Written by: Tom Sawyer

   Walkman is a popular Sony brand used to market its portable audio and video players. The term Walkman is almost history, but those of us around at the time know how common these devices were back in the day. The original Walkman introduced a change in music listening habits, allowing people to carry their own choice of music with them. The original Walkman was marketed in the 80s as the Walkman in Japan, the Soundabout in many other countries including the US, Freestyle in Sweden and the Stowaway in the UK.

   I remember when the Walkman played cassette tapes, had a belt clip and was the most popular thing to have. Those things burned through some batteries so fast you almost needed to carry spares with you at all times. Remember how we used to hate to rewind or fast forward because we knew how much battery juice it would take? Come to think about it, we sure did use a lot of things that used batteries back in the day didn’t we?

   Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know what an iPod is, but what about the history? This from Wikipedia: iPod is a popular brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Inc and launched on October 23, 2001. As of 2008, the current product line-up includes the hard drive-based iPod classic, the touchscreen iPod touch, the video-capable iPod nano, the screenless iPod shuffle and the iPhone. Former products include the compact iPod mini and the spin-off iPod photo (since re-integrated into the main iPod classic line). iPod classic models store media on an internal hard drive, while all other models use flash memory to enable their smaller size (the discontinued mini used a Microdrive miniature hard drive). As with many other digital music players, iPods, excluding the iPod touch, can also serve as external data storage devices. Storage capacity varies by model.

   We are somewhere in the digital era – this may only be the infancy – and carrying around CDs, let alone cassette tapes, is a thing of the past. Today you had better have a computer with MP3 files or else the way you get your music is old as dirt. Ipods aren’t the only MP3 players by a long shot, but they have almost become the standard in the category; I know people who say they got an iPod when they really only have a MP3 player. The popular players from Apple range from the shuffle, a device that is about the size of a matchbook, all the way up to the iPod Touch, a device which utilizes a touchscreen to play music, videos, games, check email and many other things.

   While these devices still use batteries, we no longer have to change them frequently like the past. Instead, iPods must be plugged in either to a computer or a wall jack so their batteries can be recharged. In fact, the batteries of an iPod are sealed so you couldn’t change them if you wanted (there are actually kits to do this, but that is another topic). Where will we go from here? I don’t know if the size of these devices will get any smaller, but they are sure to get more complex, offer more features and contain more memory at cheaper costs. Solar power is also being discussed as a possibility to power future devices. Don’t think about the old solar power we used on calculators years ago though. There are developments in the works that will allow solar cells (for lack of a better term) to be placed behind the touchscreen which will go unnoticed by the user. I know battery companies can’t be happy about these developments, but what do you think?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Random Buzz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.