4 ms·

> Remember how iPod beat Walkman No. No I don’t. Who the fuck was still using a Walkman in 2001?

by badamp 7y ago

rob74 7y ago
While the portable CD players from Sony were branded "Discman", they later used the "Walkman" brand for a range of featurephones (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_W580i https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_W580i) explicitly designed as music players. So you could actually say that the _iPhone_ ultimately beat the Walkman...
- hef19898 7y ago
  How I loved these feature phones. Did everything I needed, playing music later even e-mail also it was nowhere near as nice as Gmail. Youtube wasn't an option, but the sound quality was at least on par with my Pixel 2. Also phones were small enough to fit in every pocket.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  They almost certainly did that just to keep the trademark active.
pmlnr 7y ago
I was using this around 2001: Freecom Beatman Mini CD MP3 Player ( https://www.semox.de/23-06-2008/verspateter-fruhjahrsputz-ist-fur-dich-was-dabei/ https://www.semox.de/23-06-2008/verspateter-fruhjahrsputz-is..., scroll ) MP3 players in 2001 were either expensive or had tiny capacity, eg a single album, which was never enough.
- rchaud 7y ago
  Yup, I had a Memorex MP3-CD player around then. Gave me the flexibility to play both regular CDs and 700MB of MP3s on a CD-R, at a much cheaper price than what iPods were going for at the time.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
I did, AFAIR. USB MP3 players haven't happened yet AFAIR, and the alternative were DiskMans, which had all the problems of optical drives: shake it harder, it'll lose playback or damage the CD; any scratch or speck of dust on the CD was likely to make some tracks unplayable or even half of the CD unseekable, etc. Optical media really sucked hard for regular use. In retrospect, I'm surprised people put up with CDs and DVDs for so long.
- erfgh 7y ago
  Factory-pressed CDs are really durable. I have CDs from the 80s and they still work fine. Now CD-Rs... it depends what you buy. If you used some cheapo brands then yeah they would fail. Otherwise they were also fine.
- RmDen 7y ago
  I had a Rio 300 followed by a Rio 500 before the iPod was announced... those were the times.. converting to 64bit wma format so you could fit maybe 40 songs on the 300
jacobush 7y ago
The mp3 players of 2001 were so fucked up that keeping your Walkman in use wasn’t uncommon. Not among techies maybe but regular people, many of whom didn’t even have a computer yet. How would they even fill their mp3 players? (And even the techies could sigh - rip CDs? Download mp3 from ftp sites?) On many occasions it was still easier, even in 2001, to dub a CD to a cassette than juggle the computer gear.
- badamp 7y ago
  The Walkman was sold until recently (if it isn’t still) and of course living in a big city you see a handful of people using a Walkman. It never died completely. There is of course the hipster resurgence of cassettes of the 2010s. Of all this I’m aware. But techie or hipster or not I was around in 2001 and the Walkman was well past mass adoption by that point in the western world. Shitty MP3 players that people loaded up with Napster and Discmans/Aiwas knockoff were what the poors and regulars did. MD and nicer hard drive players were the enthusiast options. The iPod did not have the Walkman to contend with in a meaningful sense. Also in the US at least, the majority of households had a PC by 2001. I came from a shit poor backwater by this sites standards. We had computers. And by 2001, FTP sites? That was post peak of Napster (after Feb 2001). Kazaa, Emule, etc were all regulars options. You’re a few years off, which was substantial in the 95-2001 timeframe.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    I may be tainted by the fact that I doggedly stuck to Linux in the time period 1995-2014. :-) And I agree, walkman was not a major contender in 2001, I just mean it wasn't entirely gone from "normal user" perspective. But I stand by that iPod was the first solution which had as easy UX as a Walkman if you wanted your own playlist. As shitty as iTunes was and is, it was still the first really working music software anyone could use.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
EliRivers 7y ago
I recall the first time I bought a cassette tape walkman was about the year 2003, 2004.

> Remember how iPod beat Walkman No. No I don’t. Who the fuck was still using a Walkman in 2001?

by badamp 7y ago

> Remember how iPod beat Walkman No. No I don’t. Who the fuck was still using a Walkman in 2001?

While the portable CD players from Sony were branded "Discman", they later used the "Walkman" brand for a range of featurephones (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_W580i https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_W580i) explicitly designed as music players. So you could actually say that the _iPhone_ ultimately beat the Walkman...

hef19898 7y ago
How I loved these feature phones. Did everything I needed, playing music later even e-mail also it was nowhere near as nice as Gmail. Youtube wasn't an option, but the sound quality was at least on par with my Pixel 2. Also phones were small enough to fit in every pocket.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
They almost certainly did that just to keep the trademark active.

pmlnr 7y ago

I was using this around 2001: Freecom Beatman Mini CD MP3 Player ( https://www.semox.de/23-06-2008/verspateter-fruhjahrsputz-ist-fur-dich-was-dabei/ https://www.semox.de/23-06-2008/verspateter-fruhjahrsputz-is..., scroll ) MP3 players in 2001 were either expensive or had tiny capacity, eg a single album, which was never enough.

rchaud 7y ago
Yup, I had a Memorex MP3-CD player around then. Gave me the flexibility to play both regular CDs and 700MB of MP3s on a CD-R, at a much cheaper price than what iPods were going for at the time.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

I did, AFAIR. USB MP3 players haven't happened yet AFAIR, and the alternative were DiskMans, which had all the problems of optical drives: shake it harder, it'll lose playback or damage the CD; any scratch or speck of dust on the CD was likely to make some tracks unplayable or even half of the CD unseekable, etc. Optical media really sucked hard for regular use. In retrospect, I'm surprised people put up with CDs and DVDs for so long.

erfgh 7y ago
Factory-pressed CDs are really durable. I have CDs from the 80s and they still work fine. Now CD-Rs... it depends what you buy. If you used some cheapo brands then yeah they would fail. Otherwise they were also fine.
RmDen 7y ago
I had a Rio 300 followed by a Rio 500 before the iPod was announced... those were the times.. converting to 64bit wma format so you could fit maybe 40 songs on the 300

jacobush 7y ago

The mp3 players of 2001 were so fucked up that keeping your Walkman in use wasn’t uncommon. Not among techies maybe but regular people, many of whom didn’t even have a computer yet. How would they even fill their mp3 players? (And even the techies could sigh - rip CDs? Download mp3 from ftp sites?) On many occasions it was still easier, even in 2001, to dub a CD to a cassette than juggle the computer gear.

badamp 7y ago
The Walkman was sold until recently (if it isn’t still) and of course living in a big city you see a handful of people using a Walkman. It never died completely. There is of course the hipster resurgence of cassettes of the 2010s. Of all this I’m aware. But techie or hipster or not I was around in 2001 and the Walkman was well past mass adoption by that point in the western world. Shitty MP3 players that people loaded up with Napster and Discmans/Aiwas knockoff were what the poors and regulars did. MD and nicer hard drive players were the enthusiast options. The iPod did not have the Walkman to contend with in a meaningful sense. Also in the US at least, the majority of households had a PC by 2001. I came from a shit poor backwater by this sites standards. We had computers. And by 2001, FTP sites? That was post peak of Napster (after Feb 2001). Kazaa, Emule, etc were all regulars options. You’re a few years off, which was substantial in the 95-2001 timeframe.
- jacobush 7y ago
  I may be tainted by the fact that I doggedly stuck to Linux in the time period 1995-2014. :-) And I agree, walkman was not a major contender in 2001, I just mean it wasn't entirely gone from "normal user" perspective. But I stand by that iPod was the first solution which had as easy UX as a Walkman if you wanted your own playlist. As shitty as iTunes was and is, it was still the first really working music software anyone could use.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

EliRivers 7y ago

I recall the first time I bought a cassette tape walkman was about the year 2003, 2004.