Only 15 years have elapsed since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPod with the words: “This is the reason Apple is on the Earth”.
Boy, have things changed. Type “iPod” into Google and it now corrects to iPad – and if you saw one of the white, four-button machines first unveiled, you’d probably call Antiques Roadshow.
The picture is even bleaker for Apple’s rivals. The MP3 player counters in electronics superstores slumber behind cobwebs.
So it was a surprise to find myself not only using an MP3 player this week, but also liking it. Astell & Kern’s Junior aims to be a Rolls-Royce among digital music machines, with an anodised aluminium finish, a metal click wheel, and a suitably preposterous price tag: £400 (R7 700).
The gimmick is that the A&K Jr, like all their players, sounds better than an iPhone – or indeed any other phone.
Britain has spent an eye-wateringly vast amount on “big” headphones in recent years (as the home hi-fi market swirled down the plughole). Yet the mobiles don’t have the power or precision to drive big cans properly.
Astell & Kern hopes to change that. The digital-to-analogue converter in mobiles or MP3 players is what you tend to hear – it’s the key component in turning digital tracks into music – and while the one in the iPhone is serviceable, it’s not great. The one in the A&K Jr, however, is great.
What it won’t do, of course, is Spotify, or Apple Music. But for late nights, alone, this delivers a sonic polish. – Daily Mail