Slashdot Mirror
Walkman Creator Leaves Sony
Gammu writes "Nobutoshi Kihara, the engineer behind the Walkman, has left Sony. In the late seventies, one of the co-chairman of Sony, Morita, requested the audio division create a portable tape player capable of playing his operas while he was on transpacific flights to the US. After less than a year, the Walkman was released to the public and revolutionized the music industry. Read about the development of the first Walkman at Low End Mac."
I remember my first Walkman, and blasting "Ghost Busters". I thought I was so cool... now I post on Slashdot. The Walkman helped define a generation, and was one of the products that helped introduce more than one generation to the future of mobile music technology.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
he didnt want to durty his name anymore.
The article doesn't mention the German inventor that Sony settled with a couple of years ago. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/01/walkman_pa tent_case/
Do any of you still have the original 1979 Walkman in working condition now?
Wincopy
Sony has been such an innovative force it's sad to see them go through such hard times. Hopefully they can snap back from the P3 debacle, I think the battery recall hurt them worse reputation wise. Ironically all the problems could lead to a resurgence of the company. I think they got a bit lax and it caught up with them. P3 may end up being a dud but it might lead to a really stunning P4. They just need to avoid the same production problems. I'd say they have a far greater chance of coming up with a gaming platform that was truly innovative than Microsoft has. It takes some risk and Microsoft loathes risk. The risk taking bit them on P3 so I hope they don't go conservative the next time around. The boundaries need to be pushed and they are the best positioned to do so.
Does this mean they'll stop making walkmans?
These newfangled 'CD's will never catch on!
Latewire
Kihara could be very well the creator if the *Sony* walkman, but let's not forget who invented it : Andreas Pavel, who won a 20 year-long battle on the subject.
Article here : http://itvibe.com/news/2587/
Not so much "left Sony" as "retired". Seriously, both the summary and TFA are like "Sony in major world of poo - engineers leaving", rather than "trailbreaking engineer retires".
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Sony has a name that is still embedded in everyone's mind. If they were smart they would create their own Ipod killer and name it Walkman in a huge marketing campaign. Instead they are tarnishing the Walkman name and calling every single device they have that's capable of playing MP3s "Walkman".
There is huge room for new MP3 devices still. Even with the Zune. The Ipod takes up such a large marketshare and it is a product that is frankly geared towards Mac users in a world that is dominated by PC users. Don't' tell me it's not geared towards mac users either. The thing manages all the MP3 files on your hard drive AND on the device its own way. That is the Mac way. Hiding your files and giving you a GUI.
The man is 80 years old. I think it would be better to say he "retired" rather than he "left". It's not like he quit in disgust or took a better offer somewhere else.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I have a black and white watchman sony TV in perfect working order, and I will be annoyed when it no longer will get OTA TV signals it can use, because we use it all the time when the power goes out to look at the radar images during storms.
Walkman Creator Walks
Title fixed
do {print "Mini-Geek Rules!\n";}
until ($TheEndOfTheWorld);
It's worth noting that the Walkman's lightweight headphones were made possible by the discovery and development of samarium cobalt (SmCo) permanent magnets in the early 1970's. Materials (e.g. AlNiCo) that existed before that were not only much weaker, but could only be made in elongated shapes, resulting in much bulkier voice coil assemblies.
A famous engineer retires from Sony, now aged 80, after 6 decades working there ... and Slashdot frames the headline and summary like he was a disgruntled employee ditching the place! WTF?
Make some weather map MP4s and load them onto a video iPod.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/16/news/profil e.php
"Inspired by those discussions, Pavel invented the device known today as the Walkman. But it took more than 25 years of battling the Sony Corporation and others in courts and patent offices around the world before he finally won the right to say it: Andreas Pavel invented the portable personal stereo player."
The sony he was a part of was innovators that wanted to create new and useful items that change the world.
Today sony only wants to create products that opress and have the illusion of being world changing but when you get one you realize it's a ball of DRM with a shiney cover.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I remember listening to my cousin's Walkman-like player around that time, but if I remember correctly, his was an Aiwa (sp?). And yep, it was playing Ghostbusters!!! And if you remember, in the early scene in Ghostbusters in which the "professors" are being booted out of their offices, the student mover is listening to a Walkman as he carts their equipment away.
Ah, memories...
.. when they started using ATRAC and Soundstage for their MP3 players. A proprietary format that can't be used with any other device, and software that is massively awkward to use. Yeah, that's a good idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Pavel
This is a perfect time to break out the Variety-speak, and you let it go completely.
WALKMAN MAN WALKED, MAN!
...video weather thing would be slick. We have weather radios, just mash the button instant on to the endless weather forecast. It would be neat to have a device like that that pulled the official NOAA radar images along with the audio. Just a small screen like those portable DVD players would be enough.
If the Walkman had been released in 2006, it would have used an exotic, overpriced format of cassettes only used by Sony, and would only have been ready in 2008 at a cost of $800.
..is a bit snappier.
http://www.sony.net/Fun/SH/index.html
Is, of course, produced by SONY, so it has a slant, but there are TONS of stories about this company and its products. Quite a few of them seem to be written WITH the folks who actually worked on whatever product they are describing. Very interesting.
Oh, Cowboyneal: A few more 'headlines' like that, and we will start believing you went to the Dan Rather School of Journalism.
Offblast!!!
I'd sure buy one, no idea why they aren't out there either. I had this idea years ago, just no way to pull it off. It's the governments gig to do it, I don't see the FCC giving permission for just anyone to rebroadcast it over the air. Anyway, that is why I have a lot of 12 VDC stuff and keep a heavy marine battery charged up inside the house, so I can plug some stuff in easy and keep going when the power goes out. Thgat little watchman though is *amazing* how good the electronics are, I can get a better picture with that and the little rod antenna than my normal big color and the outdoor antenna when the weather is bad. It's better than my other 12 volt TVs as well.
I wonder if they gave him an iPod as a retirement gift.
I agree, we should demod the points of the story poster :)
While Sony has been some creeps in the last few years, it wasn't the best headline.
There are lots of people who are upset because sony is an evil multinational coperation. I have a blog where we discuss issues relating to this, check it out the mayor of awesometown
That Sony did not invent the walkman, it was a german guy and basically had trials for decade over the entire thing. He almost went bankrupt because Sony refused to pay, only after the old management left a settlement was achieved after decades of court trials and only a relatively small amount was paid. I am not sure if the german guy really has recovered from the costs of the trials.
that Sony brought the concept to market as a successful product and didn't just run to the patent office with a vague idea of something that might be produced. Who cares that he had the idea first? I had the idea for e-books in 1997 when it became obvious that you could get a portable LCD screen with enough battery life to read a book. Nobody, including me, really cares any more.
Unless there is evidence that Sony stole this idea and did not develop it independently then Sony invented the actual product by offering it for actual sale. The German guy should be happy that some Sony exec didn't figure out that it would be cheaper to have him killed than pay the lawyers.
Back in 1993 I purchased a black MZ1 MD Walkman while I was over in Japan. The device worked flawlessly, was easy to use and provided me with hours of listening enjoyment. It had optical out and a front loading mechanism which I could forsee jamming or breaking due to regular use; it never did. Years later after I had returned to the U.S. I sold it to a friend in the same box and packaging with a stack of unused blank minidiscs that I had purchased when I bought the Walkman.
Around 2001 I purchased a gold MZ-N505 Walkman and within 30 days it was inoperable. The display went blank and the unit never played another song. During the brief time it did work, I used it a few times while I walked around town and once to play music through powered speakers. The computer-to-minidisc transfer process was just as time-consuming as it was when I had the MZ1 MD and used patch cords to my stereo.
My next portable music player will be integrated into a device that has other features, such as a smartphone or video/music player. For me, the days of buying a device that performs just one task are over.
And cut into AccuWeather's market share? Never going to happen. Just a few years ago, Congress almost passed some bill that would have prohibited the National Weather Service from releasing any information directly to the public via it's web site, because it created "unfair competition" with AccuWeather's offerings (AccuWeather basically just takes NWS data and resells it to news outlets in the form of a feed). (IIRC it was introduced by the late -- his career, anyway -- Sen. Santorum of Pennsylvania, but thinking that getting rid of him eliminated this sort of idiocy would be naive.)
There are far too many people with money who make their living being the middle men between government and the public, who would strenuously oppose anything that made it easier for people to get what their tax dollars have already paid for.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I don't have an original Walkman, but somewhere around I do have a full-size-cassette Dictaphone of similar vintage, that's one of the best-made pieces of portable equipment I've ever owned. All metal construction, disassembelable (is that a word?) with a Phillips-head jewelers' screwdriver, reads and writes to a standard format, has all the inputs and outputs you'd expect, built to last forever. And perhaps most importantly, with a user-interface that you can use in the dark, with gloves on.
I keep it around mostly as an example of what high-end portable consumer electronics should be, and can be, but frequently aren't.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Note to everyone at Sony, especially the executives and the people in the music division, _that_ is the way to do business if you want to make popular products and make money in the process. The key to great devices should be "I'd like to be able to do that, I bet our customers would like it to," not the current trend of "Our customers want to do lots of cool things with our products, let's see what we can do to stop them."
This Space Intentionally Left Blank