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Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

obsoletesony.substack.com

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

#151

Post by snapetom »

timonoko wrote: post #131
snapetom wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple got it right with the original iPod, and your ask, and others, is just to extend it to modern times. A lot of these comments simply aren't helpful, and people chiming in know it. For me, I was looking for 1) Music player that holds a ton of songs. 2) Lossless. 3) No touch screen control. 4) Battery that is long lasting and semi-replaceable. 5) Smaller than modern phones. 6) Great software experience, which for…

MP3-module from Aliexpress and some ESP-board with tiny display and micropython. Ten Euro. You can make random search N in the MP3-module, because OFF/ON restarts and then you short NEXT-button wires N times.

You forgot to add /s. In no universe would this suggestion be at all practical, and meets practically none of the criteria I'm looking for.

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

#152

Post by snapetom »

Melatonic wrote: post #143
snapetom wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple got it right with the original iPod, and your ask, and others, is just to extend it to modern times. A lot of these comments simply aren't helpful, and people chiming in know it. For me, I was looking for 1) Music player that holds a ton of songs. 2) Lossless. 3) No touch screen control. 4) Battery that is long lasting and semi-replaceable. 5) Smaller than modern phones. 6) Great software experience, which for…

Why not a Fiio ? Or any of the other nicer brand DAP

I just stated it above. Because I don't want a touchscreen, I want to eventually replace the battery when it starts going bad, I want a good software experience along with it.

Fiio can't even keep their site in order. They have broken links everywhere. Nothing about it makes me think it isn't just another shitty Chinese-made disposable.

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

#153

Post by snapetom »

jjav wrote: post #90
snapetom wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple got it right with the original iPod, and your ask, and others, is just to extend it to modern times. A lot of these comments simply aren't helpful, and people chiming in know it. For me, I was looking for 1) Music player that holds a ton of songs. 2) Lossless. 3) No touch screen control. 4) Battery that is long lasting and semi-replaceable. 5) Smaller than modern phones. 6) Great software experience, which for…

> For me, I was looking for To add: - A physical switch to turn off all inputs. The older ipods had a slider switch that disables all buttons and screen inputs, which was awesome. Mostly I use an mp3 player when working on things (yard, cars, house, etc) and need something very small and very light, so not a phone. My older ipod with the switch broke down so I'm stuck with a newer ipod which lacks that switch and I h…

I swear, this site jumps on the tactile control bandwagon when it comes to something like cars, but for this thread, it's all "meh, everything's touchscreen these days. Get used to it."

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

#155

Post by dbspin »

I wonder how far we are from being able to custom spec electronics to locally manufacture low volume dedicated hardware devices at the late 90s Sony level of quality. Is this something that's likely to be possible as 3D printers, cnc machines, AI design tools and microelectronics advance. Or is the combination of materials science and expertise impossible to ever replicate? Basically is a solar punk local fabrication future where you can custom build a CD Walkman, or equivalent technical device - in small run quantities, to high tolerances, making small runs of all the requisite components - even possible. Or do we need to 'wait for' nanobots or replicators for that kind of manufacturing?

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

#156

Post by SpecialistK »

phire wrote: post #132
SpecialistK wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just thought that maybe this is something for a personal Pi 0 project. DAC + microSD card + off the shelf display + 3D printed case + battery.

Or even the Pi Pico. You really don't need that much processing power to decode mp3s and FLACs.

I was looking at the Pico first when writing that, but you would need a SD card header. Small issue - I use one for my Dreamcast controller Maple>USB bus.

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

#157

Post by numpad0 »

dijit wrote: post #97
fsuts wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But fair play to OP, you'd have to bounce it through at least Google Translate to make it legible to the predominant English-speaking HM crowd: https://x-com.translate.goog/akiraa_tanaka/status/2080114490... People still use google translate? Most browsers now have translate built in, as do llm I imagine grok on x will do this too

X’s auto translate of tweets has been really awesome actually. I wonder why its so much better than localised titles and subtitles on youtube.

LLMs can mentally match and replace whole sentences with culturally similar concepts rather than having to go word-by-word. That tend to yield more natural sounding, not necessarily accurate, translations than literal ones. That's great if you don't need accurate details and/or consistent inverse translations.

Classical machine translations can't take "EUTs sets up a bearer with eNB" and produce "The device (like a phone) connects to the cell tower."[1], it's a fragment of confection to an LLM, and that's useful when/where it is.

1: I just literally asked Gemini Flash to do it

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

#158

Post by sajithdilshan »

One thing I would love to have is a device like ipod nano (or even a smaller device) with like 1TB storage so I can have all my music offline and have with me all the time. I hate the subscription fee services and just want to buy and own my own collection.

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

#159

Post by theragra »

dbspin wrote: post #155

I wonder how far we are from being able to custom spec electronics to locally manufacture low volume dedicated hardware devices at the late 90s Sony level of quality. Is this something that's likely to be possible as 3D printers, cnc machines, AI design tools and microelectronics advance. Or is the combination of materials science and expertise impossible to ever replicate? Basically is a solar punk local fabrication…

I wonder if LLMs will evolve to allow ordering such things by request. Surely this is a a dream of many, manufacturing things same as we are vibe coding apps.

This is probably not near, but maybe in 10-20 years?

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

#160

Post by vr46 »

Obsolete Sony is a lovely-looking website ram-packed with errors and false claims, which means it’s actively worth ignoring.

I chat with Akiraa Tanaka on Twitter a lot. He’s great.

Sony was informally regarded as Japan’s electronic R&D department, regularly coming up with new and cool shit for everyone else to get behind, and while their strategy was annoying a lot of the time (control everything: proprietary connectors and standards) I think that much of their success was enabled by their willingness to cut off and bin whole swathes of their catalogue. Ok, a lot of it was binned later than it should have been (Cassette Walkmans were crap by the late 1990s, post 2000 Discmans/CD Walkmans too) the fact that they did it was a good signal.

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