The venerable Sony Walkman® “walked” away from the game
last month for good. Officially retired by Sony Corporation and
out of production as a global consumer product although some
limited versions will apparently still be available in technology
backwaters, mostly in underdeveloped parts of Asia.

The Sony Walkman® has lingered around in a manner similar to
a whithered old athlete who has stayed around a bit too long and
couldn’t take the hint that the time has come to hang up the cleats.

Maybe not as bad a situation as Hall Of Fame baseball player
Willy Mays stumbling over his own feet in the outfield, but the
sentiment is quite the same.

Young people still drive the market for music as they always have,
and many of today’s most enthusiastic consumers parents were
not even born yet when Sony introduced their portable cassette
player back in 1979.

The Sony Walkman® was one of the first easily portable major
market consumer devices that played recorded music and was
also capable of real stereo sound although the weak and tinny-sounding
headphones of the era pale in comparison to the eardrum damaging
headsets of today.

Cassette tapes are not even an afterthought in the current fast-paced
world of digital media. Cassette tapes were long ago eclipsed by
the once-revolutionary shiny plastic CD discs which are themselves
on the way to the sidelines permanently.

Change comes too fast in many areas of the consumer marketplace
leading to flaky conspiracy theories about designed-in obsolescence.

Such ideas are bunk and worthy of the scorn they receive.

The new media types such as MP3s and the iPods that are their
companion are simply smaller, faster and exceedingly more efficient
than what was available in the era of the cassette tape player.

Sony Walkman®. We hardly knew ya.