By Stephen Monteiro

Our personal devices are in some ways the most powerful tools average people have ever owned, used every day to seek help, create friendships, find work and even find love. We are also subtly nudged to love the devices themselves. In his new book “Needy Media: How Tech Gets Personal” academic and author Stephen Monteiro, assistant professor of communication studies at Concordia University, shows how the design and customization of the revolutionary iPod, in particular, encouraged deep attachment.

Looking at aspects of grip and touch developed with the iPod, it is important to recognize that, even as this device seemed in many ways to unite with the user’s body, it was promoted as an independent body. While the iPod’s form and proportions could conform to the hand as an integral part of the body, its sensitive — and even fragile — surface functioned as a zone of diverse interactivity between its body and that of the user.

From the start, the iPod’s surface was fetishized by Apple and Apple customers alike. The first iteration of the iPod was sheathed in a white plastic face and stainless-steel back. “It was … not just everyday white but a stunning, luminous, brilliant, attention-getting white,” write tech journalists Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon. Later versions, including the iPod nano and iPod mini, were faced in aluminum. These metal surfaces, particularly the polished back, were prone to scratching.

“Without a case, that shiny, mirrored metal back would start attracting scratches and dings as soon as you took it out of the box,” recalls Macworld writer Christopher Phin. In language that resonates with psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott’s theory of transitional objects, (a possession beloved by a small child that provides experiences that help the child develop), Phin continues, “But to me, an iPod whose metal case has been dulled by wear and by use is a thing to cherish. As a face lined with wrinkles and bearing the evidence of a life lived can be as beautiful as a child’s, so your iPod’s ravaged visage is just as lovely as it was when you first prized it from its box.”

Apple fetishized the delicate, reflective surface of the iPod by offering engraving on the back of the case for customers purchasing the device through Apple’s online store. Engraving distinguished the object as valuable and personal. Apple enthusiast Steven Levy explains in his book on the iPod, “With all your music at hand, in an enclosure to die for, the personal experience of the iPod goes beyond mere listening. It’s almost a relationship. So maybe it’s understandable that people often cement the relationship by personalizing the iPod itself. This helps explain the popularity of Apple’s program that offers free engraving.”

While potentially enhancing the object’s value for its owner, engraving diminished the object’s resale value. “This is the iPod equivalent of a tattoo, so think very carefully, as you’re stuck with it,” one iPod guide explained in 2004. An engraving industry trade magazine picked up on the trend, noting that “those who really want to ‘trick out’ their devices are turning to laser engraved tattoos,” and that iPods were the leading electronics to be brought to engraving shops for this service. An engraver told the magazine, “(You’re) able to take a customer’s iPod that millions of people own and make it unique to that customer’s tastes. Really, you’re tattooing a product in an incredibly personal way for customers.”

As the iPod took over the portable music player market — selling one hundred million units in five and a half years — it created a base of unusually loyal users. By 2006, over a thousand accessories were available for the iPod, many tied to the device’s case and surface. Levy notes the popularity of “literally dressing the devices, like a doll or a small pampered dog,” either with homemade outfits or cases produced by luxury brands such as Prada or Christian Dior. Of note, however, are those products that evoked epidermal connotations of the surface, including (non-engraved) “tattoos” and “skins” for the device.

Skins for iPods, in 2002.

Dick Loek/Toronto Star file photo

When Apple partnered with HP in 2004 to develop an iPod that would appeal to PC users, HP’s iteration of the device was nearly identical to what users could buy from Apple. To differentiate the product and generate independent profits, however, HP created iPod tattoos that were printable on HP printers. PC Magazine described these as “removable skins that wrap around the iPod … (and) personalize the device.” Tattoos based on supplied designs or created by the user themselves could be printed on specialized sheets for HP printers.

“That would transform your plain white iPod into something that was one of a kind and all the more cool,” explains Steve Stoute, whose company collaborated with HP to develop the proprietary product. Other “tattoos” for the iPod included stickers that could be applied to create patterns across the surface, which were more or less permanent modifications to the case. As one product reviewer explained, “stickers may disfigure it for good,” an outcome confirmed by at least one tech blogger at the time.

As a form of body modification, tattoos historically have represented one’s membership in a group or culture while often also differentiating the self from others. In describing tattooing as a social practice, sociologist Michael Atkinson identifies it as an example of body redesign projects. “While other types of body projects involve foresight, planning, reflexivity, and self-awareness, redesigning body projects generally involve the highest level of commitment,” Atkinson explains. “Redesigning body projects are hyper-expressions of personal understandings about one’s cultural location (and are) outwardly displayed according to the (perceived) social reaction elicited in specific contexts of interchange.”

Naming these decorative device accessories “tattoos,” rather than “appliqués” or “stickers,” implies the media object is a body and its surface is skin. It also frames applying and displaying these designs as a potentially subversive and countercultural activity. Through much of the 20th century, tattoos connotated deviance in Western contexts. They were the realm of sailors, criminals, carnies, and motorcycle gangs. Connotations have changed significantly in the 21st century as tattoos have become socially acceptable and even banal consumer items. At the time of the iPod’s success this shift to cultural convention was underway, but not complete.

If tattoos, cases, and engraving emphasized the iPod surface as a place for the expression of individual identity — whether that be the identity of the owner or the identity of the object (as with the costuming mentioned by Levy) — the development of “skins” for iPods brought the device’s surface into focus as a zone for haptic sensitivity and interaction.

“Needy Media”

Stephen Monteiro

McGill-Queen’s University Press

240 pages

$34.95

Courtesy Serif.Inc PR

At the height of the iPod’s popularity, “scores” of third-party companies manufactured skins for the device. Unlike other types of cases, skins were not snap-on frames or envelopes with flaps, but sheer, stretchable protective covers or sleeves made of malleable molded silicon. To enclose the iPod in a skin, the user would pry open the silicon, slip the device through the screen opening, and wriggle the object in the case until it fit snugly. Because they were thin, stretchable, and close-fitting, skins offered the protection of a case while retaining the component of fit so critical to the iPod’s identity. Descriptions and reviews of skins in tech magazines referred to their “grippiness” as an asset.

Design theorist Juliette Kristensen has noted that the advent of skins “explicitly connects the iPod to flesh, to being alive.” Like the epidermis, some skins even included “heat-ventilation pores” to dissipate the thermal energy produced by the hard drives that differentiated iPods from most other MP3 players.

Appreciating the significance of these skins to young iPod users, a 2011 health and hygiene book meant for teenagers, by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet Oz, approached the subject of human skin through this “techno-focused skin.” They claimed an iPod skin not only protects the device but also “tells the outside world something about your personality. In a way, your natural skin does the exact same thing,” they asserted.

“Needy Media” author Stephen Monteiro.

Courtesy Serif.Inc PR

Like adhesive tattoos, skins were not only a protective layer but also a style choice, coming in any number of motifs and designs. In the anthropomorphism that suffuses descriptions of iPods of the period, one reviewer wrote about a new skin for their iPod: “My iPod mini was living a lie. Though blue on the outside, it had always felt pink on the inside. Perhaps it needed to express itself. Or perhaps it was just tired of being scratched up in my pocket. Either way, I knew it was time to get a case for it.”

The gendered aspect of pink and blue casing described in the review also resonates with the account of Connie Guglielmo, a tech reviewer present at Steve Jobs’ unveiling of the iPod in October 2001. Guglielmo remembers asking Jobs about adding a case to protect the device. “What for? It fits in your pocket,” Guglielmo recalls Jobs responding. After showing Jobs she didn’t have pockets and explaining that people might keep them in purses and the like, she claims Jobs walked away without comment. When she got home, she took the matter in hand and sewed a case for the new device.

From “Needy Media: How Tech Gets Personal,” © 2025. Reproduced with the permission of McGill-Queen’s University Press.