After a fight blamed on an iPod left a 15-year-old boy dead Saturday evening in East Flatbush, some New Yorkers who wore the digital music players nonchalantly during their daily travels said they were having second thoughts.

“I’m very afraid to wear mine,” a Crown Heights resident, Marcia Blyden, 29, said – although she nevertheless let her telltale white earphones show as she walked home from the gym in Lower Manhattan yesterday afternoon.

Ms. Blyden, an administrator at Bank of New York, said that in the wake of Saturday’s killing she would hook up black earphones to the pocket-sized device so that potential criminals could not peg her as an iPod owner. In doing so, Ms. Blyden will be adhering to the advice of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which issued an advisory in April urging iPod owners to switch from the white earphones supplied by Apple to generic, less conspicuous headsets.

The Police Department has issued no similar advisory, but in response to an inquiry yesterday, Detective Kevin Czartoryski told The New York Sun: “People should use common sense.”

The MTA’s warning came on the heels of a surge in subway larcenies early this year. In the first three months of this year, 50 straphangers reported that their digital music players were stolen, compared to no such thefts last year.

In the aftermath of the killing Saturday that was said to have followed a scrap over an iPod, two Brooklyn teenagers were arrested Sunday, charged with fatally stabbing Christopher Rose, whose friend owned the device, at the corner of East 40th Street and Avenue D.

On the sidewalks of New York yesterday, white earphones were by no means scarce.

A Williamsburg resident, Adriana Arcia, 29, a student at Lienhard School of Nursing, said Saturday’s slaying would not cow her into hiding her iPod.

“I’m kind of a big girl. I’m not an easy target,” Ms. Arcia, who is 5-foot-8, said.

“I’m not a little wisp of a thing,” she told The New York Sun.

A Fort Greene resident, Esther Kaplan, 40, a public-relations specialist at Local 1180 of the Communications Workers of America, said she was jarred by the East Flatbush killing but doesn’t plan to alter her iPod wearing ways.

“I feel bad enjoying something that kids would feel so desperate to own that they would commit an act of violence,” Ms. Kaplan said.

“My attitude is, if someone tried to take this from me, I’d give it to them,” she said.

A college student from Staten Island, Ryan Nelson, 23, who was conforming to the MTA’s advice by listening to his iPod on a generic headset, said safety concerns had not prompted his switch from white earphones.

“Mine came broken, so I never had the option,” Mr. Nelson said.

Pedestrians who eschewed the ubiquitous Apple products for lower-end listening devices said price – not safety – prompted the choice.

“If I wanted to waste money on a $300 player, I would,” a Walkman-wearing East New York resident, Jamal Quyyum, said.

“But unfortunately, I can’t be extravagant that way,” Mr. Quyyum, 59, a graphic-arts consultant for Merrill Lynch, said.

Apple did not return calls seeking comment yesterday. The company sells the popular devices for between $99 and $399.

As of March 31, more than 10.5 million iPods had been purchased since the product’s debut in 2001.