iListen

My not-that-old, fairly basic mobile phone decided to keel over at the end of last week. So this week, I took the plunge into modern technology and bought an iPhone.

It's met the secondary... well, in some ways it was the primary goal of also making my mp3 player redundant.  Which seemed a fraction cruel given that it was fairly young and had given good service.  But there's no doubting that the iPhone's music capabilities are equal or better in all respects.  Easier navigation, and sound quality through my Sennheiser headphones is just as good.

The only real disappointment is that the system just isn't set up for classical music.  My investigations have shown that current editions of iTunes on a computer can understand that classical afficionados are likely to want to sort music by composer, not artist.  It's also quite capable of allowing you to group movements of a work together.  There's a Classical tab that handles all of this reasonably well.

But alas, on the portable device all that functionality seems to disappear.

My mp3 player was just as clumsy with classical.  So it's not as if I've gone backwards.  Nevertheless, it does seem as if my portable CD player, which I think has been with me since the year 2000, will continue to be pressed into service.  Because it still understands better than any more modern technology how to let me select the tracks that constitute a sonata.