When those BBC guys aren’t testing your reflexes, they’re messing with your mind. The BBC convinced a 13 year old kid named Scott Campbell to trade his iPod for a Sony Walkman for one week. Scott was baffled by the size (“as big as a small book”), poor battery life (3 hours), a lack of shuffle mode (“I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly”) and understanding the user interface (“It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape”).
Yeah, I know Walkmans suck compared to the ever new and improving iPod, but nostalgic me knows there were some good aspects to Walkmans too. Making a mix tape wasn’t just dragging tracks into a playlist – you had to time them out perfectly, or risk running out of tape. It was more of an art form, and playing around a mix tape you created on your Walkman felt like an accomplishment, rather than an after-thought.
But then sometimes the tape would get loose and you’d have to spool it back into the cassette… so, yeah, Walkmans sucked. But at the time, that was as good as portable music ever was gonna get.
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