The Sony X Series Walkman: An iPod it isn't
Click a picture to enter the Design Review slideshow.
It's not easy for Sony. For decades, Sony's Walkman devices dominated the personal audio market with great and popular products. Then along came the iPod. Sony has been playing catch-up since.
Sony's latest attempt to regain traction is the X Series Walkman (NWZ-X1051). It's a touch-screen music player with 16GB of storage, a 3-inch OLED display, digital noise canceling, integrated Wi-Fi, and a built-in Web browser. The NWZ-X1051 is an impressive media player, but does it have what it takes to unseat the Apple iPod--a modern triumph of technology, marketing, and design?
Design Review dissects the Sony Walkman.
(Credit: Moto Development Group)In this, the first edition of Design Review, I'll look at the X Series from my perspective. I'm a product developer at Moto Development Group. For 18 years I've tried to help companies combine the dreams of their designers with the potential of engineering, the realities and limitations of manufacturing, and the requirements of sales and marketing teams. In this column I'm going to do that after the fact, examining products that are on the market and interpreting their designs. I find it fascinating to "read" a product this way.
To me, it's the little things that make even a flat-front product like this Sony interesting. These details are all evidence of priorities and choices along the development path. For example, the X Series is physically solid and visually clean, which shows the hand of the designer at work (photo 1). But the physical reset button on the side (photo 3) shows a lack of confidence in the product's engineering.
For my review of the design and engineering choices Sony made while developing this product, click on the slideshow at the top of this post.
Gregor Berkowitz is president of MOTO Development Group, a firm specializing in product strategy and development for clients that have included Apple, Intel, and Microsoft. (MOTO stands for "masters of the obvious.") He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
I'd like to know your thoughts on capacitive screens with respect to usability, especially for smartphones and other devices that may preset very small (16x16 or smaller) icons as actionable buttons.
-R
And these comparisons are usually biased. The iPods also have a reset feature, for example, does that also show "a lack of confidence in the product's engineering"?
The following is an extreme comparison on purpose.
Would you want to fly on an airplane that did not have any escape mechanisms because the design and engineering teams felt they had put together such a fantastic craft that an escape system was no longer needed? Not me, because then I know that no matter how bright they might be, I am still dealing with a team of fools. It may be a glass half empty point of view, but as a former aircraft engineer and current computer systems engineer, I'm not one to embrace foolishness.
I had two previous noise canceling (NC) players from Sony, the earliest S705 with a software NC control, and the previous gen S736, with the same hard button for NC. I gotta say, while admitting I have no particular design cred, I hated the software control, and was so happy to see the hard button appear on the S736. For functional reasons only. Maybe if you don't switch the NC on and off much, then you'd like it as a software control. But there are reasons to turn it on and off, and to easily know whether it is on.
I'm with Sony on this part of the design.
- by georgee79 October 17, 2009 6:08 AM PDT
- What so good about an ipod or iphone, my blackberry storm has better camera than iphone ,plays better video, for internet I have a laptop and pc ,so who cares,sony x series rocks
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