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

Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

obsoletesony.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 257 posts

Re: Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

#51

Post by nubinetwork »

Rohansi wrote: post #48
nubinetwork wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPod was a product in an interesting time... if you ignore the screen, a modern mp3 player could be made as small as a SD card... as soon as you add the screen, you need a full operating system to manage files and run the screen. Nobody wants to put the effort into something that's going to be as basic as a mp3 player.

> as soon as you add the screen, you need a full operating system to manage files and run the screen More software? Sure. An operating system? No. There were (are?) plenty of cheap MP3 players that had screens but just drive it with some budget microcontroller.

And they're all e-waste nuggets sitting in dankpods' storage closet... :)

Re: Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

#52

Post by nl »

trencedamp wrote: post #13

This is a really interesting read. But it doesn't answer one question I have, which is why can't Sony or Apple or anyone else bring back decent MP3 players? None of this technology is lost, and there are plenty of small-time two bit no name players out there still making them, often in a much smaller, much slicker form factor than than the original digital Walkman or iPod. If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to…

> If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to buy something from a company I've never heard of with a terrible screen, use an old phone, or buy some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much.

Is this surprising?

They are a commodity (you can literally build a fairly decent for less than $10 in parts) so therefore are low profit. Brands you have heard of generally don't want to play in commodity markets.

The alternative is to move upmarket where prestige or specific features are important:

> some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much.

There you go.

> Why can't somebody take simple smartphone hardware and make a modern media player that is not a phone?

They can and do. Look on Amazon.

They call into the two buckets you outline above. Just buy one of the $50 ones from the companies you haven't heard of.

Re: Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

#53

Post by SpecialistK »

ezst wrote: post #45
trencedamp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It barely needs a screen. I adored my minidisc players and they were all basically calculator displays

Would you still adore it as much today, though? I know I don't adore my iPod classic as much now as I did in 2006, and that's inclusive of the nostalgia kick. It's just not very practical and usable in today's world.

I don't use it daily, but I enjoyed rediscovering and using my MiniDisc stuff that I was inspired to build a pretty popular website around it :)

Re: Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

#54

Post by zoeysmithe »

trencedamp wrote: post #13

This is a really interesting read. But it doesn't answer one question I have, which is why can't Sony or Apple or anyone else bring back decent MP3 players? None of this technology is lost, and there are plenty of small-time two bit no name players out there still making them, often in a much smaller, much slicker form factor than than the original digital Walkman or iPod. If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to…

These companies did everything they could to get people off the "I own files I paid once" model and onto the perpetual "I pay for streaming" model. Of course they dont want to go back to that. It goes against the profit incentive which dictates all business decisions. That's how capitalism works on its most fundamental level.

Re: Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

#55

Post by Dylan16807 »

nl wrote: post #52
trencedamp wrote: post #13

This is a really interesting read. But it doesn't answer one question I have, which is why can't Sony or Apple or anyone else bring back decent MP3 players? None of this technology is lost, and there are plenty of small-time two bit no name players out there still making them, often in a much smaller, much slicker form factor than than the original digital Walkman or iPod. If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to…

> If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to buy something from a company I've never heard of with a terrible screen, use an old phone, or buy some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much. Is this surprising? They are a commodity (you can literally build a fairly decent for less than $10 in parts) so therefore are low profit. Brands you have heard of generally don't want to play in c…

[dead]

Re: Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

#56

Post by gyulai »

trencedamp wrote: post #13

This is a really interesting read. But it doesn't answer one question I have, which is why can't Sony or Apple or anyone else bring back decent MP3 players? None of this technology is lost, and there are plenty of small-time two bit no name players out there still making them, often in a much smaller, much slicker form factor than than the original digital Walkman or iPod. If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to…

> If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to buy something from a company I've never heard of with a terrible screen, use an old phone, or buy some sort of enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much.

I recently got the Shanling M0s. It runs its own OS and seems to me completely at parity with what MP3 players used to be back in the day; in fact I think it's the best one I've ever had, and I've been buying those devices since the Diamond Rio. If more people just got one, Shanling would no longer be a company nobody's ever heard of, and the economics would change to further bring down the price too (although I think it's not all that bad right now).

Re: Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

#57

Post by bandrami »

trencedamp wrote: post #13

This is a really interesting read. But it doesn't answer one question I have, which is why can't Sony or Apple or anyone else bring back decent MP3 players? None of this technology is lost, and there are plenty of small-time two bit no name players out there still making them, often in a much smaller, much slicker form factor than than the original digital Walkman or iPod. If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to…

IDK I've got some rando Chinese product that looks pretty much exactly like a late-2000s iPod "classic" and has some fairly generic Android interface including a decent music player. I think it cost like $40.

Re: Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

#58

Post by robotresearcher »

trencedamp wrote: post #38
turtlebits wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't somebody take simple smartphone hardware and make a modern media player that is not a phone? Because you can do that with any phone and just not use the phone part?

Because I want something half the size of a phone. I don't need a giant screen, I just want a player that can do music or audiobooks and be light enough to run with. I find myself researching, trying to find the smallest lightest old phone that either has decent internal memory or a micro SD slot, but it's not easy. Most phones are massive compared to an iPod shuffle

Here's a one in close to the form factor of the last iPod Shuffle: https://www.fiio.com/m5

Re: Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

#59

Post by steve1977 »

trencedamp wrote: post #39
izacus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the question, Sony still sells a product line of both premium and cheaper mp3 player devices? Although FiiO is probably the company to look at for these kind of products.

Show me the cheaper one please. The lowest price Walkman I can see is 400 bucks for 32gb

That is the cheaper one.

Re: Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

#60

Post by a34729t »

nmstoker wrote: post #34

This is sad but no great surprise. What does surprise me a little is how far ranging the "we can't make those parts anymore" argument goes. I thought back to those seriously slim Sony Walkman and Aiwa players people would bring back to school from the Far East and even the basic things like the sliding buttons were better than products have nowadays: they would inevitably be tiny, sleek, yet beautifully engineered to…

hold on now william gibson
Post reply on HN