Forward Thinking: Kicking it the old-school way

I had a dream. I had an iPad dream. There I was, sitting on a bus with my flash shiny tablet, feeling awesome like I've seen other iPad owners feeling.

But then some big, satellite dish-sized transponders and aerials started growing out of it. Oh, how it morphed into an ugly and cumbersome looking thing.

I would like to think my subconscious had hit the nail on the head, that yes, that's exactly what the iPad is - a clunky, first generation gadget that's just an over-sized iPhone.

Let's face it, this tablet is more like a chunky iron pill than an easily poppable Nurofen.

But really, if I was honest, I think my dream was just trying to make me feel better about the fact that I will not be getting an iAnything this year - and nor will I be a purveyor of technological wizardry of any sort.

This year I am once again resigned to being a new technology and fancy gadget failure.

There are many reasons for this including the price, my priorities (hey, vinyl records don't come cheap these days) and there are surely more sleek and stylish tablets to come. So I'm just waiting until next year. So there.

I know why I had the bus-iPad dream. I caught a real live bus - because I'm old-school and that's how I roll - back to Auckland during my summer holidays because my wife and little girl took off with the car to Hawkes Bay while I had to get back to work.

I was sitting on the bus listening to my old 30GB iPod when a young lad sat next to me who was obsessively fiddling with his iPhone.

I have no idea what the fancy pants was doing with it. Maybe he was checking the temperature inside the bus, then measuring the gradient of the hill we were driving up to calculate the time we might arrive in Auckland, before settling down to watch the latest episode of Family Guy.

All my little rectangular box does is play songs and hold a few photos, I thought mournfully to myself. The expensive glossy air-freighted magazine I was reading looked more hi-tech than my battered, scratched old MP3 player.

However, I was helped through my inadequacies by this enlightening magazine. It boldly declared 2011 the year when gadgets go retro and cutting-edge technology looks to old-school pioneers to become even cooler.

You're probably familiar with those iPod docks that look like transistor radios and ghetto blasters; then there's the Commodore PC64, complete with a replica beige - yes, beige - keyboard like the old Commodore 64; and most exciting and geeky of all is the predicted mass move to FLAC, an audio format similar to MP3 but without any loss in quality.

Okay, so the files will be much bigger than the crappy compressed MP3s of today, meaning I could only fit a small fraction of the 6500 songs currently jammed on my machine. But all hail this advancement, which is a nod to the past with its return to the pure, warm and wholesome audio of old.

I have to say, despite my anxieties (which, to be honest, could have a little bit to do with envy) I'm not ashamed of being technologically challenged. I'm proud.

For example, isn't it sad when you need an app to help you plan your Big Day Out schedule? I'm going with the scrunched-up timetable on a piece of paper.

Well, I have no choice really, because my phone doesn't do apps. Like I say, I'm old-school, and that's how I roll.

-TimeOut