Just Like Peas

This column was originally published Oct. 19, 2005.

Talking technology in my house is like talking about apples and oranges. Actually, it’s more like talking Apples, because we are a Macintosh kind of family. It mostly has to do with me because in the publishing business, “Macs” seem to be the computer of choice.

I really started out with PCs and never thought I would ever switch over. At work I still administrate our IBM AS/400, which is a completely different animal.

Still I’m pretty much a Steve Jobs convert because all our systems people are, and I take advantage of the “free” support.

Besides, when it comes to design and the “cool” factor, you can’t beat a Mac.

My family’s biggest kick lately are iPods. Fortunately, there are as many different models available now as my family’s different choices in music.

In a perfect world, I would own the black special-edition U2 iPod. Our 16-year-old son would have the new iPod that can play video. My wife would have an iPod mini in her favorite color, green. And our 8-year-old daughter would have the new iPod nano.

The world, however, is not perfect. So I have an iPod mini, our son has an iPod from when they first came out and our daughter has an iPod shuffle. My deprived wife still listens to cassette tapes on our sing-along karaoke machine.

This arrangement adds to the diversity of songs that I have to listen to because our downloading from iTunes is done on my Mac.

Which means that I often inadvertently transfer my kid’s music onto my iPod.

The other day someone at work wanted to listen to the songs on my playlist. I had a pretty tough time convincing them that the Jet and Green Day songs were my son’s.

It was even harder to convince them that the Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan tunes were my daughter’s. Oh, well, just call me iDad.

rnagasawa@midweek.com