“This month, Sony’s belated response to Apple’s mini-miraculous portable audio player arrives in stores, priced at a premium of one-third over the comparable Apple iPod. We went to Sony Style on Madison Avenue, where the device called NW-HD1 had already landed, the sales tag at $399,” Stephen Williams writes for New York Newsday.
Williams writes, “‘How’s it compare to the iPod?’ I asked a salesman. ‘Battery life is a lot longer, up to 30 hours,’ he said. ‘The LCD readout is kind of dim,’ I said. ‘Battery life is a lot longer,’ he said. ‘I understand it can’t play MP3 files,’ I said. ‘Battery life is a lot longer,’ he said. Sense a theme here?”
“While the iPod gets juicier as time passes, it seems that Sony plays catch-up. Catching up is one thing; catching up to Apple guru Steve Jobs is another,” Williams writes.
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Sony: Apple launched iPod too early, technology now ready for ‘Walkman’ name – August 08, 2004
Review: Apple’s iPod kills Sony’s new Network Walkman – August 04, 2004
Mossberg: Sony Walkman ‘laborious, weak, lousy, confusing, stinks’ vs. Apple iPod – July 28, 2004
Apple blasts Sony on misleading Walkman song capacity claims – July 08, 2004
San Francisco Chronicle: Sony Walkman vs. Apple iPod – July 07, 2004
Washington Post: Sony’s internet music service ‘is an embarrassment to the company that gave the world the Walkman’ – May 29, 2004
Sony lumbers after Apple but it’s not working – May 24, 2004
Apple iTunes Music Store vs. Sony Connect is no contest, Apple wins with ease – May 09, 2004
NY Times pans Sony Connect debut: ‘maybe they ought to call it Sony Disconnect’ – May 05, 2004
Nice headline, MDN. It is extremely refreshing to see such clarity and truth. Thank you.
Never let it be said that MDN minces words in headlines or in MDN Takes.
the battery life is longer bitch!
LOL…what about the battery?
If you encode at 16 kbps and put the tunes on your iPod, Sony can’t encode at that bit rate, then your battery life will be longer than the Walkman. Of course only spoken word sounds OK at 16 kbps or at the 64 kbps that Sony uses for it’s long battery life.
It also doesn’t play. aif, mp4, wav, or anything else that you can think of!
They came up with some low quality format of their own.
Beware this thing anyone!
Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a Walkman?
The article is syndicated and appearing in newspapers around the country. Sony can’t be too happy ’bout that. As mentioned above, reduce the bit rate of songs you load into your iPod and you to can get 20 hours of battery life. If you need that many hours at one sitting then, well, YOU need a life… not the battery.
It sucks so bad James Dyson is suing for patent infringement.
I wonder how Sony’s inventory pile is stacking up — their promotion department must be working overtime figuring how to give ’em away.
Buy a song from Connect and get a ‘free’ Sony NW-HD1!
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http://homepage.mac.com/johnhood
I just returned my 2nd 4th gen ipod. Ipods are junk. If you’d actually try Sony’s new player you’d realize they didn’t rush to get the product out before working out the problems. You guys obviously haven’t been reading any of the new ipod’s problems.
hm….. never had a problem with Sony, I have a WF-M41 …. plays all my cassettes flawlessly, and has for years….