Financial Times reports today that Apple’s sales of iPod music players have grown by 616 percent since this time last year, thus confirming what anybody who rides a subway or walks down a city street can see for himself — the country has gone iPod-crazy. (I may count as one of the crazy ones — I bought an iPod myself last fall after experimenting with a less-than-optimally designed four-year-old MP3 player a friend gave me.)

One sign of how things have changed — a year ago I created the small pastime for myself of counting how many iPods I saw on the commute to work. Generally, I rarely saw fewer than two or more than three sets of the distinctive white iPod earbuds on fellow commuters. This year the game has ceased to be fun — on some days, I can count three or four iPods on the way to the subway … followed by another five or six on the train itself, plus two or three more on the walk from the subway to the office. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

My own use of my iPod is mainly to listen to audiobooks. It’s probably the only technology that could enable me to keep up with my 12-year-old daughter’s consumption of Terry Pratchett novels.

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