Hot Topic: Happy Birthday To You, Happy Birthday To You, Happy Birthday Dear iPod, Youre IFE Too! It has been five years today since the marketing birth of the venerable, perfect portable entertainment device, the iPod first came on the scene. You can read in the links below all the news, inside info and book stories about this device. We want to talk a bit about the IFE impact. To start at the beginning, many travelers carried portable music players Before iPod (BI) and we all dragged and dropped our favorite music onto these less-than-one-megabyte devices prior to getting Apple wonder. I personally have a couple of Sony devices, a Compaq player, and a big blue thing whose source is unknown to me. They all work to some degree or another. I dont use any of them. I also have another confession I dont use these terrible white earphones. I dont care how uncool it is, I want my noise-canceling headphones. Why did I get an iPod? The answer lies in the storage/size factor and the earlier fate of the possibility of flying endless hours with pneumatic headphones. While iTunes is one of the biggest drivers, Im a CD guy and I dont mind ripping discs from my collection and I wanted all of my favorite songs along. Now with 80G units, I have storage to spare. With Apple having sold over 67 million units, perhaps airlines would be smart to survey passengers and ask the obvious question: What do you have on your iPod? Portable entertainment is perfect for airplanes and the iPod took off (sorry) with the jet set. Not only was it a white-headphone-status-symbol product, it beat the heck out of many airplane entertainment systems. It had better fidelity than most IFE and the listener had choice, my choice. I cant count the number of flyers I have seen using their iPods while watching an inflight movie, multitasking, and trying to figure out the on-screen dialog. The video iPod (and portable DVD and laptop DVD players) told airlines that they needed more choice and better quality. I think they heard us and the multitude supply of portable IFE devices from Digecor, Phantom Media, eDigital et al, are in the market. With the many personal and airline-supplied video devices entering the market, airline programming will be under more pressure. Companies who deliver in-seat power have developed USB power jacks for the portable crowd and you can look for more of these power solutions for both personal and airline devices. With the advent of Smartphones and products that are Wi-Fi equipped, the airlines may be looking at regaining some eyeballs by broadcasting content to them that enhances their use. Programming like moving map displays, destination specific content, and in plane gaming will no doubt see more acceptance. We even predict that the ability to buy or rent tunes and video content in-flight. iPods have driven choice, quality and even pumped up the purchase of Apple Macs. IFExpress offices are now populated with as many Macs as PCs and we dont even miss the viruses, phishing and malware. It's not all perfect with the iPods though. For one thing, I still dont get all the complexities of iTunes and I wish the screen of my Video iPod was larger. As other hard disk based devices enter the market, no doubt the iPod and devices like it, will get a bigger screen and possibly telephony/Wi-Fi as they compete with Smartphones for the ultimate Swiss Army Knife of personal entertainment and communication. One thing airlines and travelers have to watch out for is the possibility of FAA embargos on personal electronic devices. Time and SC-202 (Google it!) will tell.