Experts blame rise in violent offenses on kids being willing to mug people for iPods.
Choice line: “We propose that over the past two years, America may have experienced an iCrime wave.” (You just know that some thinktank dork came up with that and thought it was so clever.) Of course, you could just as easily correlate the last two years to the notable rise in child poverty or the suffering economy and with it falling incomes, all of which traditionally increase youth crime rates, but hey, let’s just blame those fancy doodads the kids like these days!
Hint: when people mug other people for iPods (like they did here), it’s not because they want an iPod – it’s because an iPod has a guaranteed resale value of $100 to $200 easy. Think of iPods as $100 bills. What mugger isn’t going to snatch a $100 bill? (Note that in that story the muggers also stole cellphones, which have the exact same obvious value isse as iPods do, but the study people didn’t say shit about cellphones.)
I would also like to point out that nobody ever mugs you for a Zune. ZUNE: like an iPod, except better in just about every conceivable way, not the least of which is not having to install fucking iTunes.
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‘Round here the stories I’ve heard have been about folks with iPods getting mugged due to not paying attention to their surroundings rather than simply in order to take the iPod.
The study itself brings the iPod as the most recent example of expensive, high-status item which is obviously on your person. It has happened for expensive basketball shoes and expensive jackets. As long as we keep openly carrying around expensive things people might want to steal, people are going to try and rob us. (The study dismisses cell phones because they require subscriptions, which ignores the relative ease of unlocking and pay-as-you-go.)
In my mind it probably isn’t just iPods – it’s just that because the iPod market share is so high, if you are going to go stealing from people who are wearing headphones, you’re probably going to end up mostly with iPods. A non-iPod may not fetch as much as an iPod when you’re selling stolen property, but you can still get something for it.
(Is having to install iTunes really that much worse than having to install the Zune software?)
Hey, any time you can scapegoat the technology instead of the social climate that creates the environment generating the actual crime, you gotta take it.
“(Is having to install iTunes really that much worse than having to install the Zune software?)”
This is why I use a Creative mp3 player. I have to install no software.
Installing isn’t a big deal; USING it is. iTunes is a shitty, shitty piece of software; it’s cumbersome at what it does and it’s a memory hog. The Zune software, in comparison, is relatively compact and much simpler and quicker to use.
Apple usually prides themselves on design, but iTunes at this point is a dinosaur.
I know nothing about Zunes. Do they have the same wide-ranging music store available?
I must be the only person in the world who likes iTunes.
There is a Zune store, but you can’t access it from Canada so I wouldn’t know how good it is.
That having been said – Amazon’s mp3 service already has just about anything you would want ANYWAY, so…
I suppose I’m free to wander the streets without fear of mugging, since I refuse to own any MP3 player that requires software or a driver. (The Cowon iAudio X5L fills this requirement very nicely.)
Also: iCrime? Were they intentionally abandoning any hope for respect from their peers OR the public?
My iPod was stolen. (I’m still angry) But that was because it was in my backpack. I’m sure the worthless slushhead didn’t know it was there, s/h/it stole the whole thing. Probably didn’t have anything to do with it.
… *rage rage rage*
I’m sure it doesn’t help that ipods have those stupid white headphones you can see from a mile away.
Man, I wish I could go with a Zune. It’s a shame 120gb is the largest one can get. Of course, it’s now the largest iPod one can get, too.
Then again, I bought the 160gb because it could fit all my music then, but I’ve since found myself selectively deleting/replacing, anyway.
But yah, I hate iTunes. I love WMP, though. I used Media Monkey for a while, too. That was pretty good, also.
iTunes is the only media application worth a damn for organizing a music collection and I won’t have any nonsense suggesting otherwise. Memory-hog problems are easily dealt with by using an earlier version. (I’m really rather happy since I stopped updating iTunes and found an old 5.0 file.)
For an mp3 player, I have a really good one that came pre-loaded on my Sony Ericsson phone. In fact, don’t MOST decent cellphones have mp3 player now? And AM/FM radios? And it has memory cards (granted they are the stupid Sony proprietary cards) so I can swap out my songs pretty quickly… and it doesn’t take any extra software, because… it’s a memory card. I plug it into the SD converter and then the SD slot on the from of my computer, drag and drop, and done.
No movies or anything, but it can also carry data, so…
Strangely enough, I always thought the muggings happened BECAUSE THERE ARE MUGGERS.
Ye gods.
Yeah, I’m with you – articles like this make me think “you don’t know how theft works, do you?” People who intend to steal would like to steal items with a very high resale-value/weight ratio. iPods weigh in at 5 ounces or less and are, as pointed out, good for a fairly quick $100-200 at the modern Thieves’ Guild. They are not unique in this respect. Brand-new gadgets of many kinds are also theft magnets.
Of course, I also think that this is less relevant than the author’s horrendous taste in trying to perpetrate the word “iCrime” on an unsuspecting public.
Holy fuck this is stupid. Like, “Oh you know those people and their fried chicken” stupid.