Rob Walker, "The Guts of a New Machine" (2003) (page 445-56)

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What is the link between form and function? Designers are constantly searching for new ways to integrate aesthetically pleasing form and practical function. The problem with this, of course, is that aesthetics—or taste—changes over time and is highly subjective. Nevertheless, some designs, like Macintosh's iPod, have managed to appeal to a wide group of people by meshing a new technology with an innovative design.

What makes good design? How much of your taste is shaped by marketing forces, and how much of it is truly you? Read through the following links and try to answer these questions for yourself.

http://www.designchain.com/coverstory.asp?issue=summer02
What happens between inspiration and implementation? How do you get from an idea to a product? Though the answer is complex, it has a name: the design chain. The phrase describes the journey idea takes, from the minds of programmers and graphic artists to component selection and manufacture, and includes both the design you see and the design you don't. This article, referred to in Rob Walker's essay, discusses Apple's use of the design chain in bringing the iPod to market.

http://www.mp3.com/tech/index.php
The iPod has taken the MP3 market by storm, and is the device's most recognizable face. But in addition to all the other brands out there, the technology itself offers variants to the iPod formula. This first of these pages gives a brief introduction to a few different kinds of players. The second page offers reviews of all the MP3 players currently on the market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3
For those of us who don't, um, know quite what an MP3 is, exactly, this Wikipedia site provides an incredibly detailed encyclopedia entry on the history of the MP3, as well as the technology to play them.

http://www.designboom.com/Weblog/index.php?CATEGORY_PK=13
How strange can MP3 player design get? And what is the connection between candy and popular music? This blog may provide an answer: a portable MP3 player disguised as a Pez dispenser. Pez candy dispensers, which have spawned a veritable cult of collectors (you can read about the product on Pez's Website, linked from this blog), come in literally hundreds of varieties. You can find just about every kind of animal, real or imaginary, gracing the tops of the dispensers, as well as characters from movies and TV. The prototype for the Pez MP3 player? Yoda from Star Wars.

http://www.mp3.com/Players%20with%20Purse%20Appeal/stories/1034.html
http://www.mp3.com/MP3%20Insider%3A%20The%20Secret%20Behind%20the%20iPod%27s%20Scrollwheel/stories/1004.html
These two articles from mp3.com take on different aspects of the MP3 player's design. The first describes the product's "purse appeal": its fashion-forward outward appearance. Living as we do among the world's six billion inhabitants, we're always looking for ways to express our own uniqueness; it doesn't take long for the consumer market to answer this demand. This article discusses the way the design of MP3 players has diversified to meet this need. With the MP3 player now just one more fashion accessory, the article suggests, it has fully entered the mainstream. The second article provides a history of the scrollwheel, the iPod's navigation device, which originally moved with your fingertip. Now, the "wheel" no longer moves, and it uses the same technology as the touchpad on your laptop. The focus on design here reveals some interesting things about the way in which form and function interact.

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