Walkman to Zune

In 1979, the latest, newest gadget was the Walkman. No more sitting at home listening to cassette, now you could walk around and take it with you, unless you preferred carring a big boombox radio on your shoulders with the music blasting out. This was the first stage in portable media, a way to take content with you on the go. As time went on, a recording feature was added, as well as radio.

Around 1990 CD, DAT and MiniDisc started becoming popular. With it came the advent of the "Discman" or the CD Walkman and the Video Walkman, which was capable of playing Video 8 cassettes on a 3in color screen. In the latter half of 1990 came the MiniDisc Walkman. The MiniDisc Walkman was comparable to a miniaturised CD, capable of storing up to 74 minutes of near CD-quality audio on a disc roughly two-thirds the size of a CD.

In 2001 the Apple IPod took the world by storm. It was a digital mp3 player capable of playing music and video from your PC or Mac. It had a small hard drive inside to store the music, and decent battery that was charged whenever you plugged the ipod into the computer. This basically killed the CD music industry as people started ripping CD's onto the computer, or buying from the ITunes Marketplace for their IPod.

2005 marks the beginning of Podcasting as we know it. Apple saw this and added the "podcast" category in its ITune Store. Other companies started adding the possibility of listening to podcasts on mp3 players as well. Partly responsible for the "listen to podcasts wherever you are at your convenience" became a possibility for those with digital mp3 players.

In 2006 Microsoft came out with its own player, the Zune. It had everything the IPod had, but also had radio and a wifi feature built into it. Zune also brought with it a "social aspect". Being able to interact with other Zune users both online and offline changed the game for digital mp3 players.

Now here we are in 2009. Quite amazing when you look back at the history and how fast it has changed. I still smirk whenever I see a walkman, knowing that my zune has outdone it in every way. What thoughts do you have on this?