Las Vegas. The Consumer Electronics Show. Wannabe tech startups hawking their ‘groundbreaking’ products next to the established big boys and slot machines. A journalist pleading with a Sony executive, trying to get this businessman to understand that his groundbreaking product doesn’t have a chance. The Sony exec insists “We think we know best.”
That was 1978, and the journalist, writing for Videofax magazine ten years later, explains an interaction he had with a Sony executive at one of the early iterations of CES. At this meeting, the writer tries to get the Sony exec to understand that RCA’s VHS player, while perhaps technically inferior, has a ton of features that people want. I probably don’t need to explain to you what happens next. Sony’s Betamax loses, VHS wins.
I mention this because Sony and Honda’s partnership has produced the Afeela 1, a seemingly overpriced electric car that’s extremely advanced in certain areas yet missing some key features. These are two Japanese companies with storied histories who are historical leaders in technology, so they need to be taken seriously. Is Sony right this time? Are they repeating history?
That’s sort of the theme today for The Morning Dump. How worried should Japanese companies be about the future? There was once a time when it seemed like Japanese firms would take over the world. They didn’t. And now Japanese companies are awkwardly stuck between the United States and China. This year’s CES is a good example of this, with automakers and automotive companies freaking out over an American chipmaker, NVIDIA. At the same time, Japan’s key battery maker is saying it’s going to try to get China out of its battery supply chain in North America
And what about Toyota? Why, it just launched its own micromobility city. That’ll do the trick!
The Sony Afeela 1 Vs. The World
The first update I got about the Afeela 1’s price was not from Sony or Honda or the combined Sony Honda Mobility. It was from an open-minded journalist pal at the press conference who immediately insisted, upon seeing the price and specs, that everyone involved should be sent to prison. Well, that’s the mild version of it I’m willing to share.
Automotive journalists who, it should be remembered, were largely skeptical of Tesla for years, do not get this. Or, at least, the ones I’ve talked to and seen post on social, don’t get it. The approach from Sony and Honda is to build a car that’s more a consumer electronic than an actual vehicle you drive. From the company’s press release:
SHM aims to revolutionize the mobility experience by redefining the relationship between people and mobility. The first model, AFEELA 1, pursues an interactive relationship between people and vehicles through the integration of advanced software and high-performance hardware, resulting in intelligent mobility. AFEELA 1 will continue to evolve as a new form of mobility that remains closely connected to people, through collaboration with creators and ongoing software updates.
AFEELA 1 is equipped with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that reduces driving stress and provides a safe and secure mobility experience, as well as an interactive personal agent that enables communication with the vehicle. The cabin features a unique sound system and displays optimally placed for each seat, allowing occupants to enjoy a variety of apps and entertainment content. The vehicle’s performance is designed to provide a sense of unity with the driver, ensuring agile and stable handling while offering a high-quality ride for all passengers
The first big issue, of course, is the range and price. The new car is set to offer relatively slower charging speeds (150 kW), and lower range (around 300 miles on the EPA cycle), from a large battery (91 kWh), at a price ($89k to $100k if you want a non-black one) that seems to make no sense. Just from the pure stats, as Thomas pointed out, there’s not a lot here that can be justified. Just for comparison, a $42k Hyundai Ioniq 6 can go 316 miles (or 342 with the single motor), use a 350 kWh charger, and does all this with a smaller (77.4 kWh) battery.
When first discussed, the SHM Afeela 1 was supposed to have up to Level 3 autonomy, wherein the car is driving itself for long periods of time. Instead, it’s being touted as having “Level 2+” autonomy, which is whatever Sony wants it to be, I suppose, since it appears to be a term someone made up. Granted, the Afeela 1 does have an incredible number of sensors. There are 40 in total, including cameras, radar, ultrasonic, and even LIDAR. Again, you’re buying an entertainment system you can drive, that’s part Walkman and part PS5.
It’s entirely possible that the autojournalists are all wrong and Sony and Honda are correct. So let’s go back to the whole premise of this piece. Did Sony and Honda just create a Betamax?
I’ll refer you again to the Betamax (or Beta Tape) article from Videofax, which is the best version of this history lesson I’ve read. The journalists point to all sorts of familiar flaws, especially Sony’s insistence that it didn’t need a longer playing time because that would impair quality. Even worse, Sony insisted on not sharing its license so that other companies could build Betamax players, or cameras, or tapes. It was Sony or nothing.
At the dawn of the consumer video age, dating back to the earliest meetings between representatives of the Beta and VHS camps, Sony made a major tactical error in assuming that their marketing expertise alone was strong enough to make Beta the dominant format. We feel that this was the single biggest blunder that directly led to the Beta’s downfall. By refusing to acquiesce to RCA’s demands for longer-playing time, Sony lost the support of the number-one TV manufacturer in the U.S. By refusing to license Hitachi to make Beta, for fear of alienating Matsushita, Sony ultimately wound up losing support from both firms. Without the support of Matsushita and RCA, Sony could never recover from the lost momentum. Keep in mind that all of these events occurred before a single Beta or VHS deck was ever sold to consumers. Once these seeds were sewn, the end of the battle was essentially over before it began.
So is this thing Betamax? It has a shorter range, presumably because most people rarely use the range they’re promised. It’s technically interesting but less sexy than most of its competitors.
Nah, it’s not Betamax. This is where historical analogs sometimes fall apart. In a weird way, Tesla is probably more Betamax than SHM, it’s just that Tesla was stubborn and smart enough to make it work. Tesla insisted on doing things its own way, including utilizing a proprietary charging standard and forcing others to adapt to it. It built its own charging network and refused to use dealers. Tesla was the more expensive option, with the Nissan Leaf (which used the shared charging plug at the time) being the cheaper (but in many ways inferior) alternative.
So is SHM building VHS? Nope. If anyone is building VHS today it’s Chinese automakers. They’re able to build a wide variety of cars, packed with both low- and high-tech features, at every price point and for every potential buyer. Most Chinese automakers outside of BYD don’t make their own batteries, instead relying on CATL or other firms. They also use a shared charging standard.
Perhaps this is LaserDisk? Something that’ll be prized by a few and definitely offers some advantages, but also doesn’t have a large enough place in the market to be sustainable. SHM is touting what it calls 3A, which stands for “Autonomy, Augmentation, Affinity” and this product is only to be sold in California at first. It’s a niche product for niche customers right now, so in that sense it’s perhaps hard to judge.
Still, I don’t see it. If you want true Level 3 autonomy with LIDAR you can get a Mercedes-Benz with DrivePilot. If you trust Elon Musk and cameras, you can get way more car with literally any Tesla.
Automakers Are Acting Like ‘Swifties’ Around NVIDIA CEO
Who is the most important automotive supplier in the world? Is it Michelin? They provide the only part of the car that’s supposed to regularly touch the road. Maybe Bosch, which makes all sorts of key hardware. It could be CATL, the biggest battery maker for cars there is.
Based on the reaction he got at CES, there’s an argument to be made that it’s NVIDIA. Carmakers don’t want to be left behind in the shift to autonomous cars, which is somehow both inevitable and also somehow never quite here, and you need compute in order to make that work. There’s no company in the world that has the compute that NVIDIA provides, which is why Elon Musk has been so keen on securing as much of the company’s chips as he possibly can get his hands on.
NVIDIA DRIVE, which is the overarching name for NVIDIA’s mix of chips and architecture, is on display at CES in a huge number of cars, including Volvo’s EX90, the Zeekr Mix and Zeekr 001, the Rivian R1s, the Lucid Air, and many more. The response to NVIDIA Chairman and CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote was described thusly by Automotive News in a story titled “At CES 2025, it’s Nvidia’s world and we’re all just living in it.”
Nvidia’s leather-jacket-wearing CEO Jensen Huang has helped attract the tech-obsessed to the automotive world and vice versa. CES attendees queuing up at 4:30 p.m. for Huang’s 6:30 p.m. address evoked Taylor Swift’s Swifties, except the fervent chatter revolved around compute instead of Travis Kelce being cute.
The promise of AI, powered by Nvidia’s hardware and software, has erased the dividing line between the physical world of cars and trucks and the virtual one of big tech. At CES, it is glaringly obvious: Times have changed.
The worlds of cars and computers have become one; it’s now Nvidia’s and Huang’s world, and we’re all just living in it.
I’ve probably mentioned before that I’m a big fan of ’70s and ’80s Sci-Fi, especially from William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. The work these authors put forth assumes a political, technological, cultural, manufacturing, and financial hegemony from Japan that never quite emerged post-Bubble. If anything, the cultural imports from Japan have mostly usurped the technological ones lately. NVIDIA is an American company, after all.
Panasonic Says It’s ‘No. 1 Objective’ Is To Remove Its Dependence On China
Both Honda and Toyota have become dominant players in the car market in the United States and, especially with hybrid technology, continue to pick up market share. I don’t want to act as if Japanese companies are all lost and hopeless. While both of those companies are behind their peers when it comes to building electric cars, there’s one Japanese company that’s been quite successful in the EV age.
Panasonic became the main battery supplier to Tesla almost from the beginning, and it’s helped put Panasonic Energy of North America as one of the five largest battery makers in the world. Does it really on China? Yes. The Chinese government made securing the materials necessary to make modern car batteries a priority and still control most of the supply.
At CES, the CEO of Panasonic Energy NA told a Reuters reporter that taking China out of the supply chain for batteries used over here is its “No. 1 objective” due to President Trump’s projected tariffs:
The first thing the business has to do in regards to Trump tariffs is “not to have the supply chain dedicated from China,” Swan told Reuters in an interview in Las Vegas on Monday at the CES trade show.
That’s good for Panasonic, but it’s just the latest example of car-related Japanese industries having to adjust to American politics. President Biden has blocked a deal that would see U.S. Steel sold to Japan’s Nippon Steel, causing all sorts of concerns in Japan.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi also called Biden’s decision “unfortunate” in a regular news conference on Tuesday. “A strong economic relationship is also the foundation of [Japan-U.S.] bilateral relationship,” he said.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba also said on Monday that Washington’s decision has raised eyebrows in the nation’s industrial sector and that his administration will “urge the U.S. government to take action to eliminate these concerns.”
The incident has “a very large impact” on Japanese businesses, according to Ken Kobayashi, chairperson of The Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry and former chairman of Mitsubishi Corporation.
This isn’t an issue that looks to immediately improve in a Trump Administration given campaign promises around imports.
Toyota Is Building A City Of The Future
Toyota had an interesting announcement at CES this year, touting its “Woven City” of the future it is building on the grounds of a former plant in Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan.
You can read the press release, which sounds a little like science fiction:
Residents and visitors will play an equally vital role alongside inventors in Woven City. Known as ‘Weavers,’ these individuals share a passion for the ‘expansion of mobility’ and a commitment to building a more flourishing society. Through their participation in co-creation activities, Weavers will contribute to realizing the full potential of Woven City.
At the official launch of Woven City, starting in fall 2025 or thereafter, approximately 100 residents―primarily Toyota and WbyT staff and their families―are expected to participate in co-creation activities as the first residents. The community will then gradually expand to include external inventors and their families. Phase 1 is projected to accommodate around 360 residents, with the total population, including Phase 2 and subsequent phases, expected to reach approximately 2,000. Initially, visitors will be limited to related parties, with plans to welcome the general public to participate as Weavers in co-creation activities starting in FY2026 or thereafter.
Woven City also serves as a test course for Toyota’s transformation into a mobility company. Together, Toyota and WbyT aim to redefine mobility, expanding its scope beyond transportation to encompass the movement of people, goods, information, and energy for the benefit of individuals and society.
The ‘weavers’ sound like a use-caste in N.K. Jemisin’s “The Fifth Season.”
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Doesn’t “Crosseyed And Painless” by the Talking Heads just feel right today? It feels right to me.
The Big Question
What is the historical equivalent of the Afeela 1? Related question: What’s your all-time favorite Sony product?
Top graphic images: Sony, Honda
“What is the historical equivalent of the Afeela 1?”
I would say the Afeela is like the SuperVideoCD… which was inferior to DVD and was released shortly after DVD came out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Video_CD
Or a more modern equivalent… the HD DVD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD
Which was beaten by Blu-ray.
Blu-Ray was probably the first time that a Sony technology beat a more practical competitor in the market, after a long history of failed proprietary media formats. I think there are two reasons for that: One, they licensed it to outside manufacturers, unlike Betamax; and two, they packed a Blu-Ray player into every PlayStation 3 console, which gave the format immediate widespread distribution. Thus the format’s success was actually delivered by a Sony division that had nothing to do with the development of the medium. For once, Sony was the beneficiary of good timing.
“For once, Sony was the beneficiary of good timing.”
And learning from past mistakes and being determined that BluRay wasn’t gonna be the next BetaMax.
And yeah, the Playstation move was an excellent strategy.
I think Sony might have made another Qualia, an expensive product that nobody is actually willing to pay for
“RCA’s VHS player” – I recall that JVC (not RCA) developed the VHS format. Maybe RCA popularized it and sold a bajillion VHS systems?
No, because the Betamax was an excellent, high quality product that just happened to lose the marketing wars. This thing has none of the quality and technological superiority that Sony of the 70s and 80s was renowned for.
The only feature that mattered was porn.
I like the Woven City name. A nice homage to Toyota’s roots.
The porn thing is a myth. Both formats were made to record TV broadcasts, and VHS recorded longer (and was much cheaper). Betamax had already lost long before selling/renting videos of any kind became a thing. There was some porn on betamax, but not much because no one had the player so why would publishers bother?
Intellivision. Atari gave people a system with more games (and games that matched up with arcade experience at the time), simpler controls, and multiple controller options. Intellivision claimed to offer something special with more complexity, but the number pad overlays for different games and the awkward controllers made it a lot harder for consumers to quickly pick up. And the price of the system and the optional keyboard add on were expensive (and the keyboard add-on was very hard to find and never really supported).
This is overpriced, misses what consumers want, and can’t actually point to any real benefits to the consumer. Just like the Intellivision.
(I did put a lot of hours on an Intellivision, though. It wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t the right product to compete with Atari.)
This is 100% the correct take
A friend of mine had an Intellivision. Before I got ColecoVision I would go over and we’d play it a lot. By far my favorite Intellivision game was B17 Bomber, which made use of the voice box. You’d fly missions and you could toggle between multiple gun turrets, bomber mode, pilot mode, and navigation. We’d play as a team and one guy would take the guns and one would pilot/bomb. It was awesome.
There was another that I think was called Dreadnaught Factor which I really liked.
Those disc controllers were a pain though, and never felt very accurate or sturdy.
B17 Bomber ate up a fair amount back in the day. My brother and I still say “BEE SEVENTEEN BOMBER” any time one is remotely referenced.
Coleco had the Smurfs game, right?
Yes, but that was one game I didn’t have. I still have about 20 cartridges for it; on my original console the Player 1 controller port broke so I got another console off eBay, it’s complete and works. Last time I used it was about 12 years ago, I ran it through I think three adapters to a flat screen I had and surprisingly it worked!
Had the wheel, the Super Action controllers and the Atari adapter module as well. That system got a lot of use from me in the early 80’s.
Pretty sweet, man.
Ooh, I never had the voice box. That sounds a lot cooler than my experience. Played a lot of Lock n Chase, Galaxian (or Galaxian-like game…I can’t remember), and Frog Bog (frogs eating flies).
“There was once a time when it seemed like Japanese firms would take over the world. They didn’t.”
Twice actually.
“And now Japanese companies are awkwardly stuck between the United States and China.”
Well yeah, that’s just geography.
I’ve been avoiding Sony since they were installing rootkits on PCs when someone put a Sony recording artist’s CD in their computer. The CEO said something like, “Most people don’t know what a rootkit is, what’s the problem?”
Same here. I only ever made one exception, because a Sony camera was the only one out at the time that had all the features I wanted. But even that was 10 years ago, and I have not put any other money toward Sony hardware since. That rootkit scandal was bad.
Sony – Because Caucasians are just too damn tall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgTLx93vyrU
Holy crap that’s amazing.
I get the impression that Afeela is more of a testing ground for Honda’s future EVs than it is anything else. They figure out the manufacturing/engineering process and if a few people buy some, then great. I highly doubt this was ever supposed to be a massive moneymaking adventure. I have no idea what Sony gets out of it, though.
I assume the Afeela is a vanity project for executives on both sides. It allows them to lord over the “top secret project” and (hopefully) creates a temporary boost in stock price that they directly benefit from. No worries that it creates little to no long term value for either company.
It would not surprise me at all if the Sony effort started back when the rumors of an “Apple car” were circulating. And the Sony executives panicked in sort of a Dr. Strangelove-esque manner with “We can’t have a car gap!”
My PS1 and PS2 are probably my most fondly remembered Sony products, along with my first car Discman that had two different colors of backlighting to pick from. Hell, I often thing of getting a PS5 just so I can get back into Gran Turismo again. My least favorite Sony? Probably the 27″ Trinitron my wife and I bought way back. It was a goddamn tank but it weighed well over 200 freaking pounds. Moving it was an ordeal.
I wish I still had my PS1, I gave it to a friend who still uses it. It made wonderful whirr whirr noises, which let you know it was doing something while the game loaded.
I crank up the PS2 still to this day to play some Vice City once in a while. Good times.
Not the same thing, but Rockstar allowed a Switch version of the all-stars (GTAIII, Vice City, and San Andreas). They work surprisingly well, even if the controllers and controls are a bit different. That’s what finally let me let go of my PS2.
Still miss Medal of Honor, though.
I will stand on the idea that “Driver” was the best game ever created. That game shook tits, lol
I’ve always maintained that the absolute best thing about the advent of LCD/OLED TVs is the ability to move them. Moving my 27″ CRT was basically a non-option unless I had a couple of people around to help.
Right? Our old Sony had the nerve to not break once these tv’s became affordable. I will give it that, the damn thing was a tank in both construction and performance.
I imagine that the Afeela 1’s sound system will probably be top notch.
I’m waiting for this whole vehicle to be open sourced. /s
I loved my Sony Playstation 2. I was just the right age for this to be my 1st gaming system and I swear nearly every boy my age was issued a Playstation 2 at some point. Real fond memories of playing split screen with my friends.
I’d say the Afeela is like the Google+ social media Google tried to launch. It was from an established company trying to expand to a space that was already filled with viable competitors, and while it offered some interesting features there was nothing compelling enough to make it a choice for most people.
I’m interested to see what Honda’s ev plans are going forward, despite the success of the Prologue they are stepping away from the GM collaboration and this Sony collaboration seems like a step backwards. Maybe the Nissan merger will yield something?
I still have a PS2 hooked up for the rare times I feel like playing Katamari Damacy or Mr. Mosquito. Still rocking after all these years.
FYI there’s a Switch version of Katamari that works very well. When we got Tears of the Kingdom, the emulators (esp GTA) made me less sad to sell the PS2.
I’ve still not bought anything newer than the PS2… I just don’t really game that much, but I did play something pretty mind blowing at a friend’s house that made me consider getting a Switch. Maybe that can be my tax refund gift to myself… it would certainly be more fun than buying a CPAP.
Ha! CPAP. That’s on my list, too.
I was a big GTA fan but when the small child arrived, I was obligated to shelve it, and never really moved on. But when Breath of the Wild came out, well, it’s basically kid-friendly GTA without the cars, if you squint, so we…switched. Besides that, I haven’t played anything newer than PS2 games either.
Best wishes on your tax filing!
“SHM aims to revolutionize the mobility experience by redefining the relationship between people and mobility. The first model, AFEELA 1, pursues an interactive relationship between people and vehicles through the integration of advanced software and high-performance hardware, resulting in intelligent mobility. AFEELA 1 will continue to evolve as a new form of mobility that remains closely connected to people, through collaboration with creators and ongoing software updates.
AFEELA 1 is equipped with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that reduces driving stress and provides a safe and secure mobility experience, as well as an interactive personal agent that enables communication with the vehicle. The cabin features a unique sound system and displays optimally placed for each seat, allowing occupants to enjoy a variety of apps and entertainment content. The vehicle’s performance is designed to provide a sense of unity with the driver, ensuring agile and stable handling while offering a high-quality ride for all passengers”
I get such a Faraday Future vibe while reading this.
When you don’t have anything interesting to say, just throw a marketing word salad at people! I’ve been in marketing/advertising and data analytics for almost a decade, and the number of people who love writing and reading that shit is remarkable.
The historical transportation equivalent might be the Bristol Brabazon. Too much focus on luxury/entertainment for the passengers (100 passengers in a plane the size of a 767), resulting in too high a cost per seat mile. And, my guess is a complete misunderstanding of why people use commercial aircraft – we don’t get on them to be entertained, we get on them to get transported to a far away location.
Luxury and entertainment are nice and all, but is the cost worth it? (Of course it also didn’t help they were trying to build a propeller plane at the beginning of the jet age, whereas here they’re trying to build this thing a little too early in the battery/electrification age – so in that regard it isn’t an exact analog.)
Propulsion system not withstanding, it’s the same with this car – its purpose is to get you from point A to point B. All those entertainment features are pretty much beside the point, for the majority of us.
I’m sure there are social media types that would buy this to show off, but I just don’t see a huge market for the thing.
There are people who can afford to value luxury and entertainment above all else, but they are not shopping Hondas. And they’re not buying commercial airline tickets.
I’m having a hard time coming up with a historical equivalent for the Afeela, mostly because I have no idea how this vehicle is different from any other EV currently available. The marketing materials give almost no clues about what they have created, or why I would want one at any price (much less at a six figure price tag). One line stands out to me as particularly ridiculous:
“The first model, AFEELA 1, pursues an interactive relationship between people and vehicles through the integration of advanced software and high-performance hardware, resulting in intelligent mobility.”
I know what all of those words mean, but in that order they convey no meaning. Products like the Betamax might have had some obvious flaws, but at least the intended function of the product (and why someone might want one) is obvious. The Afeela press release seems like it was written by a someone who is unfamiliar with the product but paid by the letter to write something. Or maybe written by an AI prompted to create a paragraph of ridiculous techy buzzwords and corporate jargon.
Honestly, from what I have seen about the Afeela, I wonder if it is even a real product. It seems like a marketing stunt to me, or a desperate attempt to confuse people into thinking their ordinary vehicle is a revolutionary product.
Just realized Sony Honda Mobility is abbreviated SHM which is just too darn close to SMH.
Sony did have Blu Ray win over HD-DVD but they pretty much bought themselves that market. I think the Betamax analogy isn’t really equivalent as that was actually a better format, the hookedonAfeela1 isn’t even that good like compared to the Ioniq 6 as mentioned.
This is like the Sony minidisc and DAT vs compact disc maybe? I dunno Sony’s had a lot of wild swings with technology, good they keep swinging for the fences I guess.
I was thinking minidisc and DAT myself.
I was big into minidisc. I absolutely loved my little portable minidisc recorder/player and thought this MP3 thing would just go away.
I was also a proponent of Windows Phone, and thought Zune was the better product. Do not ever take my advice.
The last generation of Zune was a really good device. Just like Microsoft to flub the product launch and get it right just as the product becomes irrelevant. One think I hated about the Zune is that it needed it’s own software and didn’t play nice w/Windows Music Player.
I had (actually still have) a Zune HD, and the Zune software was superior to the iTunes software of the day, by a lot.
iTunes was a horrible piece of software back then. Haven’t used it in years, I assume it is bad just not as awful now.
Zune was the better product, but Apple has consistently employed the best marketing team on the planet for the past two decades and their grip on the consumer psyche is reflected in their status as one of/the current most valuable company in the world.
I’m looking at my Zune, which rocked, and also thinking about the gigs of DRM-locked music I’ve still got on a drive somewhere just waiting for the monthly signal from the Zune store that my subscription is up to date. That may be a while.
The Zune name-check also jarred my memory of the Creative Zen media player I bought my wife in the aughts. What a remarkable little gadget that was when it came out.
I bought a Zen touch in 2005. It outlasted the warranty by about a month. Such a piss off at the time. Before that I had an RCA Lyra mp3 player but wanted more storage. Heck, I probably still have the lyra in a box somewhere but their weird software probably doesn’t exist anymore. Couldn’t just paste songs onto it, had to run through their player. If you just pasted the file in it would play it backwards. I’m sure there was a reason for this.
The early MP3 players had all kinds of goofy proprietary software as a concession to the music labels to try to prevent pirating. I had an early Sony MP3 player that had enough memory to hold about two dozen songs and ran for about 45 minutes on a single AA. I vaguely remember some goofy process of loading music onto it that was a pain in the ass due to anti-pirating efforts.
I still have one Sansa Clip left from my collection of six. That was the BEST MP3 player I’ve ever had. A single charge and it would last me a 14-hour flight across the Pacific.
Holy crap, looking up the Sansa clip I think I had one of those. Kept it in my car. Someone used to make a board that would plug into the MD/Tape player slot of my old Mazda Protege5 (and probably other Mazda’s of the same era) with a headphone jack.
Sansa Clip and Protege5?!! You and I can be friends.
I loved my Zune, and much like GM Microsoft got it really right towards the end of a product run and then killed it. With that said, as much as I loathe the iTunes software my iPod Classic is still going after 12 or more years with just some degraded battery life as to be expected, and I’m seriously thinking about replacing the battery and possibly upgrading the storage to have it go another decade (I decline to have my phone be my music device for a number of reasons).
Let’s see, I had two Sony portable players, a Sharp that would play and record, a JVC and Sony component, and a Sony car player. Loved that I could create mix MDs. Stopped using MDs when recordable CDs became cheap. I have no idea where any of my players went, but I still have some MDs in a box.
I have the original Zune too, but the charging cable broke. Got it because it was cheaper than an iPod, but IMO an iPod is easier to use.
Does this mean that there will be a noncompatible commercial version of the Afeela that will find some success in a very specific niche for decades after the consumer version flops?
Holy ZUNE, Batman. Will someone make an EV that is not also a high tech Carnival? Just someone make a cheap, light simple EV.
I will wait for the automaker that builds the DVD version of an EV before buying, thanks.
Good call, get a nice one of those before they want you to get a blu-ray version that is way more expensive for just bells and whistles.
So would teleporters be the Netflix/YouTube of EV?
No, that would be the ill-fated “lease our entire lineup for $3000/month and swap as often as you like” schemes that Volvo, Cadillac, and maybe others mused about (not sure if they were actually ever offered to customers)
Historical Sony equivalent? DAT. Pretty much the answer to a question nobody asked. Favorite Sony product? Probably the OG PS3. Great system as well as my first Blu-Ray player.
MD? Memory Stick & XQD cards? Sony has a history of going its own way and reinventing the wheel.
Three words: IOMEGA ZIP DRIVE.
100 MB was phenomenal versus the 1.44 MB of a flopyy disk. Now the Iomega JAZ drive on the other hand.
I ran a student magazine in college in the late 90’s. We used so so many of these to move scanned negatives, because digital cameras were crap at that time.
I spent so much time at the school computer lab scanning photos with the online editor and got to know her pretty well. She’s now the missus. Thanks slow-as-fuck scanners!
Per my SCSI comment above, I also have a fantastic film scanner that’s serving as a bookend for lack of some kind of adapter. 🙁
My Adaptec SCSI card was, like, 50% of my net worth at the time.
I have a feeling I spent more than $800 for a gig of RAM to run PhotoShop 3 on Windows. Now I have a cigar box of 32 Gb cards I can’t be bothered to pick up. Reminds me that I probably ought to find a Compact Flash reader before it’s too late.
Memory update: the first photo job that I delivered to a client digitally was on a Kodak “PhotoCD.” They saved each file in 5 different resolutions, I think, one up to 25 Mb, but ,as all the other stuff here, required proprietary software to use that I also needed to set up for the client and which I’m sure they never used again. I’m looking at a few disks now, including an empty jewel box because I recycled a desktop tower without emptying the two optical drives. I have those original chromes, in a different box over there somewhere, which I can’t easily use because MY EXCELLENT SCANNER USES SCSI [starts day drinking].
This: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/vlc_media_player.html
VLC Media player made me able to playback and convert video from a Canon (I think Canon) recorder with the proprietary software.
Thanks, I use often for video, didn’t know it could do PCDs! I’ve used PCDtoJPEG most recently, converts pretty well. I also seem to have XnView on my machine, but as I recall it could only open the low-res files and I never sorted it out.
https://pcdtojpeg.sourceforge.io/Home.html
Moore’s law happening inside a cigar box. Perfect!
Zip filled a need in the market at the time. The alternative for moving large amounts of data was a big stack of floppies or much pricier stuff from Syquest.
100%, it was THE killer app for a few years there. And then poof into thin air.
As in, there are great family memories trapped on a dozen beta tapes in a box under the stairs for lack of a playback deck and also more trapped on a dozen zip drives in the bottom desk drawer for lack of a SCSI adapter? Sure.
Went to school from ’95-00. Spent pretty much every night of 1999-2000 in the library after homework filling my ZIP drive with music from Napster.
Mini Disc car stereos are a Thing amongst the retro Miata crowd.
I don’t know what happened to mine, but it’s nice to hear that they’re still around. I had a CD changer hooked up to it, and I could actually tell that CDs sound better than MD by switching back and forth between the two sources (and this was in a noisy ICE car).
My favorite Sony product was the TC-C521. It was a five cassette changer. I’ll never forget seeing it at Circuit City and opening a credit account just to buy it! It was wild, and I still can’t believe it existed, I had it, and have no idea what happened to it.
I remember those. I never had one or saw one in person but thought it was so cool and wanted one.
I still have a Sony 400+1 DVD/CD carousel. Put all my movies and music into it, and then discs died. So it has just enough capacity to hold everything I’ll ever have, I guess.
I had a LaserDisc player.
You had to walk over and flip the disc over manually halfway through your movie.
It was the year after I bought mine they came out with a LaserDisc player that had optics on both sides of the disc so that one did not need to flip it over.
But hey – the resolution was good.
If you had a TV that could support it.
My grandpa had a massive laserdisc collection and was the only person I ever knew to have them. I was the designated disc flipper as the youngest in the family and I also remember it would display a turtle upside down icon if you put the disc in wrong for the single sided discs.
College Biology Textbooks had a laserdisc for the instructors that was full of images and photographs they could use during the lectures.
That’s right! My high school science teacher used a laser disc in the early 00’s to show us stuff. Second and last time I recall seeing a laser disc.
In my first year of HS my English teacher used a laserdisc to show his copy of
Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juliet to the class.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet_(1968_film)
We all appreciated the extra resolution of laserdisc during the film’s nude scene.
I am so much older we watched Lawrence Olivier in Hamlet on some sort of real-reall video console player with a built in black-and-white screen.
My FIL asked me to go find him a near-mint LaserDisc player in the mid aughts when his died. Craiglist, a 70-mile drive to pick it up and a trip the UPS store bought me good will from the in-laws for a good five years. Totally worth the hassle.
My older brother, being an early adopter of everything, had one of the original laser disc players and lots of early laser discs. The original discs couldn’t fit much on them, so it took three discs (six sides) to get through a movie.
I still have a laserdisc player, in the garage. It was old when I got it in the 90’s. I have about 20 movies (in a box in the house).
If anyone wants all, or knows someone who wants them, I can meet somewhere in The Valley or Ventura County. Preferably a brewery. $50 seems right.
I still have some of my LDs, but no player.
Slightly related, but Sharp made linear turntables with a tonearm that would go underneath a record, and play the other side. Genius!