| The changes in portable music. | | | | rather than an improvement, over what came before |
| The ways in which we carry our personal music have | | | | it. Sony were telling us that portability mattered more |
| changed considerably. Here is a brief history right | | | | than sound quality, and eighteen years later, the |
| through to today’s mp3 players. | | | | popularity of the tiny iPod nano and iPod shuffle |
| 1972: Stereobelt | | | | proves that we believed it, and still do. |
| Andreas Pavel's Stereobelt was acknowledged by | | | | 1998: MPMan F10 |
| Sony as the world's first portable cassette player. At | | | | Getting closer to what we have today: |
| the time, however, no major seller was interested in | | | | The Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 is often referred |
| manufacturing the device, setting the stage for the | | | | to as the world's first MP3 player, but in fact, that title |
| Walkman to take the ‘First Portable Cassette | | | | belongs to the MPMan F10, distributed in the U.S. by |
| Player That You Could Actually Buy’ trophy. | | | | Eiger Labs. |
| 1979: Walkman TPS-L2 | | | | 2001: Apple iPod (1st generation) |
| The first Walkman cassette player, the TPS-L2, | | | | After Steve Jobs returned to Apple and the iMac |
| debuted in Japan on July 1. | | | | changed the way people thought about personal |
| 1984: Discman D-50 | | | | computers (and Apple), the company extended that |
| Five years post-Walkman, Sony extended its portable | | | | much-improved image to portable music players |
| line up in anticipation of CDs becoming the next hot | | | | 2001: Samsung Uproar |
| music medium, which now seems really dated. | | | | The first music phone/ |
| 1991: MiniDisc | | | | 2007: Apple iPhone (1st generation) |
| Sony introduced the MiniDisc as its own follow-up to | | | | Just when most competitors had caught up with |
| the Discman. Despite its ultimate failure to be a | | | | Apple's signature scroll wheel style, Apple released |
| success , the MiniDisc did plenty of damage as the first | | | | another state of the art devise: The iPhone. |
| medium to represent a degradation in audio quality, | | | | |