Neil Young, Steve Jobs and A New iPod?

The boomer pair bonded over their mutual dislike of low-quality mp3s and, we're assuming, 'kids these days.'

Neil Young, everybody's dad's favourite folk rocker, says that he and Apple founder Steve Jobs were working on a follow-up to the iPod that could store and play the highest-quality audio. Young has long expressed his distaste for mp3s because the audio quality pales in comparison to what's possible on vinyl or super-audio compact disc. Apparently, he had an ally in Steve Jobs, despite the latter making a hefty chunk of his personal fortune by selling a device that led to a proliferation of low-quality mp3s throughout the last decade. Young told a conference that Jobs "was a pioneer of digital music, but when he went home he listened to vinyl." And until Jobs died, he and Young were working on a product that would bring out the best of both the analog and digital worlds. The main problem of doing so is file size - high-resolution sound files can be 10 times larger than a typical mp3. Either way, Young says that ever since Jobs passed away in October, plans have been shelved. Young has instead devoted his time to re-starting his band Crazy Horse, which is to release two new albums soon. We'll consider that a fair trade-off.