REPLAY

I’ve limped to another conclusion on what was to be my explosive, boffo wrap-up to my previous post. Yes, scads of high school students chose to write in that they want an “iPod” in place of the generic “digital music player,” quite possibly indicating not just any digital music player will do, and that people really want specifically and only iPods.

But it may also have been used in the same way people reach for a Kleenex that is really a CVS facial tissue, Xerox something on a Canon copy machine and throw a dead body in a Dumpster that was really made by ... um, some competitor of Dumpster.

If this is true, the confusion could still work to Apple’s advantage. For all we know, it may already be, prompting comments such as, “But I wanted the kind of iPod made by Sony!”