them players down to shuffle and nano sizes, but shrink the cords?), the spaghetti mess just spoils the iPod experience. The iPod is elegant and impressive, but it’s a mess with the wires. And that’s just the included earbuds. Add to that the remote and additional meter of wire it comes with and it’s really a tangle, a Gordian knot. That’s why Sumajin’s wire organizers are such a big hit, I guess.

I’m like the proverbial complainer who bitches but doesn’t have a solution himself, which makes me just a nuisance. But if they can’t think of a retractable-type solution, they better get on the ball quick and get that Bluetooth headset out the door. Third party solutions are already coming out, and while they’re big and bulky and a major cramper of style and cool-points-subtractor, at least the wires are gone. The minute someone figures out an implementation that is both small and classy, Apple’ll have been beat to the punch. Something that hasn’t happened often.

And one more thing. This ‘remote’ thing they keep bringing up? Who are they kidding? It’s just button extensions – you still need to be close enough to actually see the iPod screen to navigate the menus. Which means you can reach the controls anyway. Which means, what the heck do you need this remote control for?The solution of course is coming up with a remote that has a tiny LCD screen with a navigation button that duplicates the clickwheel’s functions. And while you’re at it, make it wireless. So you can finally leave that danged player wired to your amp and you can select songs from across the room, like a real remote control!

I love to nitpick.