Never before has it been so easy to carry one's personal music collection around. With its ability to contain dozens of hours of music, Apple's iPod certainly revolutionized how rich people listen to music... in New York.

Not to diminish the brilliance of the little device or anything. It's perfect for that long commute on the subway, or on foot. But, unless you live in a major metropolitan center, the odds are good that the only time you spend on foot is the 30 seconds it takes to find your car and cross the parking lot – and you can forget about public transportation if your crib is in the suburbs.

Sure, you can listen to your MP3s in your car, but you better be sure that you put in the time creating play lists, because fiddling around with that little wheel while trying to control your car can have a rather negative impact on your cellphone conversations. Besides, you're probably shelling out ten bucks a month for satellite radio – you might as well use it.

The point is, a quick glance the average life-style of the average well-off, upper-middle class drone reveals the iPod's limited usefulness. Yes, it's a great piece of gadgetry, but who needs it? We had Sony Walkmans for twenty years before the iPod came along, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to observe that its user-base had been whittled down to teenagers and joggers.

The fact is, the iPod is going to quickly reach its market-saturation point, no matter how many colors it eventually winds up being. The question is, what should Apple be doing about it?

The obvious answer would be to include all of the functions that somebody might shut off his iPod in order to use. So, they could build an satellite radio receiver into it. Better still, they could also turn it into a beat-boxing cell phone. It could work. Thirty years ago, most working-men carried only a wallet and a key-ring – that's man's natural state. We long to go back to the simplicity of belts without holsters, and front pockets with enough room for spare change. An iPod that you could use to listen to the radio, play your music collection, and order pizza on would be a God-send. Especially if you could attach your keys to it.

There seem to be a few indications that Apple doesn't plan on going this route. Here's a passage from their iPod page. "Imagine: you could fly from New York to Paris and still have hours of listening time left over as you stroll the Champs Elysées."

Ah yes; imagine the sort of person who goes all the way to Paris, and then meanders around listening to Green Day. The fact that Apple thinks that such a person should be allowed to wander around France, chuffed at their iPod's long battery life, displays a serious lack of real-world understanding. Unless Apple's core demographic are bored jet-setters who spend their early-morning hours pacing back and forth on the Parisian streets, waiting for the boulangerie to open.

Convergence is a tricky thing; but if Apple isn't careful, some enterprising young cellphone manufacturer is going to eat their lunch. Not that this would be the first time they wound up having a great idea swiped out from under them.

-B. C. Silvia