On October 23, 2001, Apple Computer, a company known for its chic, cutting-edge technology -- if not necessarily for its dominant market share -- launched a product with an enticing promise: You can carry an entire music collection in your pocket. It was called the iPod. What happened next exceeded the company's wildest dreams. Over 50 million people have inserted the device's distinctive white buds into their ears, and the iPod has become a global obsession. The Perfect Thing is the definitive account, from design and marketing to startling impact, of Apple's iPod, the signature device of our young century. Besides being one of the most successful consumer products in decades, the iPod has changed our behavior and even our society. It has transformed Apple from a computer company into a consumer electronics giant. It has remolded the music business, altering not only the means of distribution but even the ways in which people enjoy and think about music. Its ubiquity and its universally acknowledged coolness have made it a symbol for the digital age itself, with commentators remarking on "the iPod generation." Now the iPod is beginning to transform the broadcast industry, too, as podcasting becomes a way to access radio and television programming. Meanwhile millions of Podheads obsess about their gizmo, reveling in the personal soundtrack it offers them, basking in the social cachet it lends them, even wondering whether the device itself has its own musical preferences. Steven Levy, the chief technology correspondent for Newsweek magazine and a longtime Apple watcher, is the ideal writer to tell the iPod's tale. He has had access to all the key players in the iPod story, including Steve Jobs, Apple's charismatic cofounder and CEO, whom Levy has known for over twenty years. Detailing for the first time the complete story of the creation of the iPod, Levy explains why Apple succeeded brilliantly with its version of the MP3 player when other companies didn't get it right, and how Jobs was able to convince the bosses at the big record labels to license their music for Apple's groundbreaking iTunes Store. (We even learn why the iPod is white.) Besides his inside view of Apple, Levy draws on his experiences covering Napster and attending Supreme Court arguments on copyright (as well as his own travels on the iPod's click wheel) to address all of the fascinating issues -- technical, legal, social, and musical -- that the iPod raises. Borrowing one of the definitive qualities of the iPod itself, The Perfect Thing shuffles the book format. Each chapter of this book was written to stand on its own, a deeply researched, wittily observed take on a different aspect of the iPod. The sequence of the chapters in the book has been shuffled in different copies, with only the opening and concluding sections excepted. "Shuffle" is a hallmark of the digital age -- and The Perfect Thing, via sharp, insightful reporting, is the perfect guide to the deceptively diminutive gadget embodying our era.

不管是在地铁车厢、健身中心或是飞机的客舱、学校的大厅里，你都能看见5年前绝不曾看见的一幕——许多人的耳朵里延伸出一条细长的白线绳，线绳的末端连接着一个小巧别致的金属盒。 这些人一边把玩着这个小盒子，手指不停地在盒子光洁的表面上划着圆圈，一边可能还在随着耳机传出的节奏摇头晃脑。 你当然明白我所谈论的是iPod一族。 你听iPod的理由可能很简单——你喜欢音乐，并对iPod获得业内设计大奖的外观很满意。但你可能还没有意识到，自己不仅是在收听小小的iPod，甚至可能是在参与一场革命活动。这场革命掀翻了唱片业，让人们在消遣时不再受制于唱片公司、演播室和广播公司。因为，无处不在的苹果公司的iPod如今引领我们进入了随意演绎自己喜好的时代。 2001年10月23日，人们还未从911事件中回过神来，苹果公司CEO斯蒂夫·乔布斯站在位于库比提诺市的苹果公司礼堂里，面对着人数寥寥的听众，从牛仔裤口袋中掏出一个重量只有180克重的小物件，同时用他惯有的夸张语气宣布这个小物件是“一个大大的突破”。 这一次，乔布斯没有言过其实。 欢迎加入iPod世代。