Hitting Sony's Tokyo Walkman press launch
posted Sep 8th 2005 12:00PM
Completely by accident, if you can believe that, we found ourselves at Sony's press launch for their new Walkman players in Tokyo this evening. Eschewing the Jobs approach of building things up with a presentation before whipping out the goods at the end, Sony simply had a troupe of models walking around from the get-go showing off the new hard disk players, the NW-A1000 and NW-A3000. Unfortunately for them, it seemed like most of the several hundred guests were music journalists more interested in the chance to see Franz Ferdinand play some songs from their new album, and Franz rather stole the new Walkmans' thunder.
Read on for a few shots of the festivities.
[UPDATE: Seems we maligned Sony by implying they hadn't done a launch presentation—we had cadged an invitation from Sony Music to the Franz live performance and didn't get wind of the Walkman launch, so, er, seems we just turned up too late. We've apprised SME of our interest in gadgets for next time.]
Franz Ferdinand, who were in Tokyo for 28 hours to film a commercial for Sony, play six songs, and get asked a few daft questions by the MC.
The NW-A3000 in its two colour variations.
The NW-A3000 clutched in our hot little hand. It’s a pretty solid piece of kit, at 182g, and that finish is going to show fingermarks even worse than a PSP.
The NW-A1000. Oddly, it felt impressively small even though its dimensions on paper wouldn’t suggest that.
That's a sweet device. If it worked with iTunes, I'd be all over it.
nice...
nice...
Completely by accident found yourselves in Tokyo. As someone who has not long been back from holiday in Japan, I really wish I had your sort of luck.
These are great looking players (they stole the RioCarbon shapes!), and I'd have bought one of the OLED flash players in a (gulp) flash if the damn things worked with Macs or iTunes.
Still, these players sell better than the shuffle in Japan - but I dunno about these selling better than discontinued minis or the nano.
Ewwwwwww!
They're more interesting than an iPod mini -- but not than an iPod nano.
iTunes sucks.
i cant wait to see if the new software "connect player" is any good
Chris--Being in Tokyo was by design; the press event was the accident :)
Hey David have you used itunes? I am no Apple fanboy I don't even own one of those suckers but I have to admit that itunes is the easiest to use slickest interface for organizing your music out there, or at least I have not seen a better one and I have tried a few. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction.
dt: Try winamp. I like it much better as a general audio player. It's way smaller in size on your desktop, it supports every file type, its way easier on your memory/processor, and its skinable (with some pretty damn sweet skins out there too). Not as good as Itunes for playing/burning/ripping though, not that I would use Itunes for the last two features anyway
Too bad these were not released last week, as they look lackluster compared to the nano...
nice try tho, Sony
(iTunes / airTunes fits my needs perfectly)
Oh, in my comment before, i meant not as good as Itunes for playLISTING/burning/ripping
Like the immense catalog on iTunes but don't wanna use iPod? Get JHymn
Yeah, accident :) Well, i just want to be at the right place at the right time ...
As cool as those look, they are useless if I can't run down to the corner and buy one. Can you even buy one in the US yet? Oh, winamp? does that burn, rip etc. ?
Craig - I think Winamp sucks. I used to use it and at one time is was good, but now it is missing so many features that make iTunes so great. Like playlists. Winamp does not have custom smart playlists or song ratings, so you have to drag all the files in and out of folders. Yuck. Plus iTunes works great sharing our network at work, not sure if Winamp can do that.
Winamp does have nice skins, that the one thing iTunes is missing.
zed - Yes, you can burn cds using Winamp.
Are you serious about this player? They look cheap! It looks like a garage door opener. All this does for me is make want to buy the iPod nano even more. I don't have an iPod yet if you can believe it... o_0
dt, I prefer Musicmatch or Winamp.
interesting discussion, love Apple, hate Sony, and so on... does anyone actually care about what happens to your digital music after you've reached maximum storage capacity on your little mp3 player? I'm already on the next level, too many digital music files, looking for a multi-room digital audio solution and have narrowed down my search to 2 devices, the Olive Symphony (http://www.olive.us), and the Sonos (http://www.sonos.com), does anyone have hands-on experience with either one of these units?
ITunes a little faster for playlisting, but the fact is that winamp has far more functionality than Itunes. With the most recent update, even smart playlists are possible. On top of that, there are thousands of plugins for just about everything imaginable, while Itunes has approximately....zero option for plugins.
On top of that, Winamp (along with many third party mp3 programs and even windows media player) sounds far better than Itunes.
The only really nice feature that I found with Itunes, which is really great when you live in a dorm especially, is the ability to play someone else's library over the network seemlessly.
thats my 2 cents.
yes winamp by far is much better then iTunes. iTunes is really overrated and its bulky as hell on the desktop, who wants something that big just as a music player. there are certain things that i like on each player, like iTunes is good for parties, media player is the best for video and editing music files, and winamp is the best for general music playing and listening to individual tracks.
yea, i'm definitly on the the next level, my Black Zen Micro 5gig is filled to its max capacity, thats why i'm waiting for the new Micro Photo. Its supposed to arrive sometime this fall, 8gig micro drive, 250,000 OLED display and 15hour removable battery. definitly worth the wait... did i mention its suppsed to be priced between 250-300USD? :D
by the way... this new sony walkman definitly looks like what the Rio Carbon should have been, nice job Sony, even though i still don't like you :p
spinaltap:
plugins are possible through QuickTime, as that's what iTunes relies on for Codec support. Although i'm not sure what other plug-ins you mayh be referring to.
RE #20
I reached past that level a long time ago. I filled my 60GB iPod Photo very quickly and started looking into the Sonos solution. Lucky for me, my (richer) best friend got a two-unit Sonos system for me to play with. (Silly guy thinks he bought it for himself...)
Anyway, after living with it for a while, I decided against it. What did I go with? For the same $$$ he was out for the Basic Sonos system, I got another 60GB iPod, a Mac Mini (wirelessly networked to my mass-storage Mac which stores my entire 90GB+ library) and three Airport Express units for other rooms speakers. For the price of another Sonos Zoneplayer, I could get yet another Mac Mini or 60GB iPod Photo, if I ever want to expand it even further.
Compared to that, I don't think the Sonos is so great. I don't get a cool (but unfortunately quite fragile, expensive to replace, and not actually very portable because it's so big) remote by going with the Mac Mini instead of the Sonos, but I get so many more features in the networked Mac Mini that Sonos will never be able to offer.
when is sony gonna release the battery life info? better or worse than hd5? that'd sell me on it... i really liked the replacable battery of the hd5
I've been using Winamp for about 5 years now, initially as a response to how craptacular Windows Media Player was (and still is, really). When I broke down and bought an Ipod for playing music at the gym, I was forced into using itunes. I can't stand the program. It's bulky, processor-intensive, and making playlists out of 4000 songs is frustratingly long-winded.
How to make a playlist in Winamp? Right click a folder full of mp3s or .wmas and select "enqeue in winamp". Lo and behold, the entire folder is tossed into your playlist, which you can save whenever you want. Clicking and draggin in itunes is so old and busted. And also, the shuffle command? Why the hell does it change the order of your songs in itunes, instead of just playing in a random order?
On a side note, there is no other music player i've ever seen that uses so little system resources as Winamp. You can run it in the background of pretty much anything. (Even BF2!)
Look, for a company that was putting out garbage for the last few years in terms of mp3 players this is incredible, not only have they gotten over the mp3 hurdle, they have announced plans for aac and wma compabality in a future firmware upgrade. Sonys most recent mp3 players are known for their ease of use, long battery life, and better music quality, and with the opening of a real connect music in an itunes like store the last reason not to buy sony has been removed. I know they dont look as amazing as they could in these pictures but they were in a large press event with bright lights and thousands of hands touching them, just wait till these hit the states.
Now to the ipod nano, ive said this once and ill say it again, i will not even consider buying an ipod until i see a video ipod, significantly better battery life, and better sound. People keep saying apple raises the bar, nothing could be more untrue. Apple regurgetates the same mp3 player in a new shell year after year and manages to make a killing each time. 14 hours of batter life for a flash player?? Thats pathetic, i would trade that color screen in a heartbeat if it meant 20+ hours of battery. Cnet did a sound quality comparsion a while ago against the top mp3 players and ipod ranked consistently last, while sony's latest network walkman, not the one just announced, was consistently first. Stop being a tool for apple and think before you purchase your fourth ipod of the year.
http://www.mlipod.com/index.php
ml_ipod: The plugin for Winamp that lets you control your iPod.
I bought my iPod about a year ago, and hated iTunes. It's too...slick, pretty...whatever. I've long loved Winamp, and wanted to use it to control my iPod.
This plug in works like a charm. It lets you drag and drop songs into your iPod, create custom playlists, and do just about everything else.
It's worth checking out if you're not happy with iTunes.
actually xandui....that cnet article was rediculously biased....if you read fair and balanced comparison you will find the ipod to be among the top, if not the top...apple pays a lot of attention to quality (which is why their computers cost "more" than PCs) and is no different with their ipods...
and would you really rather have a thicker nano with longer battery? (a color screen is actually less power consuming than a greyscale screen). i think apple did their homework and figured people would rather have size over battery life..who listens to 20 hrs of mp3 continuously?
i've got one (20Gb), sounds better than ipod and has a 35 hour battery life. sweet.
Does anyone know how to get one of these in the U.S.? It must be possible. I know they are available in Canada at the Sony site...