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Posted on 01-07-2009

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The idea of portable music has been around from much before the iPods and XpressMusic phones; and it all started with the Sony Walkman. The game-changing device celebrated the 30^th anniversary of its launch on Wednesday; but a new generation will never know how big a change it was to the world. 

So ubiquitous was it that the Walkman became one of those brands that are used interchangeably with the product itself. You ‘had a Walkman’, not a portable audio cassette player, much like you ‘take a Xerox’ instead of a photocopy.

On this momentous day, BBC Magazine took away 13-year-old Scott Campbell’s iPod Touch and gave him one of the original Sony Walkman devices for a week.

The article is a hilarious read of a young boy’s struggle with an arcane technology, and his interactions with adults who get nostalgic while warning him of the Walkman’s many shortcomings.

“It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape,” Campbell writes. “[My dad] had told me it was big, but I hadn't realised he meant THAT big.”

And upon missing the shuffle feature, he simply held down the rewind feature and let go. The trick failed to impress his father, who warned him: “Walkmans eat tapes.”

Since the dawn of the digital portable media player, Sony has never been able to compete with its Walkman digital players against the likes of the iPod or Creative’s many offerings. But despite all these shortcomings, a generation which grew up with the amazing 30-year-old gadget can forever tell the young ones: “Show some respect, son. This is your iPod’s grandfather!”

Picture credit: BBC