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Sony founder Akio Morita dead at age 78
Winston Smith writes "Akio Morita, founder of Sony, died today at age 78. Morita defined the post-war Japanese electronics industry and his vision and influence played a major role in shaping our gadgetized world. He'll be missed. Here's the NYT obituary." (You already know the "registration required" drill.)
Cheers,
-j.
Heck, if I were him, I would have called it Morita.
Some reporter once asked IIRC, John Lennon, what he called his haircut. (This was back during the British Invasion). He said he called it Arthur.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Cheersy,
-j.
As a graphic artist, I have frequently had marketers as bosses, and they were generally the worst bunch around.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
They didn't work on VHS until later. In the beginning they had the video 2000 system that was far superior to both Betamax and VHS because it had a lot of features common with uMax (a professional system from Sony). It was a tape that used both sides and I believe it was 4h per side, but I my memory could be wrong here, ie. 2h per side 4h in all. :-) is Intel's line of CPUs. The 8086 was a crappy architecture already when it came out, because it was already carrying baggage from the older 8080, that in itself was carried on from the 8008 that was built upon the worlds first CPU, the 4004. So because Intel can't start over and build something from scratch their top-CPU (PIII Xeon) now is in a lot of trouble working at high speeds and high loads. And still they are the most used in the world. Then again, so is the piston combustion engine, which is also thermodynamically an almost total waste of energy (the Sterling engine does much better and could run on the same fuel, and if only the Wankel engine had been developed more, it would probably also send the piston engine to the grave yard where it belongs together with the steam-engines). :-)
The creator of VHS was Japan Victor Company, JVC, which in itself was the spinoff of the local Japanese branch of RCA hence their right to use the logo with the dog looking into the old turntable cone (His Master's Voice). And only because Matsushita Denki, which Panasonic is a daughter company of, supported VHS whole heartedly did it eventually outdo Betamax. Probably because Matsushita is the largest consumer electronics company in Japan and they had muscle enough to outdo Sony.
All in all a good example of how little technology in itself matters for the spread of any product. First the technically most superior product fell (video 2000), then the next (Betamax) and what was left, VHS, that however eventually has been refined to not be too crappy.
My other favorite example (it goes off topic now
I am getting too far off topic, when all I should say is that the World actually has lost a true innovator and entrepreneur, and the Japanese has lost the 'dark sheep' of Japanese electronics industries, that they even so eventually learned to love the products of (like Honda in the car industry
May he rest in peace.
Peter
AKA lalleglad (lynx wont let me login)
No, just the asinine type.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
> Give me a break. Any so-called "industrialist"
> who hates Linux is at best a poseur,
Do we know that for sure? Can you give us a reference to an article where Akio Morito says anything about Linux. I would have thought that a man with his visions would have known better.
Set your wayback machine to World War II. The fact that the Chinese didn't have a big lobby in Congress is the only thing that kept all the leaders of Japan from being hung for crimes against humanity.
Check the facts. The Japanese' war crimes made the Germans look like kindergarden bullies. They enslaved tortured and murdered not only the Manchurian Chinese, but Americans as well.
We thought that we could use them as a trading partner, so we (America)let these atrocities slide. Then America rebuilt their country. Sounds like a handout to me. Of course we have also spent ourselves into an astronomical debt to keep the "evil commies" at bay and allowed Japan to continue to exist by becoming their Army.
Of course all this ended up poorly for the US because we forgot the lesson of Pearl Harbor:
The Japanese culture has no sense of honor, integrity, or fair play.
As further evidence of this look at their continued slaughter of whales, rhinos, and elephants. All because they are terrified of their dicks not working.
Note also that they are the single most racist culture on the planet. It is interesting to note that to the Japanese, the Koreans are "Niggers", yet if you look at the history of Japan, it was founded by Koreans who lost the war. They retreated to those islands and inbred for hundreds of years. That is where the Japanese came from.
So I think welfare state is not only fitting, but perhaps understated.
I have to agree with you there. Sony's products haven't been the most reliable. They are cheap, and mass produced.
My brother opened up our PSX and tried to pull a cable out of a socket on the mainboard and successfully managed to liberate the socket as well. I was angry because it only a day old at the time. I looked at it and the connector was SMT and the solder joints were very "cold."
Ho hum, grab my solder station, fix it, and do a little more "modification" while I'm at it.
My brother's SONY CD changer (which I'm still making fun of him for buying) sometimes glitches and he has to shut off his van and restart it to get it working. Essentially, he has to reboot his van. That's pretty sad.
Basically, it comes down to how many units you can produce in a short time. Often, doing a good job comes second. I've been in the process control business and that is the focus of development in that area.
My PSX is a newer "dual shock" model. There are more plastic parts in the CD mechanism in the newer ones. I'm already getting FMV skipping on some CDs.
However, I'll have to give SONY quite a few kudos for the recent quality of some of their ideas such as the PSX, the AIBO, and the VAIO.
that's probably because you're buying consumer products. the aim is not to be super-reliable. buy pro products for that.
i want to put in a plug for sony's professional stuff, something along the lines of "it's quite nice", but i don't think i've ever used any.
what professional equipment do they make? apparently not pro-audio, or at least not much of it. i imagine they have high quality pro video products.
if you want to do something right, and never worry about it breaking, buy pro products. they're more expenive, and lack some cushy features (remote controls), but they're amazing. i'll never go back to consumer audio.
And Beta was better, anyway...it's still the standard for broadcasting. Sony just didn't have the media clout back then to get high volumes of popular movies in that format...
Betacam != betamax
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
are you trying to tell me that DATs are compressed?
i'm (virtually) positive they're not. minidiscs are. i can't imagine nearly every studio in the world would use a compressed format.
i could be wrong, but i'm virtually sure they're raw.
phase problems are another matter entirely. . .
"Don't take this as me dissing him, but in all fairness, do you not think the engineers at Sony deserve a mention for their enginuity in making the PSX?"
Nope. If those particular engineers didn't exist, others would have invented something else cool and exciting. The success of PSX is based on engineering, marketing, and manufacturing. All of which combined gives you your immensely popular end product. All of which is directed by the top of the hierarchy, if not Morita (he was only an honorary position holder last I checked) then his successor. Successful companies are formed from the top down, not by talented engineers (see Microsoft(MSFT)), among others.
Chris
PS - besides, the PSX is not such an amazing technological achievement. PSX2 looks like it may be, however. Pretty good 3d action for your buck, though...
hmm.. I think the walkman was a decent idea..
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
For Generic AP news items.
It's not like these stories are only on NYT, they are everywhere.
Why support this anti everyone under 18 news site???????
No, magnetic tape was invented and starting to get popular in the USA when he founded the SONY (SOund of New York) corporation. You are right about the walkman though, allthough it was initially a failure since the technicians couldn't fit the electronics needed for making an actual tape *recorder*. The audience did not seem to mind and the rest is history ...
send + more == money?
The Audio Engineering Society had proposals for two types of digital audio tape: R-DAT & L-DAT.
In order to get the bit density needed, you need either a very short gap, or a high tape speed. The short gap required thin film heads, then under development. The high tape speed can achieved with helical scan. Philips wanted linear DAT, but Sony pushed for rotating head DAT. Sony wanted to get to market ASAP, and argued that VCR technology made that possible, even though cost and performance would suffer.
With R-DAT on the market, Philips rushed the linear variant, and didn't wait for better heads. With lower density, they went for lossy compression, which also wasn't fully developed.
So we have two formats, neither as good as it could be.
SONY isn't a japanese acronym, but rather plain old english meaning 'Sound Of New York'.
..
Simply because he had his first encounter with a magnetic taperecorder in
send + more == money?
Bad people die too. We just don't care about them. Hence, we don't mourn for them. After all, what better way to punish a person than to try and forget they ever existed.
Great, now you've gone and gotten me depressed.
Someone want to create user slashdot password slashdot?
:(
The problem with shared public accounts is, invariably, some jerk decides to get cute and change the password to something else.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I remember seeing an interview with him on 60 Minutes a number of years ago. He said that the products that Sony produced were the ones he wanted to have. I think we can honestly call him one hell of a wired geek.
The problem with Beta was not due to "a lack of movies" as you state, but had more to do with Sony refusing to sell blank tapes to the porn industry. JVC was more than happy to let whoever have blank tapes.
-------------------
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may be drafted...
You completely missed the point I was making. I was responding to someone who beleived there would be no playstation if it wasn't for Morita. _That's_ bulls**t! If you can prove Morita came up with the idea of the PSX 2, do it now. There may have not been a Sony, and the PSX wouldn't be called the PSX, but something very similar would exist. That's the way life works. Do you think there would have been no computer if it wasn't for ENIAC? No, Eckert and Mauchly would have designed something...
I do not suggest the man isn't smart. He may have come up with some great ideas, but as the president of a company, that is not his job. His job is to take ideas and decide if they live or die. He made some very good selections, I might add.
In fact, if you would have bothered to read my last paragraph:
This isn't to say that this guy wasn't important. I'm not sure of Sony's history, but I'm gonna bet that this guy has no clue of what goes on inside the electronics of a Playstation. Just that he is the president of a mega-corporation. This keeps him away from the action. Perhaps when Sony was small, he did real important ingenious stuff. Now he just does important stuff (well, before his death).
Too bad you flame before you read.
I truly agree Sony products are good. I have never had a bad one yet. I ask you though, with your angle that Morita came up with everything that made Sony good, "How can ONE man come up with every idea for such a large company?". The answer: He can't.
He might be good enough to come up with many ideas, but he couldn't have come up with them all.
Don't take this as me dissing him, but in all fairness, do you not think the engineers at Sony deserve a mention for their enginuity in making the PSX?
I'm glad you enjoy Sony products. Perhaps you might want to read my post, just below yours before you agree so wholeheartedly.
The NY Times failed to mention that after the war, their first product was a rice cooker.
Exactly what I ment, thank you. I'm glad that I didn't get moderated down for yelling at him, because he was a fucking brat.
latin: sonus = sound
But then, a couple of months later, Sony came out with their walkman, which was remarkably similar to this guys' invention. Lots of details were similar, including a device that used the microphone to record the noises around, and mixed that into the music that was listened to. The goal was to not complete isolate the listener from ambient noises, which could get dangerous if you were in a car, or similar situation. This device was dropped on later models, as it was a little bit too telling.
The German guy sued Sony, but being rather poor, he couldn't afford a lawyer who was really up to task. Moreover, he also didn't anticipate that Sony would go as far as to have his house burgled to steal any evidence... He eventually lost, and had was left with a huge legal bill.
The walkman was a decent idea, but they didn't create that either (see this comment for details).
You base your liking a person or not on their choice of OS? I honestly hope you are kidding and not just immaturely shallow as you appear to be.
Man, you sound like a brat. Cripes, if you can't take someone else's opinion and have nothing to add to the debate, LEAVE.
Very wrong. Microsoft got where it was today with engineering. How? Because Bill Gates 'stole' a similar DOS and rebuilt it and sold it. He was a software engineer. This created the company. Down, up is the way it happens.
So, would the PSX even exist for the Marketers to market if it wasn't for the engineers. But of course, as I said, the President of the company okayed the way it went. And it worked. Another person can do that... How many big companies are there now? 100's... Taking someones idea and marketing it is NOT original! Not that it is wrong, I personally don't think so. And you have to smart to make it a success. But Morita DID NOT INVENT THE PSX! Which is what I said!
I remember him from one of the Amex "Do you know me?" ads in the 80's. The cliche "birdlike" really applied to him small and slight, and his eyes were full of both intelligence and no small amount of humor.
I have a mental image of him now, perhaps sitting in a garden or on a hill, with a pack of ideally-realized Aibo's frolicking around him...
What we need more of is science!
Since this thread has gotten out of control, a fact that I've mentioned many times has to be restated:
THE PSX 2 WAS NOT INVENTED BY Morita. He never even affected its development, marketing, use, or anything else, since the guy wasn't even involved with the company at the time it was created.
This is what the whole argument is about. Man, things get pointelessly involved here...
This isn't to say anything bad about the person. I don't know anything personal about him, so I won't comment on him. He may have been the last person on earth with a clue, but, as I said, he didn't invent the PSX 2.
The Sony ES series is what you are looking for if you want high end audio in a Sony product.
Can't help but wonder how much money the welfare state just made from this great man's death...
Can your IM do this?
coincidence?
The way I understand this and another obituary I read he was the man who actually came up with ideas like magnet audio tapes and the walkman, only to name a few.
A good man died.
It's because of him you will get your PSX2, so show the man some respect you fucking brat.
offtopic but, rob isnt closing his italic html tags, and it screws up the rest of the page. this is like the 3rd time this week I think
Careful, the humour decision department (moderators) at slashdot might not appreciate jokes of the macabre type...
Filed at 1:27 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) -- Politicians and business executives mourned the death of Sony Corp.
co-founder Akio Morita on Sunday, lauding the entrepreneur who helped change
Japan's image from a maker of slipshod products to world-class manufacturer.
``Morita was a leading figure who played a pivotal role in developing Japan's postwar
economy,'' Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi was quoted as saying by Kyodo News
agency.
Morita, whose health had been failing for several years, died Sunday of pneumonia. He
was 78.
Obuchi was one of about 400 people who visited the world-renowned businessman's
Tokyo home following his death.
Morita co-founded the electronics giant in a bombed-out department store after World
War II. He was the last of a generation of Japanese industrialists that included
carmaker Soichiro Honda and electronics rival Konosuke Matsushita.
A front page article in Japan's national Asahi newspaper called him the ``face of
Japan's economic sector.''
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who co-authored ``The Japan That Can Say No,''
with Morita, called him an exceptional businessman with a cosmopolitan outlook.
``He had the international mind that Japan lacked in the past and looked at Japan's
place in the world with a sense of relativity,'' Ishihara said.
He added that if Morita had become chairman of Japan's top business lobby, the Japan
Federation of Economic Organizations, ``the Japanese economy might have changed.''
Morita was a savvy salesman who became No. 386 on Forbes magazine's list of
billionaires, with an estimated worth of $1.3 billion. He was also the only
non-American on U.S.-based Time magazine's list of the top 19 businessmen of the
20th century.
In the late 1980s, he called for many of the economic reforms now being carried out by
Japan's government, although he reportedly declined an offer to become foreign
minister in August 1993.
``Mr. Morita was a hero for me. He hewed through the world market and breathed life
into the company and the Sony brand,'' company president Nobuyuki Idei said.
Born in the central Japanese city of Nagoya on Jan. 26, 1921, Morita retired as Sony's
chairman in 1994. A year earlier he had suffered a stroke that left him weakened and in
a wheelchair.
Sony Corp. began in 1946 when Morita, the oldest son of a rice-wine brewer, joined
former Japanese navy colleague Masaru Ibuka, a fellow engineer, to start a business
repairing radios on a borrowed $500.
Using old parts and ingenuity in Japan's harsh postwar economy, he and Ibuka
produced Japan's first magnetic recording tape and tape recorder in 1950.
They made Japan's first transistors in 1954 after convincing government industrial
planners to allow their upstart company to buy the rights to the American device. They
made Japan's first all-transistor radio in 1955.
Sony made the world's first all-transistor television in 1960 and the first home video
tape recorder in 1965.
With Morita as president of Sony's U.S. subsidiary, Sony in 1970 became the first
Japanese firm to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and in 1972 became one of
the first Japanese companies to build a U.S. factory.
Probably the company's most famous success was the Walkman personal stereo
cassette player, which Sony began selling in the 1980s.
Morita was also ready to acknowledge his occasional blunders. His best-known gaffe
was in VCRs. When the market for videocassette recorders was in its infancy in the
early 1980s, Sony pushed its Beta recording format but lost to competitors who used
the more popular VHS standard.
Even without Morita at the helm, Sony continues to lead the world in electronics and
computer entertainment. Earlier this month, the company launched a new attack on
rival game makers Sega and Nintendo by announcing next year's launch of an improved
version of its popular PlayStation system.
-----Transmission Complete----- If you want to email me...Don't
Looks like you've already scored 1 insult... :-|
Note, not that I persoanlly appreciate this humour too much, I realize it exists, and I'll take it. As long as there's no direct insults to the person, then (within reason) it's fair game.
And I'll bet his only involvement with the PSX 2 would be pen to paper on the go-ahead of the project, like most company presidents. He might never have even done this, perhaps the executives did it for him...
Why is it that only the good people seem to die?
I think anyone who enjoys electronic gaming or listening to music on the run should stop right now and pay a few minutes of respect.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Maybe slashdot could work out some sort of agreement with NYT so people with the proper referers could avoid logging in.
If it had not been for him Sony would not exist and PSX2 would never be made, get it?
The passing of Akio Morita is truly the passing of a man who almost single-handedly changed the world of consumer electronics.
From the development of the first successful transistor radio, the Trinitron tube TV, and so on to the co-development of the Compact Disc, Sony under the guidance of Morita was one of the few companies most visibly responsible for raising Japan out of the ashes of World War II to economic prominence today. Morita did such a masterful salesmenship job for Sony that when Sony announced their PlayStation game console, it literally became almost overnight the #1 gaming platform.
If I were to list the top 10 industrialists of the 20th Century, Akio Morita belongs in this esteemed company.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Does anyone else find it kinda odd that the walkman is what the NYT thinks we should remember him for? Here is a little tidbit that might win you a beer sometime: compact discs are the size that they are because Mr Morita wanted the format to be large enough to hold Beetoven's Fifth Symphony in its entirety.
I drink to make other people more interesting
DAT sounds good, but can't it be erased? That would be a bummer. That's why I like CDs. Difficult to destroy, impossible to erase (unless it's CDR [by destruction] or CDRW).
And, pardon my ignorance for never using the format, but can't DAT degrade over a shorter amount of time? CD's last at least a lifetime (ie. over 100 years, at which point I don't care anymore).
That's a little to much extrapolation. That's like saying if it wasn't for Westinghouse, there'd be no electricity to your house. Another company would have taken up the slack. Or like saying the PSX would never have been invented if Coleco hadn't made the Coleco Vision.
People "on the floor" invent things, not the guy at the top of a company. When was the last time the head of IBM or Microsoft came up with an idea? It's always the little people that think up the ideas. The people at the top of a large corporation are too removed from the ideas to think up new ones.
I mean, just look at Nintendo, they would come up with something better, given time. Sony will best themselves in the market sometime.
This isn't to say that this guy wasn't important. I'm not sure of Sony's history, but I'm gonna bet that this guy has no clue of what goes on inside the electronics of a Playstation. Just that he is the president of a mega-corporation. This keeps him away from the action. Perhaps when Sony was small, he did real important ingenious stuff. Now he just does important stuff (well, before his death).
Actually, the failure of DAT is probably more due to the record companies than Sony. They managed to get legislation requiring anti-piracy devices passed, along with (I think) a tax on the DAT media.
In essence, they killed off the technology to protect their monopoly a little longer. (It's going away anyway. MP3 and similar formats will destroy the record industry as it is today.)
At any rate, blaming DAT's failure on Sony is really a bit unfair. DAT was a great technology and would have boomed if left alone.
Is this true? I never thought of Sony as a company into censorship... (removing the ability to publish ones message is censorship).
Actually, you're a little off. Sony did invent Betamax (and Betacam, the professional format), but JVC and Matshuita (sp) invented VHS after Sony told them to pound sand on a colaberative effort (as they did with u-Matic).
As for CD's, Philips invented the compact disk, but didn't have a use for it until Sony presented them with the digital encode/decode process
read all about VHS and Beta in _Fast_Forward_. I especially like the story about when Akio Morita slammed a paperback book on a table demanding the engineers make the tape the same size. Much like the dress shirts that had an oversized pocket to prove their transistor radio was "pocket sized."
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Yes, but he had a very clear vision of what the world should be. That, in many ways is much more important than defining specific products. Could you imagine the technical knowledge and capital of, say, IBM under the control of someone who demands the impossible?
A greater concern to Japan seems to be that all the great inovators seem to be dying off. I'm not an expert on Japan, but from what I've been told about their culture is that it does not exactly create free thinkers (which is just what they need right now). Sure, they can perfect devices (witness laptops), but can they do something truly new?
BTW, (feel free to argue this point) the most important product Sony ever introduced was the (professional) portable video recorder. Many of the programs, channels, and producers you see today owe much to that little device!
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
that made some really derogatory public remarks about Americans in general a few years back?
Isn't the dev platform for the PSX2 Linux-based?
Either why, its not healthy to want people to die just because they don't like Linux.
Prove that he didn't invent the PSX or PSX2.
Works both ways ya know.
Too easy. He wasn't working for Sony when the PSX 2 was invented, like the article said (he left in '95 or so).
;-)
And this is the right way.
It's even more depressing when you realize that not many of us will get the chance to even become a legend in our own lifetimes. Most of us will probably just drift through and disappear, with no one caring, no chance to change the world.
I read Morita Akio's book, Made in Japan recently. It was a pretty good look at the early days of Sony, although certain parts did _drag_ , especially when he was talking about his family adapting to life in America and all.
The idea was that it was not important to be the first to invent something but to actually do something with useful with the technology, to modify and adapt it and to improve on it. That's what they did with the transistor.
Morita really is more responsible than any other individual for the shape of the modern consumer electronics industry. Beta might not have been a "win" at the consumer level (it's still popular in the professional marketplace), but the Walkman (and all it's derivatives), the 3.5" floppy that's still the de facto compatibility benchmark in the computer industry, and the CD itself were all things that his Sony produced or collaborated on. Morita also was instrumental in accelerating the pace of product releases (creating a relentless consumer demand for "the latest model"), and moving away from the boxy, purely functional look that products once had - Sony has generally been a style leader.
Interestingly, I'm typing this on my new iBook - and Jobs' desire to produce products with a consumer-oriented "look" to them has been, by his own admission, profoundly influenced by Sony.
Although Morita stepped away from direct control over the company in the mid-'90s, I wonder if Sony risks losing a sense of direction without the founder present to "center" the company. It will be interesting to see. Sony still is strong in newer categories like CD recording and digital video (they are a leader in the deployment of FireWire devices), along with some of the more interesting PC designs (I'd love a PictureBook, oh yes...). Will they stay that way?
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
A more detailed obituary is available on MSNBC ...no @#$$!@# login needed either.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
According to this article: "Morita [told] engineers to make Walkmans despite the lack of market research. "We don't believe in market research for a new product unknown to the public. So we never do any," he said.
How many great products never make it to the world because of some idiot in the marketing department who thinks his or her opinion is all that counts? It's not like marketing departments are ALWAYS right...or there wouldn't have been New Coke...Edsel...Iridium...Windows CE...
I really think someone who has guts to stand behind an idea is someone who will be sorely missed in this technology-based world.
And Beta was better, anyway...it's still the standard for broadcasting. Sony just didn't have the media clout back then to get high volumes of popular movies in that format...
My opinion...maybe true...probably not...just true enough to me.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Sony/Phillips. Then Sony went their own way with DAT and Phillips with DCC *urk* and the Sony came back with MD. Both Sony and Phillips are working on the DVD format alternative to DVD-RAM (can't remember what it's called)
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
I thought it had a lot to do with the Sony vs Universal court case. Universal were suing because they thought that the vcr would kill the movie industry. They probably didn't care much about JVC because VHS was such a crap format.
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
Sony invented the Beta tape format...while Phillips developed VHS. Despite the fact that beta had higher quality, and cleaner edit cuts, VHS won with consumers and beta is only used in professional broadcasting.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Likewise, Sony did not invent the CD...they wanted consumers to use DAT. DAT had the same quality as CD, plus it was more durable and was (drumroll) RECORDABLE in DIGITAL. Of course, CD won the consumer market and DAT stays in professional recording studios.
Generally speaking...Sony's biggest mistake has been overestimating the taste of consumers.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Nope, you're not refueuling the fire. I pretty much agree with what you've said. And thanks for reading my post. :-)
;-). But if what you say is true, then that is sad. Many good products come from Japanese companies...
:-( I'd rather be using an Amiga, or Atari computer right now. And an osbourne laptop instead of this trash. Don't forget, PC DOS goes into a similar arena, along with the IBM PC Convertible... ;-)
That is the point I was trying to make. In his latter years, he did his job well. He directed the company very well, and had the ability to reform people's ideas into something better. Witness the walkman, pocket radio, trinitron, etc... But, AFAIK he didn't invent audio cassette, the audio casette player, the radio (in general), etc... He directed them into other great ideas. I think when he first built the company, he may have been truly creating the product, but as someone suggested, when it came to something like the walkman, he directed them to make it a certain size. Isn't that what a large company president is supposed to do? Direct the company. When the company was small, he had to be much more directy involved in the engineering and creation of devices. He was less a president, and more of a marketer/engineer/boss rolled into one, as I would think most people at the top of a small company are.
I have no idea as to what the situation in Japan is (I don't live there, and, sorry to say, I don't pay too much attention to the country. Too busy living here...
Hmmm, I never considered the portable video recorder. I can see it is quite important, yes. As far as an impact on my life is concerned, though, the walkman was the best thing Sony made.
Hmmm, well the technical knowledge of IBM often did create "the impossible" depending on how you look at it. The IBM PC wasn't supposed to fly, due to the fact that it generally sucked for the price (The first model XT. You know, green screen, horrible sound. 64 to 128k memory. $3000). But the impossible succeeded... Too bad.
Anyways, to get back on topic, and wrap up what I said earlier:
Morita DIDN'T invent the PSX 2. Period. Infact, I think he played no role in it whatsoever, since it seems he left being the major player in the company in the mid-90's. He once invented stuff, but later in life, this inventiveness seems to have petered out, and he took on the role of being a real company president. Correct me if I'm wrong...
I was right.
Bill PERSONALLY reviews EVERY microsoft product, and gives his input. I know of one unique feature added because it was his idea. He also drinks Diet Pepsi.
You ever notice all Sony seems to do is take existing technology developed by others and just make it smaller and less reliable? None of the Sony products I got since 1990 are still working.
Give me a break. Any so-called "industrialist" who hates Linux is at best a poseur, and deserves to die. I'm glad Akio Morita is finally dead, maybe now we'll see greater acceptance of Linux.
This is bullsh*t. It is because of Morita that the vision (and capital) to invent the fantastic home electronics we have today exists in a very advanced and modern form. Hands down. The man was brilliant, show him some respect.
Chris
PS - Sony laptops are phenomenal. How can one company continually turn out the coolest new stuff...one man's vision...
Why is the company called Sony? What does it mean in Japanese? Is there a translation for it or what?
Heck, if I were him, I would have called it Morita.
--Bernie
I wholeheartedly agree. I have never owned a Sony product that was not exceptional in quality. Akio Morita, you will be dearly missed. -Wren
No you can't...
Why not just give a link to the ap.org story? Why make people register for NYT?