Week+1


 * Question:** Compare and contrast a Sony Walkman with an Apple iPod, and describe the differences in their physical construction, interface design, technology and delivery of sound. Quick sketches are helpful for this analytical process.

The Sony Walkman can be considered the father of portable media players. An ingenious idea gained popularity very quickly. On the other hand, the Apple iPod is lightyears ahead of the Walkman. Firstly, the iPod has a sleek and thin design. The Walkman is quite bulky with its mechanical parts visible. Apple has focused its efforts on not only creating a portable media device, but on providing an attractive user-friendly design to be used with minimal effort. In this I believe they have succeeded. The Sony Walkman is big and heavy, where the keys may be difficult to press for some and sometimes may stick. The iPod uses four simple keys to control all functions on the device. All the buttons are located on a “wheel”, making adjusting the volume an easy task going in a clockwise direction to increase it and a counter-clockwise to decrease it. Additionally, there is a display on the iPod which the Walkman lacks. This allows for the user to view the current song playing and to browse through the song selection according to artist, album, or by playlist. The Walkman has none of these options. The user has to blindly press rewind or forward to find where the current song ends and the next song begins. This is not user friendly at all and can become quite frustrating. Also, the iPod can carry thousands of songs, whereas the user of the Walkman is limited to the current cassette playing in the device that will hold about 10-12 songs maximum. Thus it is clear that the rapidly changing technology has allowed for Apple iPod to create a far superior device over the original Sony Walkman.