Over the years, I have owned and used many items emblazoned with the familiar silhouette of a bitten apple. But my two favourites are probably the least technologically advanced, which is probably why their praises aren’t sung too often. So I would like to offer my own faint warble to them here.
The first device which holds a special place in my heart is this little marvel:
It looks like a Nano that’s grown a tail, but it’s actually an FM radio. Plug it into the old version of the iPod and the screen becomes a transistor receiver dial.
Now, doesn’t that look nice?
I’ve written before about my unbounded love for Danny Baker’s show on BBC London 94.9, but without this beauty, I wouldn’t be able to indulge in the simple pleasure of listening to the great man every day while I cycle into town. Having used the TuneIn app, I’ve learnt that radio via 3G is simply a means of disturbing your listening pleasure with random silences, and I’ve heard that DAB radios have the same problem. So for the foreseeable future, I’ll stick with this fantastic analogue oddity.
My second thing of wonder is the remote control for the iMac.
It enables you to adjust the volume, pause or skip tracks, and switch playlists or albums. All of which you can do with a mouse or a keyboard, but not when you’re slogging away on the turbo and you suddenly realise that you need to go one louder or change to a completely different playlist if you’re going to last until the end of the session. Essentially, by combining this simple infrared device with a pair of good speakers, you’ve turned your Mac into a less fiddly, turbo-friendly iPod.
Yes, these wotsits are merely accessories, humble sequins on technology’s shimmering raiment. But rather than launch the third incarnation of the same tablet in less than two years, I really wish Apple would instead come up with more of these unusual objects. The sort of objects that say, “I can fit neatly into your life,” not “Fit all of your life onto me.”
The DYNAMITE! Files 
May 6, 2013 at 10:28 pm
For Mother’s Day my son got me one of these. When I’m watching something on Netflix and getting sleepy, I want to pause it; but have to get up to do so. We were both very disappointed to realize it’s only a remote for ITunes and such. That nothing else can be paused. Darn. I’ve got a five foot piece of bamboo now, that I use to hit the “space” key on my IMac’s keyboard, from my bed. So I can pause my viewing. It works for “pausing” whereas this remote can only pause what I don’t use on the IMac. Darn. And sigh.