Customer desires go from simple to highly complex

I'm in the electronics store arguing with a teenage salesman about which iPod to buy.

I want the tiny new 1-gigabyte Shuffle for $80.

He's trying to convince me that I'll be much happier with the larger, feature-laden 8-gigabyte iPod Nano for $250.

"The Shuffle doesn't have any features. You just turn it on and off. It doesn't have a display. You can't even see what songs are playing," he tells me. "Believe me, you're not going to like the Shuffle."

The differences between the two devices say a lot about the dichotomy of technology these days -- why some of us love it and why some of us hate it, often at the same time.

Despite the hard up-sell, I buy the Shuffle.

The teenage salesman is right about one thing. I don't like the Shuffle.

I love it!

I relish its simplicity. It has a few, obvious controls: on/off, a switch that plays songs randomly or in order, a nifty all-in-one dial that has volume and play/stop/skip button.

It's literally the size and weight of a matchbook. It comes with a built-in clip that allows me to secure it to a pocket or a shirt sleeve.

It's so simple that my wife -- the anti-technologist -- frequently asks to borrow it, even though she has her own music player.

To me, the Shuffle is so simple it's elegant.

The curious thing is my kids -- and their peers -- aren't at all intrigued by my new toy. Oh, they are impressed by the Shuffle's tiny size. But the lack of features and capacity bothers them.

"You can't see what songs you have," my 11-year-old nephew says. "You can't pick what you want to play."

My 16-year-old daughter has nearly a thousand songs totaling four gigabytes on her 2-year-old iPod Mini. She keeps most of her music library on it. She has playlists that correspond with activities and moods. She uses the display constantly to pick specific albums, artists or songs.

It's this granularity -- the ability to categorize, choose, program what to play -- that appeals to her. There is a huge amount of programming power in that iPod display.

Some of us can appreciate both types of technology. When I'm programming a network firewall, for example, I love the granularity -- the ability to restrict this group of users, but not that one. I can -- and do -- create firewall rules for any set of conditions.

When I'm listening to music on a portable music player, on/off/shuffle is all I need.

But most of us tend to like one type of technology or the other: simple or powerful.

All this is a long way of saying that shoppers -- and salesmen -- should try to understand their audience this holiday season and all year long.

For the adults, consider the Shuffle. For the kids, check out the Nano.