Karl Klockars

Hi, Steve Jobs.

Actually, if anyone at Apple is out there and could just, like, pass this onto him, it’d be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.  You don’t even have to tell him this was my idea.  Take full credit.  Maybe you find me and buy me a sandwich some day.

Listen, I want to talk to you about your iPods.  Thanks for those, by the way.  Not only are they handy and less of a pain in the ass to haul around than a Discman or anything else, but they’re also cool little toys to have.  I remember when I got my Nano and I thought I was the coolest person in the world because I had a little thing the size of a pack of gum that could hold my whole CD collection.  Nice job.

But there’s one thing that you still need that would make all of your Ipods way more desireable.  Do us all a favor.  Put a damned AM/FM tuner on the thing. I know, I know, the Zune has one of those (for FM, anyways) and I’m sure you don’t want anyone to think that you, the Great Innovator, is biting Microsoft’s style or anything.  But this is one time when I think you could take a cue from them, just this once.

Look at it this way.  The whole thing driving the digital revolution is one of immediacy, right?  We can have everything we want, when we want it, now now now now now.  Am I right?  Your iPod sucks for immediacy. You know how immediate it is?  As soon as I can get home and plug the thing into your stupid iBook, which is not exactly a up-to-the-second kind of thing.  You dig?

What happens if I am sitting on the Brown Line and someone’s jumped in front of the train – again.  Do I know it if I’m listening to another Penn Radio podcast from 2 years ago?  No.  Do I know it if I’m listening to the songs I just downloaded off of iTunes the other day?  No.  Do I know anything at all, unless I’m listening to the radio?  No.

Immediacy.  Those songs on my iPod?  Written and recorded days, weeks, months ago.  Those guys who are on those podcasts I download every week?  They did all those interviews a week and a half ago.  Those people on the radio that are talking?  They just said those words 7 seconds ago. You want cutting edge?  You want immediacy?  You want to be right up to the second?  You want a radio tuner on your iPod.

Plus, you’re a technological guy.  Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could figure some way out to, I don’t know, embed data into the songs that are played on radio?  So we could know what they are?  Oh yeah – we can.  Radio stations and satellite radio have been doing that for years now.  So would it be impossible to imagine that you could figure out a way to flag that information when it comes through your now-with-a-radio-tuner iPod so you could download it later – maybe even through something like iTunes so you make a few cents on the transaction?  Oh, wait – MS already tried it and no one paid attention.  So pretend it never happened, give away all the technology to radio stations to sell your songs, and do it yourself.  Now is the time.

And I’m guessing you’ve got something of an ego, right?  Feed it a little bit.  I mean, you’ve basically changed the world with your company, so why not make a simple decision to single-handedly save an entire industry?  Let’s be honest – radio is pretty much in the crapper financially and in terms of image.  “Radio?  You mean like with the tubes and the dial and Traffic On The 7′s and the old guys screaming about being conservative?“  Yes, kid, radio.  You, Steve Jobs, could turn that around.  Every trade magazine would get down on their knees and kiss your feet.  Sales managers with a new angle and tactic would build altars and shrines to your name.

Not only would putting a radio tuner on your iPod revitalize the industry, but since I’m assuming you’d be doing all this digitally you’d also be creating a new niche for the HD broadcasts everyone seems to be doing but nobody seems to care about.  All of a sudden there’d be a point to broadcasting in HD, and all those extra streams of audio would be worth doing something with.  Dammit, Jobs, you wouldn’t just be saving an industry, you’d be creating millions of dollars of new revenue streams.

Plus, just think of how cool it would be to graze through the dial with a click wheel.  You could sell different “faces” for the video interface of the tuner band.  Want your iPod to look like an old 30′s era radio?  Sure!  It’ll cost you 99 cents, though.  How about all in neon?  Or all in camoflauge?  Or with Rush Limbaugh’s face filling the screen and the frequencies streaming along his nicotine-stained teeth?  All can be yours for a buck a pop.  Sell new headphones with the cord being used as an antenna or something.  And all this was made to scroll through with the iPod touch interface.  It’s perfect.  So now there’s a monetary incentive for you to do it, and not just out of the goodness of your iHeart.

Seriously, Steve.  We want it.  Maybe a lot of us don’t know we want it, but we do.  We want it when we’re sick of listening to the same songs and want to be exposed to something new.  We want it when we’re stuck on a bus wondering when the hell we’re going to move on Lakeshore Drive.  We want it when we didn’t download that episode of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me – but we could listen to Wait Wait as it’s broadcast.  And imagine what someone could do with on-demand audio from stations and their integrated websites?  Holy crap.

Do us a favor, Steve.  It doesn’t seem like innovation to go back to the Marconi drawing board.  But at some point in the near future, it’s the right thing to do.  You know, when you run out of apps for your iPhone.