The picture, obviously, is of a Shuffle, with powerBeats. Not so obvious is the filter: edited in LoMob, with the 1980s filter.

So I picked up a friend of mine — sort of a casual acquaintance actually — in my car and took a moment to plug in my iPod to charge. “Oooooohh, you just have to have your TOYS, don’t you”, she said, voice dripping with disdain and sarcasm, as though an iPod is a silly bit of frippery. I let it go. I could have told her that in 1980, I had at least 800 record albums, and my stereo took up a whole shelf, as well as two corners of the room for the speakers. Aside from sheer bulk, the problems with that setup are numerous: your vinyl records wore down and got scratched every time you played them; you had to put them away in their sleeves; you had to get up and lift the needle to skip a song, and maybe make another scratch; those huge speakers were so powerful you would get evicted if you ever dared to crank up the volume, so always heard a small range of the actual music. Putting on headphones was a slight improvement for fidelity, but then you were tethered to the stereo, perhaps lying on the floor. Now, you can fit the entire kit and caboodle in your pocket. When I go out for a walk, I have not only my stereo system, but my entire music collection. And the sound is AWESOME. And the albums never wear out, no matter how many times I play them.

Is a stereo a toy? Is a record collection a toy? Is it perhaps virtuous to have the whole thing take up an entire room, and thus rarely listened to? Or is the player-and-earbuds equipage so completely normal that the old-fashioned vinyl-and-speakers thing is the toy?