The MacWorld Conference and Expo started Monday, and everyone is a-buzz wondering how stud-geek Steve Jobs is going to top the worldwide product orgasm he orchestrated last year with the iPhone. There is talk that he will unveil a skinny Macbook, new partnerships with Paramount and Warner Brothers, blah blah. But I have a suggestion that could transform the industry and will make everyone in the world an acolyte of Apple, forever:
Do something about my goddamn iPod earphones!
I seriously spend more time untangling the dumb wires of my iPod than anything else I do in my modern techno-enslaved life. Even if I am careful and try to wind them around my little sleek black perfect video iPod, they will somehow instantly tangle into a puzzling glob. Then I spend 20 minutes walking down the street trying to make order out of chaos--precious time that could be spent with Fergie or Shakira. This problems is also mildly dangerous because I march down the street concentrating on the string-puzzle and almost step into oncoming traffic. Then, I usually get exasperated and stuff the critters in my ears, and they dangle around my neck like mangled spaghetti, capable of catching onto a passing truck or baby carriage and tragically strangling me as if I were a modern day Isadora Duncan!
Stevie, sweetcheeks, how do you expect me to block out reality and fashion my waking life into a constant hipster soundtrack if I am stuck contending with a knot of wire? This is the kind of design nearsightedness that is going to gradually turn our world into the movie Brazil: sleek surfaces and consoles and gloss that hide an inefficient labyrinth of dirty dusty cables and wires.
In an entry in the New York Times 7th Annual Year in Ideas issue, a University of California physics professor was frustrated with his laptop's tangled computer cables and conducted an experiment with lengths of string, concluding that the longer the string, the more complicated the knot. This is a brilliant scientist who understands the plight of the modern man.
Steve, hire this guy and solve the earphone crisis! Fast! Maybe it's retractable earphones! wireless buds! Biodegradable versions that you could throw away and then order online and have them delivered immediately wherever you are standing! I don't know, I'm just an enslaved Apple product receptacle, I leave it to your designers who are probably making more money than I will ever see in my lifetime. But Steve, cutie, when you show up on the Macworld stage in your little bottom-hugging khakis and rugby shirt, why not unveil something that will truly change the world?