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The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

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Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#161

Post by jacobush »

badamp wrote: post #149
jacobush wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mp3 players of 2001 were so fucked up that keeping your Walkman in use wasn’t uncommon. Not among techies maybe but regular people, many of whom didn’t even have a computer yet. How would they even fill their mp3 players? (And even the techies could sigh - rip CDs? Download mp3 from ftp sites?) On many occasions it was still easier, even in 2001, to dub a CD to a cassette than juggle the computer gear.

The Walkman was sold until recently (if it isn’t still) and of course living in a big city you see a handful of people using a Walkman. It never died completely. There is of course the hipster resurgence of cassettes of the 2010s. Of all this I’m aware. But techie or hipster or not I was around in 2001 and the Walkman was well past mass adoption by that point in the western world. Shitty MP3 players that people loade…

I may be tainted by the fact that I doggedly stuck to Linux in the time period 1995-2014. :-)

And I agree, walkman was not a major contender in 2001, I just mean it wasn't entirely gone from "normal user" perspective. But I stand by that iPod was the first solution which had as easy UX as a Walkman if you wanted your own playlist. As shitty as iTunes was and is, it was still the first really working music software anyone could use.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#162

Post by KozmoNau7 »

criddell wrote: post #158
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vinyl resurrection is mostly due to hipster cred, and a whole mythology that has sprung up around the (imagined) sound quality benefits. The format also has a lot of drawbacks. The records are large and fragile, turntables are relatively large and the whole setup is not very portable. Records are also very much read-only. The compact cassette is small and rugged, tape players can be small enough that they are bar…

> The vinyl resurrection is mostly due to hipster cred, and a whole mythology that has sprung up around the (imagined) sound quality benefits. I think that was the start of it, but at this point it's spread well beyond hipsters. One of my kids bought a turntable and they do the same thing I did when I listened to records 30 years ago - lie on the floor and examine the sleeve and liner. Aside from the large format art…

Bandcamp has a huge selection. Maybe not the biggest mainstream artists, but definitely something to satisfy every taste.

There are others who specialize in specific genres, especially within electronic music. And some labels have started offering CD quality downloads, Nuclear Blast is the one I'm most familiar with.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#163

Post by totaldude87 »

AstralStorm wrote: post #143
totaldude87 wrote: post #135

The problem with pioneers is that , they rarely move to next level, may be due to the thinking that "whatever" they have today just rocks and will "probably" rock tomorrow. Few Examples : Nokia missing the Android boat - thinking Symbian was great Windows missing the Mobile operating system boat - thinking Windows Phone OS was great Sony missing the iPod boat - thinking , hey we got Walkman , what else you need. And…

Apple with the end of the Mac and iPhone is next? ;) (What's ahead is not quite predictable. It might be VR, BCI or something entirely different from either.)

If they keep ignoring that usability trumps over thinness , then yeah, they could be next.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#164

Post by criddell »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #162
criddell wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vinyl resurrection is mostly due to hipster cred, and a whole mythology that has sprung up around the (imagined) sound quality benefits. I think that was the start of it, but at this point it's spread well beyond hipsters. One of my kids bought a turntable and they do the same thing I did when I listened to records 30 years ago - lie on the floor and examine the sleeve and liner. Aside from the large format art…

Bandcamp has a huge selection. Maybe not the biggest mainstream artists, but definitely something to satisfy every taste. There are others who specialize in specific genres, especially within electronic music. And some labels have started offering CD quality downloads, Nuclear Blast is the one I'm most familiar with.

> Bandcamp has a huge selection.

Sure, they win by quantity. But it doesn't matter if they have millions of artists if what I want is a particular Radiohead album.

For now, CD is still the best way to buy mainstream music in a high quality format. It also happens to be pretty inexpensive as well. On top of all that, I'm an old guy that happens to enjoy looking over my collection, picking a CD, and sitting down to listen to it for an hour, giving it the same attention I would if I were watching a movie or reading a book.

I also subscribe to a streaming service and that's how I find a lot of the stuff I want to buy.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#165

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

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…

You'll probably be happy to learn about the file format M4B! It saves your listening position, so you can move it between systems and use different programs and it should remember your position. It's the preferred file format for audiobooks.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#166

Post by atoav »

And I still have one that works. Big fat latching switches that you can activate blindly in the pocket of your jacket, a output that can actually drive headphones properly, ...

Sometimes I have the feeling we didn’t really move forwards in terms of interface design.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#167

Post by MajorBee »

jacobush wrote: post #105
Gunvig wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>With music I can cross the entire city on foot and more. I'll play Devil's Advocate here and say that the Walkman marked the beginning of the end for people having spatial awareness and social skills in public places. You've only got to look at all the people meandering through our city streets today; ears plugged with headphones, faces glued to screens –often walking along with other people but yet completely deta…

Marillion presciently commented on that with these lyrics: “Sheathed within the Walkman wearing the halo of distortion Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation”

> Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation”

Now that is a lyric, goddamn.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#168

Post by jacobush »

MajorBee wrote: post #167
jacobush wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marillion presciently commented on that with these lyrics: “Sheathed within the Walkman wearing the halo of distortion Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation”

> Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation” Now that is a lyric, goddamn.

And there's more where that came from...

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#169

Post by Zelphyr »

astrodust wrote: post #139
Zelphyr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And like the white iPod ear buds that came twenty years later, those orange foam headphones were a status symbol. Simply walking around with them hanging around your neck made you cool e.g.; Marty McFly at the beginning of Back To The Future I find it amusing that we went from relatively small Walkman headphones, to tiny little Apple earbuds, to giant Beats headphones as the status symbol.

Remember the old ridiculously huge cans from the 1970s with a quarter-inch jack? They're back!

That was my exact thought the first time I saw Beats headphones.

Re: The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

#170

Post by thesmok »

FabHK wrote: post #119

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 t…

My Walkman senses when the supply spool stops rotating, and then reverses.
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