[Macworld]

Post your comments for Happy birthday! The Walkman turns 30 here

[MorrisTheCat]

Good article. I actually didn't know the original walkman had such features like independent left/right volume controls and that hotline button.
There are some MP3 players on the market today that don't even have features like this. I think the intro of original Walkman is when Sony was really at the top of their game, making some of the best and most innovative electronics out there. They've really had a fall from grace since that time. Mostly due to their arrogance and trying to push stupid proprietary formats onto their customers that required them to jump through hoops. Dumb moves on their part.

[flybynight]

Heck, I didn't realize that CDs were around (much less, in a Walkman) in 1984! It wasn't until the late 80s and early 90s that most of my friends were getting CD players.

[newuser1980]

I have a sony walkman for 20 years and it still working fine, it out last most of the mp3 player you can find today, with a sony walkman, you never need those expensive sealed battery, and you never fored to use the latest itune.

[natmusak]

More like, Happy Posthumous Birthday, Walkman. The name used to mean something, but Sony has diluted it to death. I can't believe they're still selling Walkman-branded players in 2009 (and with ATRAC support, yet no AAC playback!?).

They should have retired the Walkman brand with the introduction of the PSP. The only well known, relevant product line associated with the company today is PlayStation. If Sony would get out of the generic mp3 player and Blu-ray player markets, there would be less cannibalization of the PSP and PS3, respectively, and thus, better sales of each. Can anyone imagine Apple selling dedicated DVD and/or Blu-ray players alongside the Apple TV?

[ibeetle]

According to The Inflation Calculator (www.westegg.com/inflation/) $200.00 from 1980 is equivalent to nearly $500.00 today. So, it is rather amusing when I hear people complain about the cost of a iPod Touch for less than half that price.
BTW $200 today only had the buying power of $80.00 in 1980. Which is kind of say really.

[danmusician]

ibeetle said:

BTW $200 today only had the buying power of $80.00 in 1980. Which is kind of say really.

But, you had to do a lot more work to get $80 in 1980 than it takes to earn $80 today. Looking at the overall standard of living in the US, I'd say we're doing pretty well. Nearly every kid I know has an MP3 player - many an iPod Touch - and a cell phone. I didn't know ANY kids who had a walkman in the early 1980's.

Add to that the fact that mortgage rates were over 10% in the early eighties, reaching nearly 16% in 1982, and inflation was also double digit, you can understand why people didn't have nearly as much disposable income in the 1980's as today.If the average person had $80, it was probably going for food or mortgage payments.

[danmusician]

It is amazing how similar the Walkman story is to the iPod. In the late 1970's, I bought a portable cassette recorder. It was slightly larger than the Walkman in the photo. It wasn't stereo, but did have an ear phone jack and a built in speaker. I don't remember the brand - probably Panasonic - but it was under $100.
The Walkman came out a twice the price. It had a slightly better feature set, but most of all it became the cool thing to have. Sony wasn't the first on the market nor the cheapest, but they set the standard by which everyone else was judged. Sure sounds familiar!
BTW, why is it that music devices don't come with balance controls anymore? It's a feature I miss a lot.

[danmusician]

MacPCJustCreate said:

However some of that "disposable income" came from debt. The highly leveraged balance sheets of many people is part of what caused the financial meltdown (I call it the great opportunity). This and cheaply available money, the government pushing home ownership and allowing Fannie and Freddie to leverage to insane levels and many other factors have created the current opportunity (some call it a mess) in which we find ourselves. The interesting thing is that much of our economy is driven by consumption and consumption is driven to a smaller or larger degree by debt, however this type of debt is bad debt because the cash flow is in the wrong direction -- out of one's pocket ... enriching others.

All good points. Personally, I abhor debt and refuse to borrow money to buy anything other than a car or a house. (And I'm not happy about borrowing for a car!) Anyway, I often forget that apparently many people carry (large) balances on their credit cards.

Still, I am amazed that in this current economic downturn most of the kids I see with iPods and cell phones have NEW ones - purchased in the last 6 months

[Wyomac]

Yes, I have a Walkman as well and it has been very durable. However, the cassettes I have owned have shown significant degradation-particularly the commercial ones. The tapes I made on high quality TDK or Maxell tapes are still playable, but they will not last forever either. I never owned a portable CD player that I could jog with-they were all too sensitive though the anti-shock feature improved over the years.

As for the batteries, the obvious tradeoff is in battery life and in constantly replacing disposable batteries. I've been lucky in that my iPod batteries have lasted a long time. Keeping a supply of AA and AAA batteries or keeping a set recharged is much more inconvenient.

Yes, being tethered to iTunes and a computer is an issue for some, but I find that much more convenient than choosing which CD's or cassettes to travel with.

[tony_d]

Personally for me the big difference between the iPod and the Sony Walkman is the amount of music you can carry. As MacPCJustCreate points out "the iPod is the media carrier". I remember when Apple first introduced the iPod (when we thought 5G was huge) my first thought was wow,now I can travel with almost my entire music collection in my car (my car stereo had an aux jack, even then.) With that said my first experience with the Walkman was how well they sounded. I had never used open ear headphones before. I can remember it was weird to see people walking around with headphones on. Now that's all you see.