Tim Quirk tells the story of the Walkman, and how it’s “changed the way we listen, and what we listen to.”

On crazy geniuses and products with and without imagination. "And the iPod itself is a shiny fruit fallen to earth from an enchanted tree in a mystical fairy land populated entirely by crazy geniuses."

Pressure from hearing charities and internal company concern has led Apple to patent a technology that would calculate how long a listener had been listening at high volumes and automatically turn the volume down.

An interview with Apple's brilliant product designer, who possesses a "fanatical care beyond the obvious stuff."

"Every time Apple releases something new, I am re-staggered by the internet's ability to be negative. It makes me sad. Every Steve Jobs presentation brings out so much negativity... There's no way to grapple with it, [but] I'm going to try."

Interesting ideas from Apple, patented just in case.

The absolutely perfect tool for opening one's iPod, only sixty cents. This is what Apple technicians use.

"Everything you need to make your own small & simple, but very powerful USB charger for your mp3 player, camera, cell phone, and any other gadget you can plug into a USB port to charge! Uses 2 AA batteries, more than doubles your iPod 4G/5G battery life!"

Make your iPod shuffle into a cross necklace. "Just toss your old cap habit, pop on the divine iBelieve and rejoice!"

Very good list.

The wiki for "an open source venture into porting Linux onto the iPod. So far, we have successfully ported a customized Linux kernel to the iPod, and written a simple user interface for it dubbed podzilla."

"The goal of this project is to create an easy to use GUI program that enables Mac OS X user with iPods to install linux on HFS+ formatted iPods while still allowing users to keep and use the Apple Supplied OS."

"'No one should psychoanalyze the song selection. It's music to get over the next hill.'"

On the struggle between Apple and the music industry. "Is the government coming to take away your iPod? Of course not. But your iPod is already less functional than it should be."

CSS specs on your iPod.

Get the latest feature info from our tech-obsessed editors with breaking news, in-depth reviews, hands-on videos, and our insights on future products.