On 30th anniversary of Walkman, 13-year old reviews it vs. iPod

He thought that was cumbersome, he should have seen the stuff prior to that. You can't really compare a Walkman with an iPod, two completly different types of technology. The only similarity, they both play music. But a good exercise for a 13yo (they know everything at that age). I can't help but wonder what they will be saying about the iPod in 30 years time!

 

"Why did they waste all our resources producing this junk and shipping it all over the world?"

 

Ah that's all new tech.
This was a revolution in portable music.

A friend of mine bought one of these to school.
No way to hide that you had the latest and greatest back in those days.
I'm not sure how you went jogging with this baby.

I remember buying a Sony Discman,
back then it cost me $500AU and was my first CD player. It broke down just outside the 12 months warranty and cost a further $200 to repair. Next time it broke it stayed broke.
The picture shows it without the battery pack, the battery adds about half the thickness again.

I also had a

Getto Blaster about this size but mine was all black with detatchable wooden speaker boxes! Great thing to have at a Sky Show! Used 8 D cell batteries and at a good volume that lasted an hour if you were lucky. I always took a spare set of batteries to Sky Show.

 

We thought we were so 'with it' when we had a Hi Fi system like this in our lounge rooms.

 

I had a first generation Walkman. This was before I had a car, and used to do a lot of actual walking. I thought it was wonderful at the time.

 

I recall the chore of recording hrs of tapes before a long trip.The chore taking hours of real time.

A friend worked at Dolby studios and remarked that the word "Dolby" was probably the most frequently used name.Being printed on every tape and piece of stereo equipment.

 

this was a interesting concept--having the young man review a piece of personal kit he has never seen but provides the same basic service...

Personally i actually use all three systems today---
french language cassettes on a marantz portable--discman in my shoulder bag for segwaying and mp3 player.

but there again i was the guy who actually bought a quad stereo system in the late 60's early 70's..argh!

regards
Froley

 

I remember skiing decades ago with a walkman and then a discman, lamenting the constant skips, mangled tapes, and frozen batteries. Sitting at lunch one day, I daydreamed out loud about a futuristic time we could plug headphones straight into a memory chip. Good thing somebody heard me.

 

Hey, you had nice hair back then! I remember - vaguely - when I had hair

 

My folks had a system like that, early to mid 1970's if I recall. My Dad also had giant bushy sideburns

 

Hey Pat, I didn't know you looked like that when you were younger.

 

I never implied that was me, I said I had a Getto Blaster about this size but mine was all black with detachable wooden speaker boxes! So the person in the picture isn't me and the Getto Blaster isn't mine either. But I used to smoke back then, like a fool.

 

Jayman thought it was you.
I thought it was rather funny.

 

IMO, in terms of sound quality, the biggest qualitative leap effected by the Walkman was not due to a technological advance, but rather was attributable to a packaging idea involving existing technologies:

The pairing of a portable cassette player with lightweight, open air, high fidelity headphones (using a mini jack and mini plug).

If you plugged the original Walkman's headphones into the cheapest portable cassette players or radios then in existence, you would have been just as surprised by the sound quality as you were when you first listened to the Walkman.

 

Now that I'm curious, how *did* you look back then? I somehow can't imagine you having a red bushy beard at 18

 

I never smoked, but when I was 14-18 had nice flowing long hair, almost all the way down to my butt.

<sigh>

Enjoy hair while you have it, it does NOT last .....