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Rebounding from the tepid 4000 Weeks Holiday, Ian Dury delivers the low-key and thoroughly charming Apples. Although the music is considerably more relaxed than any other Dury album, it's the perfect backdrop for Dury's clever, literate stories, which resonate with great humor and detail. Apples does lack a standout song or melody, but the whole of the record is quite engaging, and it represents a respectable and modest comeback from Dury. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Apple's iPod turns five
Since it was unveiled five years ago today, the iPod has taken on a variety of shapes and sizes, become a cultural phenomenon, and incited copycats and even some backlash.
For Apple and its gurulike leader Steve Jobs, the iPod has been the gift that keeps on giving--for five monumentally successful years.
The first-generation iPod.
Since Jobs unveiled the digital media device five years ago today, the iPod has sprouted a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes, with ancillary names like the Mini, the Shuffle, and the Nano. Most importantly, the iPod has single-handedly done more for the popularity of digital music than anything since the original Napster.
Its trademark white earbuds are ubiquitous, with Apple having sold a whopping 68 million iPods since its debut and compatible with both your car and your pants. That popularity has spawned an iEverything array of products hoping to ride on its coattails, from kitschy decorations to hardware for toilet tunes.
And the iPod has become enough of a cultural phenomenon to spark a bit of a backlash, with both potential competitors and music fans alike deriding Apple's "walled garden" approach of retaining customers by making sure it won't play nice with competitors' offerings.
The success Apple has gained from that approach has spawned copycats, with even software behemoth Microsoft abandoning its strategy to work with partners that make their own players and digital stores to launch an integrated player and store of its own called Zune.
As Apple reported last week that strong iPod sales continue to drive the company's profit, many industry watchers have fixated on what the House of Jobs will do next. Will the company unveil its long-rumored iPhone at its MacWorld conference in January? Does it plan to enter the satellite radio market of XM and Sirius?
Who knows if Apple can sustain its lead. But with a market share that hovers around 75 percent, according to recent NPD Group data, any company hoping to do what Apple did to Sony's Walkman--supplant it as the de facto portable music device--has a daunting task ahead of it.
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