Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

stereogum.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 180 posts

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#111

Post by mclehman »

timcederman wrote: post #71
piqufoh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Sony WH-1000XM series (possibly the next segment down as well?) still has this feature and I've found it good enough to be useful.

On planes it's simpler than pausing/removing the headphones to order a drink and the same in the office when you just need a quick yes/no from someone next to you.

There's also a passive mode I use when I'm actually outside with the headphones on. You don't hear engine noise or planes overhead but you can still hear tire noise of nearby cars so you don't get run over. If it's quiet you even hear footsteps.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#112

Post by FabHK »

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…

> Playback resumed at (nearly) the same spot as it was last stopped, even if moved to a different player.

You did have to remember which side you were listening to, though. So, the tape carried all the necessary information to maintain state, minus 1 bit. :-)

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#113

Post by cuu508 »

johnnycab wrote: post #87
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.

This reminds of a comment, where someone never having used a typewriter before, commented that people in the olden days were prescient enough to put #(hashtag) on the keyboard, before Twitter was invented.

Or someone finding a floppy disk and saying – oh, that's cute, a 3D-printed Save icon!

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#114

Post by joncrane »

simonh wrote: post #79
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.

Well? Did she play it all the way through?

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#115

Post by RmDen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #72
badamp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I had a Rio 300 followed by a Rio 500 before the iPod was announced... those were the times.. converting to 64bit wma format so you could fit maybe 40 songs on the 300

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#116

Post by RmDen »

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.

>>To spending $500 on a 128mb MP3 player. Compressing Mp3's into tiny WMA's.

Haha me and my RIO PMP 300.. I did exactly that.. converted mp3s into 64kb wma files

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#118

Post by bluedino »

Sony always seemed to be the premium or status brand when it came to consumer electronics, everything from portable music players to televisions and VCR's.

They always had competition from brands like Sharp, Pioneer, RCA, Magnavox, but I think the big hit came when the really cheap brands started to flood the market. Sony had the Discman come down to $99 for $349, but buyers were still going for the $39 units from Craig, Koss, Sanyo and such.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#119

Post by FabHK »

One super useful feature was "Auto Reverse", allowing you to listen to both sides of a tape without having to take the cassette out and flipping it. It came out 3 years later, eg in the Sony WM-7.

One thing I learned while looking into this now is that Music Cassettes (MC) have the magnetic recording tape, and then at both ends a "leader", which is much stronger than the thin magnetic tape, so it doesn't break when the end is reached. Furthermore, the leader is transparent, unlike the magnetic tape, and so auto reverse could be triggered by an optical sensor (this website claims that the WM 7 had an optical sensor - I thought Walkmen (Walkmans?) triggered auto reverse from the mechanical pull when the tape reached the end.)

http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-7

EDIT to add: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Tape_leaders

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#120

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN