The original Sony Walkman is 30 years old as it was originally introduced in 1979. I do distinctly remember these things from my childhood. I never specifically owned a true Sony model (only the cool kids were able to afford one), but the word Walkman was so widely used that it was the standard term used to describe a portable cassette player. In today’s age this hasn’t changed, except that we call any portable MP3 player an iPod whether made by Apple or not.

The Walkman was originally blue, however this didn’t last long as the vast majority of models were gray. And for whatever reason, Sony was able to make gray look cool in the 1980s.

As a sorta/kinda experiment, a teenager was asked to use one of these clunkers for a week instead of an iPod to see if he could figure it out.

A few quotes from that article:

• "When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks…"
• "It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape."
• "I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser…"
• "I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly…"

Go ahead and rest the rest from the link above. Good stuff.

As an interesting end note, audio compact discs were released to market only one year after the Walkman was introduced – and it’s still the standard audio format sold today.

Sandisk recently acquired MusicGremin, a company who makes wi-fi enabled MP3 players.

For those that ask “Does that mean you can share music between players wirelessly?” Yes. Microsoft has had this feature available on their Zune model.

And for those that ask “Isn’t sharing stealing?” Not in the way this is done. The music is delivered via a subscription service, so all the bases are covered.

What we will see from Sandisk is (hopefully) some portable MP3 players on the lower-cost end of the spectrum in a price range more people can afford.

Wireless goes right along with portable. A portable electronic device today that doesn’t have some kind of wireless option, be it Bluetooth or otherwise, is more or less worthless because you’re still chained to wires in order to bring digital content on the device.

As early as ‘09 we should be seeing several MP3 player choices – all with wireless options – in the sub-$150 range.

For those keeping score with Apple, the iPod touch is the only portable media-specific (this excludes the iPhone) model that has any wi-fi option at all. And it costs $299.