Whither The Walkman?

A 13-year-old boy gives up his iPod for a week to review the Sony Walkman for the Beeb, over here. Favorite quote: "It took me three days to figure out there was another side to the tape." Clearly his parents are fonder of techno-flash than either my wife or I am, because my 10-year-old could have helped him out with that.

It only now occurs to me that the iPod is the first portable music player I've ever owned (discounting the Pioneer boom-box that sat in my various bedrooms from 1981-1984; car stereos too, for that matter). I'm not sure why I never purchased a Walkman, or one of its competitors. I was certainly attracted to them at the time. Sound quality was an issue, I think, as well as longevity. Those little tape players had a reputation for dying within a month or two of the warranty's expiry.

It's amusing to think that back when my group of guys first met we were all in the habit of carrying a briefcase of cassettes just about everywhere we went. The last couple of years it's been a matter of who gets to plug his 'pod into the speakers next. Vive la change, I say.

So tell me: what happened to your Walkman?

Paying For Technology

After the passenger window got replaced, after all those freakishly square shards of glass had been vacuumed up, after all the stuff -- maps, Archie Digests, Harry Potter CDs, serviettes, Chickadee magazines -- was back in its proper spot, we were left with the impression that nothing had been stolen. Even my sunglasses were still there, forcing me to finally admit they were scuffed and stylistically passé beyond redemption. If we could just overlook the inconvenience and expense of replacing the broken window, we could almost laugh about it.

Weeks later we figured out what was missing: the iPod, and that useless widget that fits into the cigarette-lighter.

My wife was saddened -- it had been my gift to her, and she made extensive use of its comforts during business trips away from the family. There was no question it would have to be replaced, but I'd become jaded enough toward the brand that I wasn't beyond considering the competition. I couldn't help noticing an alternative that sold for $200 less than my wife's former iPod, and offered as many features as the iPod that sold for $100 more. A difference of $300 is not insignificant, but I had to admit it didn't quite have the iPod's sex appeal -- also not insignificant. I ran it by my wife, who shrugged and said, "As long as it has the music, I'm fine with it."

It does, plus a few things the iPod did not have, including videos of our daughters. And it's a great deal friendlier toward Linux users than Apple is. Hoo, boy -- I very quickly learned how easy it is to bork-up an iPod. Apple's customer service techs ("Geniuses," they call 'em) are, on the face of it, a forgiving bunch. The guy who served me hooked up the device to his computer, cocked an eyebrow and said, "Curious: the software seems to have been tampered with. I'll just restore that for you..." He did, and threw in a few bonus tracks to boot. Bon Jovi, Toto, one or two songs from Flashdance -- even Milli Vanilli. He certainly knew how to hurt a guy. Just one more reason to go non-Apple for round II.

So far, I'm happier for the change; we'll see what my wife makes of it when she attends a conference in Chicago in a couple of weeks. She's too busy (and far too practical) to care, but rumor is there's a new iPod model coming down the pike. Will it wow like the phone did? Frankly I'm too busy and practical to care.

Other music-technology links: can Rick Rubin save big music? My take: he's got an uncanny ear for what people want to hear, but it remains to be seen if he's got a similarly revolutionary approach to its tech-delivery.

iPhone? ho-hum. Ubuntu phone? Hm. I'd like a closer look, please.

Review of the Day

Or, "Again with the iPod!" Here is a quick look at Steven Levy's The Perfect Thing: How The iPod Shuffles Commerce, Cultures, And Coolness. My favourite quote from reviewer Alan Jacobs:

This tendency — mon iPod, c'est moi — is irrational, perhaps, but irresistible: having just noted the last ten songs played randomly by my own iPod, I am deeply disappointed to see one of U2's most famous songs there, and even a little annoyed that the Beck song it pulled up is one of his more accessible. I would feel much cooler if it had pulled out something by the Dirty Three, or Charlie Patton, or Yo La Tengo. But as things stand I feel ordinary. This little electronic gadget, like a pocket-sized Freudian analyst, has somehow revealed — worse, allowed me to reveal — my inauthenticity, as though its famously fingerprint-attracting polished metal back had lifted itself before my appalled face and cried, Behold!

Well, when you start talking french to your iPod (just don't call it "ee-POD"), you can be sure your reflection will come back looking a little grubby. Still, curiosity got the better of me. I might be telling tales out of school by revealing this list of ten randomly shuffled songs from my wife's iPod, but bear in mind I'm the guy who put them there:

Steely Dan, "Black Friday"
Sting, "The Lazarus Heart"
Carolyn Arends, "Travelers"
Lisa Stansfield, "Soul Deep"
Steely Dan, "Everyone's Gone To The Movies"
Los Lobos, "Kiko & The Lavender Moon"
Shelby Lynne, "Why Can't You Be"
Bonnie Raitt, "Nobody's Girl"
Talking Heads, "Cross-eyed & Painless"
Erasure, "Breath of Life"
Emmylou Harris, "O Little Town of Bethlehem"
Bruce Cockburn, "Call It Democracy"
Eurythmics, "Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves"
Lisa Stansfield, "Tenderly"
Steve Bell, "The Lord's Prayer"

Hey, that's not 10 -- whoops! That "shuffle" feature is more entrancing than the paper's daily horoscope. Apparently Levy is convinced the iPod is wired to give Steely Dan top billing, which the casual reader might think is borne out by this random list of mine ... or rather, "my wife's". But the Dan happens to be one of my wife's favourite groups (and, quite coincidentally, my all-time personal fave), so I went ahead and ripped and uploaded their whole darn ouevre. That's a lot of songs, so the real surprise is seeing two from Lisa Stansfield in such a short span -- there's only one album by her in this little gizmo.

Maybe when I've taken a break from numbering pages, I'll see if I can't somehow generate a random selection of my music on the PC (in the interests of fair representation).

Over at Slate: iPod, Schmypod "Levy, a senior editor at Newsweek, is a prime example of the boomers who think the iPod is revolutionary. But really, they're grateful, because it's made them feel cool again" - Michael Agger

Five Years of The iPod, And When Does The Honeymoon End?

Well ... it's hard to say. So far as this lonely consumer is concerned, though, it ended a few days ago. And not a moment too soon.

DV's words of caution were timely. Listening to 800 of your favourite songs in MP3 format is a treat -- so long as you're using those tiny little eardrum blasters that come with the iPod. If you graduate to a pair of Sennheisers, things are still okay. But try bumping this up to speaker-quality, and you will quickly find yourself disappointed.

I haven't yet tried playing the iPod through our home stereo, and I don't think I'll bother (I'm certainly not dropping another $100 on Apple's docking bay). I have, however, hooked the iPod up to a pair of computer speakers. The quality is not-bad, but it is definitely a distant, tinny echo of what the artists were hoping you'd hear. I am not by nature a stereophile, but listening to MP3s is the aural equivalent of grabbing orange rind in hopes of squeezing out a glass of orange juice. The soundfile is so tightly compressed that any manual attempt you make to broaden it (i.e., fiddling with the "bass" and "treble" knobs, or messing with your multi-channel equalizer) will only highlight the extremes and eliminate the middle. No thanks.

If you want the convenience of 1000-plus songs shuffled at random, or carved into playlists, you're better off hooking your PC up to your home stereo and playing OGG files ripped from your CD collection. As for car stereos, I'm guessing we're still a few years away from a satisfactory digital revolution.

Still, when it comes to digital music, iPod is indisputably its present, and quite likely its future as well. Here is PC World's Five Lessons For the iPod's Fifth Anniversary. The video link at the bottom -- Apple Introduces the iPod -- is nine minutes long, and quite instructive. Steve Jobs pretty much had the iPod's across-the-board appeal nailed down (even though his praise for the speed of Apple's file-transfer, and the iPod's "impressive" battery-life is a shade wide of the mark).

"Five years"? That's just the beginning!

Jumping To iPod

There were two sights to greet me when I stepped out of the car at the 18th Annual Gathering of The Nick Adams Society. The first -- a deliriously happy subset of mates on the verge of killing a bottle of Caol Ila (the best whisky this year, but not quite as fine as last year's Bowmore Darkest) -- was pretty much a given. The second was not: the supply of this year's music did not issue forth from a Montreal Boom-Box, but from a jauntily propped iPod and a pair of high-end computer speakers.

I was amused, and made a few snide comments ("Aren't we too old to fall for the hype? Hey, that's not the U2 model, is it? It is?! Oh, we are definitely too old to listen to that shite!"). But over the course of the next day and a half, I became duly impressed -- won over, even.

This is my wife's birthday present:



She gets it tomorrow, the day before she boards a plane for San Francisco. In past business trips, she's been able to get a whack of work done on her lap-top while flying. What with the latest scares, the only thing she can now expect from her long flight is bad food, dodgy customer service, and unpredictable company (the terrorists have succeeded, damn their eyes!!). I have loaded this little gizmo to the walls with four gigs of her favourite music, while practising the greatest of restraint and not embedding one single tune that would qualify as one of my personal favourites (anything from these guys, for example). Here's hoping it makes her flight and her time away a shade more enjoyable.

Now, as I've noted before, I have become a Linux man. So when I first went shopping for an MP3 player, I wondered if there mightn't be something on the market that plays OGG. files (if you haven't played around with sound files, OGGs generally have a greater "depth" to them than AAC. or WAV. files, do -- nevermind MP3s). There is, in fact, quite a variety of players that support OGG files, so I stood in the MP3 aisle of a sound superstore and pondered all my options.

And pondered. And pondered.

And gradually took note of just how many freaking options there are for iPods. Dock 'em here, or dock 'em in this, or hook 'em up to this baby. You say you'd like to listen to your iPod while driving? Well you can!

Throw in the fact that I, your humble scribe, qualify by default as "the geek" in our marriage and it suddenly became clear that the decision was made for me.

In theory I am all for challenging iPod's command of this very significant corner of the market. I have purchased nothing from iTunes, and do not foresee the day when that will change. But at this moment, I'm guessing the suits at Apple get on their knees every morning and thank the Maker for Tony Fadell, much the way John Travolta and Sam Jackson do for Quentin Tarantino. Thanks to Fadell, iPod does not simply "have control" of this market: it owns it.

iPod still won't play OGGs, but that's become a moot point. At a certain age (*ahem*), you're no longer able to differentiate soundfile dynamics in earphones the size of jelly-beans. When I need the sound quality, I play the CD. When I need background music (which, for a kitchen guy like me, and a commuting woman like my wife, is 99% of the time), a half-decent docking station is just the thing.

Filling the iPod has been fun -- it scratches the geek itch to lurk among Linux forums, take notes and ascend the learning curve. Thanks to Linux, I'm able to rip a number of my wife's favourite discs, despite Sony's (to name just one corporation) abominable copy-protection programs. Understand: I'm not advocating music stealing. I walk the line in that regard, because I've got enough musician friends to keep me honest.

I've already paid to listen to the music; I am not now, nor have I ever been, a "file sharer"; I just want to play the music on my chosen device. But these copy protection programs are heinous things -- they are, in fact, much more agressive than mere "protection". The old department store adage, "When someone steals, we all pay the price" takes a nasty turn with these computer-hashing execute-files. They're the equivalent of walking in to a store, and being forced to leave your pants behind when you exit. No thanks.

So now my wife has 900 songs of her music tucked into a device the size of a cheap cigarette lighter. I'm looking at the growing pile of homemade CDs (again: perfectly legal transfers of purchased MP3s to CD) on our stereo -- discs fated for a landfill, when they finally glitch. And I'm thinking, How many of those failed CDs would it take to justify the expense of....