As always, post Apple events we start coming down from the high and everything’s a little less…gleaming. In the cold, harsh light of day, we see some ugly truths about Apple, its products, and oftentimes ourselves.
Take the issue of the “missing” search feature on the 5G iPods. When Steve Jobs demoed the new revision of the iPod with video yesterday, it appeared as though not much had changed from a hardware perspective. So many people assumed that the search feature he demoed would be included in the next software upgrade to the 5G iPod.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be true. While owners of earlier 5G iPods do get the ability to play games and have other UI changes (for example, scrolling quickly through a list of songs, artists, or albums now causes a bezel to pop up telling you what letter of the alphabet you’re in), they didn’t get the search function.
This has lead to anger, recriminations, and cries of foul play from existing 5G owners. Some demand that Apple add it in, others speculate it might be added when the new iPods ship (their official denomination appears to be “iPod (Late 2006)”), while others start targeting the complainants.
As an (early) 5th generation iPod owner myself, I’m a little disappointed not to see it, since my instincts tell me that it wouldn’t have been a difficult addition to make, but I’m not terribly surprised; Apple has done this in the past with computers and iPods. It would have been nice to have, but I’m much happier than they’ve included support for the games on all 5Gs. It’s far far more important that my Tetris addiction be fed.
