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What happens when a 13-year old boy - a boy who's probably never come into physical contact with a cassette tape before in his life - trades in his shiny iPod Touch for a clanky Walkman from yesteryear? Well, according to this interesting piece on BBC UK, it wasn't exactly a week filled with fun and games.
When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I
got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a
little embarrassed.
As I boarded the school bus, where I live
in Aberdeenshire, I was greeted with laughter. One boy said: "No-one
uses them any more." Another said: "Groovy." Yet another one quipped:
"That would be hard to lose."
OK. So maybe the classic Sony Walkman doesn't score too highly on aesthetics, but surely in terms of functionality...
It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the
tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the
metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but
later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two
different types of cassette.
Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn't is
"shuffle", where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a
function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to
create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and
releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.
Hmm... Well considering that it took him a whole three days to realize that there were two sides to the tape, the Walkman does notably suffer from some ease of use issues. Thankfully though, the young man's father shed light on how delicate cassette tapes really are, and how the constant rewinding could potentially transform his museum worthy Walkman into an ancient paperweight.
You can catch the full story on the BBC UK website here: http://tinyurl.com/mebjkx and check out the young man's thoughts for yourself.
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