"My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day.
He had told me it was big, but I hadn't realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.
When I saw it for the first time, its colour also struck me. Nowadays gadgets come in a rainbow of colours but this was only one shade - a bland grey.
...
My friends couldn't imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.
In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic.
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.
I told my dad about my clever idea. His words of warning brought home the difference between the portable music players of today, which don't have moving parts, and the mechanical playback of old. In his words, "Walkmans eat tapes". So my clumsy clicking could have ended up ruining my favourite tape, leaving me music-less for the rest of the day. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8117619.stmLittle could he imagine the alternatives back then:
Why does man Kill? He kills for food.
And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.