As one of the six people on earth who uses a Sony MP3 player and its companion Sonicstage, I have often looked at iTunes with the sort of envy usually reserved for a male friend with an impossibly smart and hot girlfriend. But while almost everyone either thinks of iTunes as either ‘the thing you use to get stuff on an iPod’, or increasingly ubiquitous jukebox software, it’s good ole’ Walt Mossberg who has seen what iTunes actually is:

…iTunes is much more than a companion to the iPod, much more than a media playback program and even more than a front door to Apple’s online download service. It’s a sort of miniplatform hiding right within Windows that allows Apple and other companies to connect a host of hardware and software, and to create media-sharing networks without engaging with Windows itself or with Microsoft’s built-in Windows Media Player.

I’ve said this a hundred times already – but I’m no Walt Mossberg. It is, however, very true – iTunes is a platform, a model that renders one’s Windows and Microsoft experience obsolete or, worse, undesirable. It is a Trojan Horse of the smartest kind and has introduced millions of people to the world of Mac and its aesthetic and interface.

The one part that Mossberg hasn’t written about here is the connection between iTunes and zeitgeist. iTunes is a vital part of contemporary culture; among the many things it marks is the shift from the weary resignation of the 90′s to the ironic resignation of 00′s. We don’t say we live in ‘iPod culture’ for no reason. When you open up iTunes you also engage in a world of Macbooks, Starbucks lattes, irony and shoegazer rock. I realise that sounds like an enormous stretch – but self-identification and understanding contexts through brands is hardly a revolutionary idea: who are you today if not a conglomeration of the commodities you consume? The iPod-iTunes combo is so successful not just because it’s so good at what it does but, more importantly, because it has become a marker of one’s participation in the zeitgeist of the age. This also helps to explain the utter dominance of iPod-iTunes: even though there are other ecosystems that do certain things better – it feels better to live in what feels like the ‘contemporary’.

There’s much more to be said about this, but for now, you’ll have to roll with Mossberg.

Link to Mossberg Article and a Slew of Annoying, Poorly Written Headlines

I have a weird thing for interfaces – I just love it when something works seamlessly and intuitively. But beyond that, interfaces are the meeting point of user and technology, the line at which the human capacity for creativity and technology’s capacity for creating new modes and forms meet. As such, I think new interfaces don’t just allow for new levels of efficiency, they simply allow for ‘new things’. And while I am still completely in awe of the iPhone’s multi-touch screen, particularly in light of the new commercials, I think it only represents the tip of the iceberg, particularly when compared to Microsoft’s new Surface project.

The difference, I think, lies in the confluence of the technology in use and the aim of that technology. The iPhone aims to simplify and streamline the experience of a multimedia media phone with its touchscreen interface, allowing one to cleanly move back and forth between video, music, photos and communication. With Microsoft’s Surface, however, the use of infrared cameras to detect movement on the tabletop screen aims to replicate how we are accustomed to dealing with physical objects. To wit, Surface challenges what technology can do, rather than making what it does already more efficient. Paradoxically then, in becoming more invisible through making technology mimic pre-technological habits and behaviours, tech has become infinitely more sophisticated and conducive to creativity.

Anyway, there’s only so much words can do here – check out the video below. It’ll, like, totally blow your mind and stuff.