The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago • Hacker News Board

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#21

Post by emptybits » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:04 AM UTC

Fond memories of Sony and the Walkman era. I worked part time for Sony from the mid to late 1980s while I was a student, paying tuition bills. It was a dream job for a consumer electronics nerd and budding AV enthusiast, getting to demo and play with everything. Sony was still king of CRTs with XBR line of Trinitrons consistently on top. (Back breakers to move across a room, BTW.) Their ES family of audio amps and reference CD players were generally well respected. Meh for speakers.

But back to Walkmans ... it was really eye-opening how multiple times per year they would release new variations in size and materials and features or just colours, and people would line up or pre-pay to get their hands on them. People who already had Walkmans, often. The brand loyalty was mostly deserved IMO, because Sony was really doing some original R&D.

Personal faves ... compact models in the drop & waterproof Sports line, especially when issued in non-yellow. The solar model was weird, and not super effective, but damn Sony was trying.[1] The metal, and great-sounding Boodo Khan with supplied headphones was also pretty slick.[2] But from a materials and engineering POV there were some gorgeous delicate little metal-body units and at least one was actually the same size as a plastic cassette case itself.[3] (It would expand slightly when you inserted your media.)

Long after I left Sony I tried to keep the brand faith with MiniDiscs for years. But the MD's time has also come and gone...

[1] http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-f107

[2] http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/dd-100

[3] http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-10

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#22

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:07 AM UTC

Now I feel old, remembering when they came into the scene.

Never got to own one though, just clones.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#23

Post by spenczar5 » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:27 AM UTC

emptybits wrote: post #21

Fond memories of Sony and the Walkman era. I worked part time for Sony from the mid to late 1980s while I was a student, paying tuition bills. It was a dream job for a consumer electronics nerd and budding AV enthusiast, getting to demo and play with everything. Sony was still king of CRTs with XBR line of Trinitrons consistently on top. (Back breakers to move across a room, BTW.) Their ES family of audio amps and re…

Thanks for sharing this stuff.

It’s hard to resist thinking of iPhones when you talk about people lining up to buy the latest model, even when they already have a Walkman. It makes me daydream about Apple looking like Sony (a bit bloated, a bit of a faded giant) in 30 years.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#24

Post by niftich » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:34 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #20

The Walkman is a classic case of how an entrenched competitor with deep pockets couldn't really stand in the way of an innovative product. I point this out because, whenever you come across an idea for a startup, you'd inadvertently find one or more businesses already built around the idea, sometimes with ginormous funding or income. Remember how iPod beat Walkman, Firefox gazumped IE, Zoom sped past WebX, stripe poc…

FWIW the iPod didn't really beat deep-pocket Sony's cassette Walkman or MiniDisc per se, it beat the uneven and dizzyingly wide field of onboard-storage digital audio players, from thumbdrive-looking sticks that only held a couple songs, to full-blown Creative and iRiver HDD players on which you could conceivably carry your entire collection, but whose device UX, song-copying computer-side UX, and resilience were bested by Apple. It also came at a time when portable CD players that could play a CD-R full of MP3s or WMAs were widely available, and were a popular incremental upgrade for those who were already used to burning their own CDs.

With suddenly dozens of ways to enjoy portable audio, Sony was hurt by the fall of the MiniDisc. Less so in the world of CD players, but in the the world of digital audio players, they were just another poorly-differentiated manufacturer. Songs were decoupled from their original hardcopy and became files one could manage on a computer, and the UX of moving these tracks onto portable playback devices was starting to matter.

Actors like Real, Microsoft, Apple, MusicMatch, and NullSoft were in this space, and their interests didn't necessarily align with the interests of audio player makers. Apple initially partnered with MusicMatch when the iPod launched to have a file management story on Windows, before they shipped iTunes.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#25

Post by forgotmypw3 » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:37 AM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #18

W-Stool wrote: post #9

Don't forget the MiniDisc format that Sony also released years later under the "Walkman" brand - for a while there it was an audio storage format and playback hardware that briefly seemed ahead of its time. Sony, if nothing else, were technical innovators during their best days. You knew the gear wasn't imagined and designed by a bunch of bean counters.

> You knew the gear wasn't imagined and designed by a bunch of bean counters. Hmmm.... Only later when they were marketing TV's? Hated Sony for selling essentially the same TV with the same guts but leaving out one chip (for example) so that "Picture in Picture" required you spend an extra $500 on the high end model. I always suspected it went something like this: • Engineers describe the feature set they can deliver…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#26

Post by megablast » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:44 AM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #17

samplatt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an entity that's waged a multi-decade billion-dollar bloody and bitter war against music piracy, Sony certainly have been instrumental in its proliferation.

That's because the device group is a different entity than the media group. Unfortunately the media group made enough money to start dictating things to the device group which didn't single handedly ruin it, but definitely opened the door to the Korean rivals that weren't bending over backwards to stop consumers from using their devices.

It did ruin the minidisc, when Sony decided you couldn't get digital data from the disc.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#27

Post by eicossa » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:50 AM UTC

keyle wrote: post #7

Walking with music has completely changed my life. Can't imagine the amount of ideas I've had and steps I've taken listening to music. With music I can cross the entire city on foot and more. footnote: do you remember when your batteries were running low and the cassette would start slowing down the music? ;)

A moment to process the fact that the song has suddenly started playing sloooowly too :)

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#28

Post by joering2 » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:50 AM UTC

samplatt wrote: post #8

dugditches wrote: post #6

Remember the cool kid having a Dual Deck stereo to make mixtapes. Having a rats nest of tape when one failed. Then that evolving into whoever had good internet and a CD Burner. Eventually almost 'renting' music by returning a CD-RW with a new request list. Just how much Discmans would skip with Burnt CD's versus Legitimate ones. To spending $500 on a 128mb MP3 player. Compressing Mp3's into tiny WMA's.

For an entity that's waged a multi-decade billion-dollar bloody and bitter war against music piracy, Sony certainly have been instrumental in its proliferation.

Absolutely. I believe it was VIACOM who sued Sony for inventing and mass-producing VCR which obviously allowed you to tape their movies and play them back later on, which was consider piracy ;) someone else can link to the court case as I’m on mobile. Had it been lost we would be able to record ourselves anything that is aired on TV probably a decade or more later.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#29

Post by JKCalhoun » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:58 AM UTC

forgotmypw3 wrote: post #25

JKCalhoun wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You knew the gear wasn't imagined and designed by a bunch of bean counters. Hmmm.... Only later when they were marketing TV's? Hated Sony for selling essentially the same TV with the same guts but leaving out one chip (for example) so that "Picture in Picture" required you spend an extra $500 on the high end model. I always suspected it went something like this: • Engineers describe the feature set they can deliver…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

Thanks, yeah, that's been our Brave New World. :(

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#30

Post by johnpowell » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 6:11 AM UTC

murat124 wrote: post #10

Also this is how we saved batteries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk8v9Ijp1So

In high school I worked for Kodak in photo lab doing the processing for all the overnight photos in Oregon and Washington. The nice thing is all disposable cameras had AA batteries in them and we filled up a few 50 gallon garbage cans of disposable cameras a night.

On my breaks I would just sit there ripping the batteries out of the cameras for Walkman batteries for my friends and I. I accidentally touched the capacitor for the flash once when taking out the batteries. Only made that mistake once.