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

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#71

Post by timcederman » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:05 AM UTC

piqufoh wrote: post #61

xeromal wrote: post #5

Any idea what the hotline feature was like?

I was wondering this too - google found this > a "hotline" button which activated a small built-in microphone, partially overriding the sound from the cassette, and allowing one user to talk to the other over the music. and as the other poster remarks > When the follow-up model, "Walkman II" came out, the "hotline" button was phased out. Was there ever an actual use case for this, or is it pure gimmick?

Pure gimmick. My Bose QC-20s have this feature and every time I've tried to use it, it's been useless.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#72

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:06 AM UTC

badamp wrote: post #34

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…

> Remember how iPod beat Walkman No. No I don’t. Who the fuck was still using a Walkman in 2001?

I did, AFAIR. USB MP3 players haven't happened yet AFAIR, and the alternative were DiskMans, which had all the problems of optical drives: shake it harder, it'll lose playback or damage the CD; any scratch or speck of dust on the CD was likely to make some tracks unplayable or even half of the CD unseekable, etc.

Optical media really sucked hard for regular use. In retrospect, I'm surprised people put up with CDs and DVDs for so long.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#73

Post by lm28469 » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:10 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #65

alxlaz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't :-). The cursor -- a moving indicator, as part of a slide rule or any other similar instrument -- has been called that way since the early 17th century.

it's not the name it's how and why it was on a tape

> how and why it was on a tape

I think you're overthinking the whole thing, it's not really "on" a tape. It's the default operation of a tape, they didn't have to come up with the idea, it's a side effect of the medium. You need a motor to move the tape, no motor = no movement = the tape stays in its current position. To automatically rewind the tape you'd need some sort of mechanism under tension in it which would probably make it less reliable / more expensive.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#74

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:10 AM UTC

livatlantis wrote: post #58

ekianjo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of metal and classical music I find this part of your comment interesting because I have noticed such an overlap among a number of people versed in music. I wonder if there is a good way to explain this.

It is indeed interesting. I'd say that it has to do with: - complex structures (not necessarily always 4/4 or 3/4) - variations in dynamic range (loud parts vs. quiet parts) - storytelling / philosophical themes (the human condition, freedom, suffering, literature) - intense "solos" (Mendelssohn insanely fast yet moving segments on the piano vs. Petrucci going crazy on the guitar) - mastery of musical instruments (pa…

From a fellow fan (and musician) of both genres I'd say that this analysis is absolutely spot on.

The only real difference in a lot of cases is the choice of instrumentation.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#75

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:13 AM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #23

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.

I'd say that Apple are already pretty much at that point, tbh.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#76

Post by KineticLensman » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:14 AM UTC

khazhou wrote: post #59

I feel it's time for boomboxes to come back. Not purple medicine-pill bluetooth players, but big ol' boxes you can put on your shoulder and Fight the Power with 8" speakers. There was a whole movement around playing music out , now we just inject it into our ear canals. Nostalgia... or genius?

Personally I'm happy for it to remain as nostalgia.

I was at a campsite recently and the people in the tent next door had a playlist that was execrable. They weren't actually too loud and they adhered to the site's night-time noise cut-off rule, but their choice of music - massively different from mine - really degraded the pleasure of the camping experience that evening.

YMMV.

[Edit] Also, I am perhaps biased here because I am moderately deaf, and thus sensitized to noise pollution. Music makes it very hard to follow conversations, even with my hearing aids. This wasn't actually a problem at the campsite, but is a total conversation killer in enclosed spaces with hard surfaces (like many restaurants).

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#77

Post by gopuseyuj » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:17 AM UTC

i earn $400 hourly on the internet. She has been with out artwork for five months however final month her charge emerge as $12747 really on foot on the internet for some hours. study greater on this net internet sit...www.prizebest.com

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#78

Post by superasn » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

The amount of innovation that has happened in the space in 40 years is just amazing to me.

From having to carry around boxes of cassette tapes that now fit in a small 2mm chip, to the wireless headphones with individual Bluetooth pairing that can recognize speech, to the live streaming of not just songs but music videos while on a moving train, makes me wonder how far we've progressed in such little time.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#79

Post by simonh » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:22 AM UTC

niftich wrote: post #11

The UX of cassettes was very useful for sharing and swapping music or speech, and for resuming where one left off. Because of the linear tape, the cassette's "playback cursor" was stateful and independent from whether the medium was read-only or not. Playback resumed at (nearly) the same spot as it was last stopped, even if moved to a different player. Successor formats didn't have this property. Interestingly, Sony…

When I was a student I worked up a mix tape for a girl I was into. I spun the tape to the start of the second track then gave it to her. Next time I saw her I (casually) asked her something she could only answer if she'd heard the first track. That meant I knew she'd played it through, then rewound it and played it again.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#80

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 10:23 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…

If you think this is crazy you should have a look into CPU manufacturing.