Steven Levy is not stranger in chronicle all things Apple. Over the years, he wrote a book about the launch of the original Macintosh (Insanely Great) and countless stories Apple and Apple products in general interest magazines like Newsweek. The new (relative) book by him gave a pretty good insight into the development of the past and current generations of iPod – similar to the what he did with the book Insanely Great.

In The Perfect Thing, you’ll find out what’s the first song ever played on the iPod . You’ll also find out more about the click wheel, the design & engineering process of the iPod. If you are in any form of product development you’ll gain interesting insight on how things get done and can be insansely great at the same time.

There are other parts of the the book I don’t enjoy as much (mainly the cultural part – it’s just ok), but the NYC subway iPod Music Smack Down is certainly pretty funny. The short side track story about the history of the Sony Walkman is also pretty nice.

With all the talks about DRM Music right now, this is also a reference book on the subject matter – and how that relates to Jobs and the iPod.