Let's forestall the obvious objection by conceding that lexicographers have yet to identify any definition of the verb "to need" according to which anyone really "needs" to own an iPod. Nor does anyone need a CD player, or a tape recorder. If you have the money to ask the two-iPod question, you have enough to spend it on something more useful. Besides, if we're talking about personal leisure devices, whatever happened to spinning tops, dominoes, or bits of wood tied together with string? Back then, we made our own entertainment.
All true. Yet the dilemma arises, thanks to the frenzy over the iPod Nano, which has leapt from Dixons' shelves at the rate of five a minute. The ubiquitous yearning for the Nano - especially among owners of its predecessor - tells us more than we might want to know about the power of the market to manipulate emotions. (Full disclosure: I own both. But the Nano was a birthday present, so it doesn't count, OK?)
The Nano is unnecessary, profoundly so if you've already got an iPod. But Apple's greatest gift is its grasp of what the thinker Virginia Postrel calls "the substance of style": the ever increasing importance of aesthetics in mass culture. The Nano creates a need where none existed because it feels like progress: it's so much smaller and more beautiful. But did the older iPod really feel like lead in your pocket, or look dated? Now, seeing the Nano ads, it's beginning to seem that way ...
These are dangerous waters for any firm. Apple has to avoid giving the impression that its products are built to obsolesce, that anything you buy now, however pretty and functional it seems, will be superseded. (Consider Apple's "clamshell" laptops, praised when released, but comical now. Even 2003's iPod Mini seems like yesterday's toy.)
This is why reports that the Nano scratches easily are a potential PR disaster - especially for Apple, whose designs target an especially anally retentive, perfectionistic personality strain, exemplified by founder Steve Jobs. But recent history suggests the firm will sidestep the pitfalls. And the logical next step? The iPod Subatomic: so small you can't see it! The embarrassing thing is, I shall probably want one.