Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Apple Archive

Sony Just Doesn't Get It - the Digital Walkman Can't Compete with the iPod

- 2004.07.12

This past week Sony unveiled a Walkman digital music player to commemorate the Walkman brand name's 25th anniversary. The Walkman certainly was a groundbreaking device when it came out in 1979, because of its ability to let you listen to your cassettes in stereo without annoying anyone else around you.

Yes, there were earphones and shirt pocket radios, but they weren't generally stereo - and they didn't play cassette tapes. The Walkman was really a big step forward when it first came out.

The same could be said for the iPod. Yes, there were other digital music players on the market, but few held more than one or two CDs worth of songs, and none were as stylish as the iPod. The iPod essentially moved the portable music player market from the analog Discman to the digital player. Considering that the iPod currently has greater than a 50% market share, Apple must have done something right - just as Sony did with the Walkman in 1979.

I've still got an old Walkman that I use occasionally - in fact, I have two, a WM-1 and a slightly newer WM-22. While they don't work as well as they once did (for example, the forward and rewind buttons don't work very well anymore), it's easy to see why the Walkman sold well from the beginning: It's easy to use. The controls are right there, and you don't need to read the instruction manual to figure out how to use them. There are no unnecessary features, either. You're probably not going to be recording anything, so why have that feature? (Although Sony did put out one Walkman model with that feature.)

The most important feature was that they worked with the standard format of the time, the cassette tape.

Does this sound a bit familiar? That's right, because Apple's iPod is the modern-day Walkman.

The iPod moved the industry forward in the same way the Walkman did. While not the first digital music player, it moved the portable music industry over from CDs to compressed digital music. It had what people wanted. It sounded good, held a lot of music, and - most importantly - worked with the existing music format, the MP3. This allowed people to transfer their MP3s right onto their iPod without re-ripping their CDs or converting their files.

The new Sony digital Walkman doesn't support current standards, just Sony's proprietary ATRAC3 format. You have to buy all of your music from Sony's download site or use their SonicStage software (Windows only, of course) to convert MP3, WAV, or WMA files from your CDs or hard drive.

Then there's the claim that Sony's 20 GB Walkman holds more songs than the high-end 40 GB iPod. Well, it does, but the problem is sound quality. The iPod holds 10,000 CD-quality songs (128-bit AAC encoding). CD quality, something Sony's engineers don't seem to see as a concern (the digital Walkman uses 48-bit encoding). After all, music is music, right? The more music it holds the better, right?

Sorry, but if the music doesn't sound good enough, who wants to buy the device that plays it?

The iPod sold and continues to sell because it provides the right combination of style, storage, ease of use, price, and sound quality. It remains to be seen how well Sony's digital Walkman will do, but I suspect they will have a hard time with sales. It's simply not a flexible enough device.

My advice? If you want a good digital music player, look at an iPod or other similar device. And if you really want a Walkman, hop on eBay and look for a WM-22. It doesn't play MP3 files, but it does come in cool colors - like lavender --and it's a lot more flexible than the Digital Walkman.

Recent Apple Archive articles

iPods, notebooks, and other modern electronics more readily replaced than repaired, 12.07. Whether it's an intermittent failure or a broken display cable, more often than not it's cheaper to replace a broken electronics device than repair it.
Options for replacing your older iPod, 11.19. Whether you've run out of space on your old iPod or want features it doesn't have, here are your options in new and used iPods.
Could the $200 'green' PC with gOS Linux become a threat to Apple?, 11.14. The low cost, low power Everex desktop comes with a customized version of Ubuntu Linux, has a Mac-like Dock, and sells for $400 less than the Mac mini.
Leopard different, a bit buggy, but worth the upgrade, 11.02. Leopard on a Power Mac G4 and a MacBook Pro: It runs well on both computers, but each has some odd bugs, and some of the changes are a step backwards.
More in the Apple Archive index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: 'WallStreet' PowerBook G3, May 1998 - WallStreet offered 3 screen sizes and CPU speeds from 233 to 292 MHz.
Group of the Day: Mac UK is for Mac users in the United Kingdom.
February 9 in LEM history: 00: Think choices - Promoting the Macintosh - 01: Apple vs. Mac clones - 05: Apple and the $100 laptop - Yojimbo - Core Duo vs. G5 - 07: The story behind After Dark - Microsoft Office 2007
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

Best 15" MacBook Pro Deals, 02.02. Used 2 GHz, $700; 2.4, $999; refurb 2.53, $1,449; 2.8, $1,699; 3.06, $2,199; new 2.53, $1,610; 2.66, $1,839; 2.8, $2,109; 3.06, $2,550; more.
Best G3 iMac Deals, 02.02. 500 MHz CD-ROM, $40; 450 MHz DVD-ROM, $60; 600 MHz CD-ROM, $230 shipped; 700 MHz CD-RW, $300 shipped.
Best eMac Deals, 02.02. 1 GHz SuperDrive, $269; 1.25 Combo, $100; SD, $360; 1.42 GHz Combo, $299; SD, $439.
Best Mac mini Deals, 02.01. Used 1.25 GHz G4 Combo, $369; 1.5, $399; Core Solo, $399; 1.83 GHz Core Duo SD, $439; new 2.26 GHz nVidia, $580; 2.53 GHz, $759; Server, $985.
Best iBook G4 Deals, 02.01. 12" 1.07 GHz Combo, $200; 1.33 GHz, $259; 14" 1.42 GHz SuperDrive, $399.
Best Titanium PowerBook G4 Deals, 02.01. 800 MHz Combo, $285; 867 MHz SuperDrive, $400; 1 GHz Combo, $549.
Best 13" MacBook & MacBook Pro Deals, 01.29. Used 1.83 GHz, $570; 2.0, $599; 2.4 GHz, $800; 2.26 MB, $849; new, $925 after rebate; Pro, $1,108, 2.53, $1,399 a/r.
Best Power Mac G5 Deals, 01.29. 1.8 GHz single, $399; dual, $479; 2.0, $549; 2.5, $609; 2.7, $799; 2.3 GHz dual-core, $709; 2.5 GHz Quad, $939.
Best Mac OS X 10.0-10.3 Deals, 01.29. Mac OS X 10.0, $30; 10.1, $20; 10.2, $50; 10.3, $50; 10.3 Server, unlimited users, $130.
More deals in our archive.

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Apple Archive articles copyright ©2000-07 by Adam Robert Guha. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2010 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.