drewmckinney.net

My love affair with Sony began in the 80’s when I got my first Walkman. It was hard to believe that I could listen to my music while walking to school so I bought a bunch of blank tapes and I duped some of my records. I was the happiest kid in third grade and everywhere I walked I listened to I Love Rock N Roll, an album that my sister had given me for Christmas (mucho thanks Alexandra! I wish I knew where that album ended up…).

I replaced my Walkman with a Discman in the 90’s (my first CD that I bought was Slaughter’s Stick it to Ya, which I’d purchased before owning any sort of player…I kicked myself in the nuts the first time I finally listened to it…) and was dismayed that I had no means to dupe my records or tapes for this new medium. I could tell that the CD was going to change the way I listened to music so I went ahead and bought some cd’s of some of the records that I already owned. I didn’t know much about fair-use or copyright law back then but it really burned me to have to pay twice for the same damn music.

I received a Sony Boombox as a birthday present one year and was glad that I could finally listen to music without having to wear headphones. There’s nothing fancy about the boombox (I still have it and it still works) but it’s durability signed an invisible contract for me and Sony and I was firm in my belief that Sony produced the best consumer electronics available.

I’d always liked the look of the Sony VCR’s because of that round interface and the spinning-dial control for rewind and fast-forward so I picked one up (I still have it and it still works). This was a time of great rejoicing for me because I was old enough to rent porn.

Eventually everyone needs a calendar in their life and I was no exception. I picked up a Sony PDA, the sexily-thin PEG-T415 (I still have it and it still works…I don’t use it anymore because I’m on OS X these days) and my life was suddenly very organized. Thanks to Sony I could now carry appointments, contacts, games, and documents in my pocket. I haven’t seen a thinner PDA come out and alas, Sony is out of the PDA game for now.

I got sick of carrying cd’s around with me so I looked into the latest portable-music hardware and decided on MiniDisc. The latest Sony model was the first MiniDisc player to have a USB port and the idea of transferring music in faster-than-real-time really appealed to me (I still have it and it still works). I didn’t realize at the time (many people didn’t realize at the time) that in order to transfer the music I had to use the weird software that was bundled with the player and that the software converted the files into something called ATRAC, Sony’s own audio format. Wow, that software was terrible. It crashed my machine frequently and would seize up and refuse to transfer music. I couldn’t just delete a song on the player but instead had to “check” it “in” or “out.” Laaaame. Way lame. After browsing around the community of MiniDisc users I was finally able to find a method of getting music onto my minidiscs without having to use Sony’s software. That was a workable solution but I was really steamed that I had to go to such lengths just to listen to some Sade. My love for Sony began to fade.

These days everyone has heard of Sony’s recent f-up with installing rootkits on unsuspecting customers that happen to pop a CD into their computer. I’ve read numerous articles on this issue and to me it appears that Sony is only sorry that they got caught. True that they have “temporarily” stopped using the rootkit software but I think that this is only for as long as it takes to write a more secret and hard-to-find rootkit.

I haven’t bought a CD in quite a while but I know that I won’t buy any from Sony any time soon. I’m fed up with my old lover trying to cripple my music. While the Sony of old used to make incredibly sexy hardware I don’t find that to be the case these days. The stuff coming out of Sony is no better (and in some cases, quite worse) than anything else out there and it’s too damn expensive for what it is. Sony, you’ve sucked up plenty of my dollars over the years but you will suck them no more.

Now I must go and listen to some music to console myself. My DRM-crippled music that I purchased from the iTunes Music Store calls out to me. Well, thanks to jHymn it’s not really crippled anymore but once again I find myself fuming that I have to go to extraordinary lengths just to listen to music. Music that I’ve already paid for, sometimes paid for two or three times.

Apple, I use your products now but be warned that I’m keeping my eye on you.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 12th, 2005 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Random Blah Blah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.