To coincide with the iPod’s fifth birthday, Newsweek’s Steven Levy will release a new book this month about the iPod entitled “The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness.” According to the publisher’s description, the book aims to be “the definitive account, from design and marketing to startling impact, of Apple’s iPod, the signature device of our young century.” You can read an excerpt from the book here.
“Detailing for the first time the complete story of the creation of the iPod, Levy explains why Apple succeeded brilliantly with its version of the MP3 player when other companies didn’t get it right,” says the publisher.
“Besides his inside view of Apple, Levy draws on his experiences covering Napster and attending Supreme Court arguments on copyright (as well as his own travels on the iPod’s click wheel) to address all of the fascinating issues—technical, legal, social, and musical—that the iPod raises.”
In a unique move, the book borrows one of the iPod’s most well known qualities by “shuffling” chapters. “Each chapter of this book was written to stand on its own, a deeply researched, wittily observed take on a different aspect of the iPod,” explains the publisher.
“The sequence of the chapters in the book has been shuffled in different copies, with only the opening and concluding sections excepted.”
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