Sony advises: Do not use Sony Connect software, music application causes ‘major problems’

20 years ago

“Sony is advising consumers not to use software supplied with its new range of digital music players after hundreds of users complained that it caused their computers to crash.
The new Sony MP3 Walkman was billed as the company’s long-awaited answer to the iPod and became one of the biggest-selling electrical items for Christmas,” Simon de Bruxelles reports for The Times Online. “But Sony admitted that the software sold with the player has ‘major problems,’ which has left many owners unable to use the players. The Connect Player programme is designed to transfer music from the user’s computer to the player and to connect them to Sony’s music sales website. But distraught buyers have been posting messages on websites cursing Sony. Others have returned their £199 players for a refund.”

“A woman called Amy wrote that her boyfriend bought her the Sony player for Christmas after she asked for an iPod. She said: ‘After three bottles of wine, 60 fags and trying all night to get some songs on the thing, me and my boyfriend are over. This morning I tried again, failing and throwing the mouse at the wall. Help!’ John Dolan, a software designer from Cambridge, bought the players as presents for his 12-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son. He spent the two weeks before Christmas trying, without success, to get them to work properly,” de Bruxelles reports.

“Sony, the company that began the portable music revolution with the cassette tape-playing Walkman in 1979, was a late entrant in the race to take on the iPod. It finally produced its new Walkman range in Europe and Japan in early November,” de Bruxelles reports. “The players were an instant success. Both the 6gb NW-A1000 and the 20gb NW-A3000 flew off the shelves despite costing £149 and £199 respectively. Unfortunately for a significant number of purchasers, the bundled software refused to work. Users complained that they were unable to get the Connect Player programme to load on to their computers. Others found their machines crashing or got bored waiting hours for signs of life.”

Full article here.
Unsurprisingly (because there is none), de Bruxelles offers no proof to back up his claim that Sony’s MP3 Walkman “became one of the biggest-selling electrical items for Christmas.” Perhaps he defines “biggest-selling” in a unique way; perhaps “biggest-selling” to him means “most-defective,” least-desired,” “highly-returned,” or something similar? “Biggest selling” in stores that had already run out of iPods, maybe? Without sources or numbers, we can only guess. According to the proof-averse de Bruxelles, “both the 6gb NW-A1000 and the 20gb NW-A3000 flew off the shelves” and were “an instant success.” One can only surmise that retailers were wiping them off their own shelves poste-haste in clouds of dust in order to make room for more iPods. Certainly, the Sony players and the Windows-only Connect software were “instantly successful” in helping people realize that they should’ve bought an iPod and downloaded iTunes instead. Why waste money on bad fakes when you can have the real thing?

Just like Macintosh: iPod+iTunes. Because life’s too short.

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