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iPod More Popular Than Beer?

Posted by Zonk on Thu Jun 08, 2006 04:03 PM
from the screwed-up-priorities dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Media Media (Apple)
prostoalex writes "Whenever someone says college students, the first thing that comes to mind is drinking beer, right? Wrong, says new research by Student Monitor, which claims than in 2006 73% of students it surveyed said iPods were in, while beer drinking and Facebook.com fought for the second place with 71% of popular votes."
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  • Summary is incorrect. First line of story clues you in:

    Move over Bud. [emph mine]
    Story is about american students. Summary headline should read:

    Apple: iPod more popular than flavourless brown fizzy drinks.

    (I'll leave the facebook==beer popularity jokes to others:)

    • Re:Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:5, Funny)

      by HillBilly (120575) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:10PM (#15497761)
      As it goes...

      American beer is like sex in a canoe, its fucking close to water.

      • *snort* - thanks for that, haven't heard it in years :-)

      • Re:Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:4, Informative)

        by Sponge Bath (413667) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:40PM (#15497973)
        ...its fucking close to water

        There are plenty of very good (and close mainstream, pun intended)
        beers from the US these days. Avery, New Belgium, and Victory breweries
        are some of my favorites. (beware the Golden Monkey)

        Of course, most of those brew English or Belgium style,
        so props to the originating countries for showing the way.
        I just wish I could convert more of my 'NASCAR' type friends
        from 'Bud' and the 'Silver Bullet'. When they come over and peruse
        my fridge full of tasty, bottled treats they give a blank look
        and whine: but where is the Coors?

        *shudder*
          • As far as imports go, Ales lose out to Lagers. There are a few, but for English imports stouts seem to have the upperhand. Germany has a majority share of the imported brews I find here in Connecticut. There are lots of European brews imported as well. Belgian trappist brews are quite popular as well. Alas, even in my favorite local beer super-store (Amity Discount Wine and Spirits) Canadian beer is sadly underrepresented. Only the major breweries are available, and while a decent drink, you miss some

    • Re:Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheRaven64 (641858) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:21PM (#15497852) Homepage Journal
      I am a PhD student, so I'm perhaps not representative, but I find this 'research' slightly hard to believe. In the last three years, I have bought exactly one iPod. Over the same time, I have bought several hundred beers. Taking this week as a fairly representative example, I have bought two beers, and no iPods at all.
      • I personally think instead of comparing the purchase, it's comparing the usage that's more relevant. Let's rephrase the question and ask this Ph.D student, how much time he spent listening to his iPod this week and how much time, she spent drinking beer?

        I mean iPod isn't just a 1 time purchase thing, it's the ongoing usage. If I purchase a bunch of beer, but because it's to accomodate my guests that I hang out every week, it doesn't mean I'm into beer.

        Just thought it was something to think about.

    • Re:Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:5, Funny)

      by thefirelane (586885) on Thursday June 08 2006, @05:01PM (#15498109)
      I'm sorry, you seem to be under the impression college students drink for taste.

          • Re:Bzzzzzzzzzt! (Score:5, Informative)

            by c_forq (924234) <forquerc+slash@gmail.com> on Thursday June 08 2006, @06:48PM (#15498816)
            And iPod's also suck. Overrated electronic devices, becoming a fad because of people's lack of knowledge regarding mp3 download services/devices. I don't approve of corperations[sic] luring stray unknowledgable[sic] people in, and locking them down with their shit proprietary formats of mp4, and m4a.

            Or they have become popular because they are damn convenient. I have plenty of knowledge of MP3 players, and the software for most of them sucks balls. The next option is using an MP3 player that you can totally ignore the software, but I have a very large music collection and prefer the automation of transferring songs. For cataloging music iTunes is an excellent program, and having an MP3 player that links up to it is a great bonus. Now on many grounds the iPod is not the best player (in some cases far from it) but the iPod definitely isn't in the suck category.

        • Uhhm, Budweiser [wikipedia.org] or Budweiser [wikipedia.org]? Because, you know, the latter comes from Budweis, Czechia, and is indeed quite popular in Europe, though it has nothing to do with the American one (different company, entirely different beers), but both sold under the same name.

          Read this:

          In many countries, the beer produced by Budjovický Budvar is the only beer that may be sold as "Budweiser" - in those countries, the American Budweiser is usually marketed as "Bud." Since both Budjovický Budvar and Anheuser-Busch h

  • Not just college students (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BWJones (18351) * on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:05PM (#15497704) Homepage Journal
    It's not just college students. No, the iPod has absolutely become a phenomenon that I was thinking was perhaps restricted to college students and those of us Apple geeks that were early adopters (I had an iTunes music server made out of an old Powerbook as soon as they released iTunes). However, my thinking has essentially been completely corrected with all the travel I was doing over the past year giving talks and such. On every trip, I saw white earbuds connected to iPods and just last week on the Washington, D.C. metro subway, I counted twenty people in my car alone coming back from the Pentagon who were using iPods of various types, three people with Powerbooks/MacBook Pros and two people with brand new Macbooks. It was amazing and given the performance of the stock market over the past couple of weeks, made me feel much better about the shares of AAPL that I purchased.

    • I counted twenty people in my car alone coming back from the Pentagon who were using iPods of various types, three people with Powerbooks/MacBook Pros and two people with brand new Macbooks

      You're having a laugh! Twenty five people in your car using Apple products? Did you have four elephants in the boot running Windows laptops, as well?

  • For one thing, beer is never going to be popular with more than 37 percent of law-abiding college students in the United States, where the legal age for possessing an alcoholic beverage is somewhere in the junior year. With an iPod, on the other hand, any college student in the United States can rip CDs and buy DRM'd tracks from iTMS.

    • Re:Go away, you're not 21 (Score:5, Funny)

      by gardyloo (512791) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:09PM (#15497740)
      For one thing, beer is never going to be popular with more than 37 percent of law-abiding college students in the United States[...]

            Pfft. Those two guys are a little creepy anyway.
    • law-abiding college students

      Individually, I understand every word in that snippet.

      But together.... just not parsing.

    • Good lord, have you been to college? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SuperKendall (25149) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:33PM (#15497936)
      For one thing, beer is never going to be popular with more than 37 percent of law-abiding college students in the United States, where the legal age for possessing an alcoholic beverage is somewhere in the junior year. With an iPod, on the other hand, any college student in the United States can rip CDs and buy DRM'd tracks from iTMS.

      I was at one of those schools in a state where the drinking age was 21. What I can tell you is it's easier to get beer than a nice glass of ice water!

      People are used to easily availiable beer starting in high school!

  • Stupid kids. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mctk (840035) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:06PM (#15497710) Homepage
    No matter how many songs you listen to, she's still gonna be ugly and talk to much.

  • In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nerdposeur (910128) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:06PM (#15497714) Journal
    ...sandwiches are still more popular than laptops.

  • A new phrase. (Score:5, Funny)

    by gardyloo (512791) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:07PM (#15497718)
    "Free as in iPod"?!? I think not.

  • Tomarrows headline: (Score:5, Funny)

    by a_greer2005 (863926) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:07PM (#15497721)
    iPod better than sex; survey of virgins shows.

  • Oh crap! (Score:4, Funny)

    by larsoncc (461660) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:08PM (#15497726) Homepage
    I didn't realize this was a binary choice!

    I just bought an iPod! THE HUMANITY! Beer, I miss thee already!

    (heh)

  • Age factor? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GillBates0 (664202) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:08PM (#15497727) Homepage Journal
    TFA doesn't mention the age groups of students that were surveyed.

    Barring underage drinking, it is more likely than not that students over 18 years would vote for beer, while iPod's would appeal to the younger agegroup as well. Infact early teenagers seem to be the target of their marketing campaigns, and people who're more likely to vote iPod over alcoholic beverages.

    Given the fact that most students in the country comprise of the 0-18 age-group, and a minority in the 19 and over age group, the results aren't surprising, and infact skewed.

    • All true, if this were a survey of ALL students no matter what educational level. However, this is a survey of college undergraduates, which generally are between 18-22.

      Again, most of which can't legally drink, but a lot less of a percentage than your post would indicate.
    • "Given the fact that most students in the country comprise of the 0-18 age-group"

      I thought collage was like uni... wouldn't that mean that people would go at 18 and be there untill 21? Also, because they can't legally drink then the "ooh... beer" thing wouldn't be there. besides did they ask if I would rather have one beer or an iPod (because I'd take the iPod) or was it whether you could never have one... because then I'd have to protect the beer...

      Well, I say I'd take the beer; it didn't say which
    • Here is real life, people under the drinking age are, I assure you, drinking. In fact most of them have been drinking since well before college.

      If anything I would expect the 18-year olds to vote a bit more heavily FOR beer, because it is a "forbidden pleasure" still. By 21 it's lost some of the lustre.

  • Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kesch (943326) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:08PM (#15497733)
    The margin of error is 2.3% so they are all really tied.

    Still whats better than jamming out with your iPod while surfinf Facebook and getting drunk?
    • Still whats better than jamming out with your iPod while surfinf Facebook and getting drunk?

      Posting on slashdot while drinking beer, listening to an iPod and 'sufinf' facebook.
  • Yeah, right. Which college do YOU go to?

    Frack, mine. Guess you have a point.

  • I dizagrea (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jambon (880922) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:10PM (#15497758) Journal
    Bere is waaay mor popoolre tnah podis! I heave noo idia wat ur talkn abowt ociffer....seeriuslee, man.

  • huh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by blackmonday (607916) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:10PM (#15497759) Homepage
    "...beer drinking and Facebook.com fought for the second place with 71% of popular votes."

    You might want to check your math, you drunk facebooking iPod dancing freaks!

    Im ny day we studied in college, humming along to an 8 track! And that's the way we liked it!

  • Flawed Survey (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mattwarden (699984) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:10PM (#15497760) Homepage

    Not everyone likes beer. The percentage is higher with college females. Why didn't they ask 'alcohol' instead of 'beer'?

  • It's best to cover all your bases. When you head out to your next class, take your iPod AND a 6-pack. Everyone will marvel at how hip you are. (Except for, maybe, your professor.)

  • Budweiser beats Barry White everytime (Score:5, Funny)

    by JavaNPerl (70318) * on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:18PM (#15497829)
    You can take the one listening to the 6th song on your slow jams playlist, I'll take a women on her 6th beer.
    Once again the education system fails us.

  • Why, those young punks.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mswope (242988) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:19PM (#15497835) Journal
    I remember when it took my two roommates and me to scrape together $6 to get a pitcher of cheap beer. If there was a $20 between us, we were drunk and proud of ... something...

    These kids nowadays with their $250 iPods... Sheesh! :-)
  • Is there a new t-shirt with all the various models of IPODS instead of brands of beer?

    Fear... soon the metric will not be Olympic pools of beer drank by college students, but rather Gigabytes or Terabytes of data (music) purchased from ITUNES by college students!

    Just another reaon to feel that college students these day are "lacking that quality education we enjoyed back in the day."

  • Something seems fishy... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tool462 (677306) on Thursday June 08 2006, @04:38PM (#15497958)
    I question the validity of this survey. Wouldn't beer-drinking college students necessarily be underrepresented in this type of poll? It's totally not a statistically representative sample of college students if they asked these questions during daylight hours, and even worse, if they asked them before noon.

  • Probably... (Score:3, Funny)

    by catdevnull (531283) on Thursday June 08 2006, @10:06PM (#15499799)
    They were probably drunk when they took the poll...
    • he probably just sumbits a lot, and there doesn't seem to be an upper limit on it. You are free to send in a thousand stories in one day if you want... I bet at least 5 would get posted. Also you can hang out on a popular tech site, keep pressing F5 untill a new story comes up and be the first to submit it... that'd work
    • And coincidentally, I moved on to my next "I'm bored" target, fark.com, which has this story at the top of its list. I wonder if prostoalex perhaps submits to both or submitted it here just because he saw it on Fark? Shrug.
    • I suspect he just knows how to write up a story wel^h^h^h in a manner suited for the slashdot audience.

      Who cares really - he doesn't seem to be pimping anything like Roland or beatlesbeatles were, so *shrug*

    • Hey, nerds drink too! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by donscarletti (569232) on Thursday June 08 2006, @08:25PM (#15499339)
      Hey, don't bash nerdy university students. I'm an undergraduate currently studying for a research masters level course on neural networks with a beer in my hand (11:25 am) and no iPod or whatever the hell a facebook is in sight. Mind you, I do live in Australia, which might explain my priorities a little.

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