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It was 40 years ago today that Sony, not Apple, revolutionized the way we listen to music. The Walkman, a portable cassette player that, for the first time, let us take our music with us without bothering our neighbors, hit the market on July 1, 1979. The portable cassette player revolutionized how people listen to music. The Walkman wasn't the first of its kind, but it was the first affordable and manageable portable music player -- others like the German Stereobelt were too clunky and expensive, so they never took off.

Children's perplexed reactions to a Sony Walkman have been caught on camera, with the majority frustrated at operating clunky buttons over a touch screen. Los Angeles-based filmmakers Benny and Rafi Fine asked volunteers aged six to 13 to guess what the bulky device was, with suggestions including a 'walkie-talkie' or 'boombox'. 'What is this?' one nine-year-old girl quizzed as she investigated the Eighties-era cassette player, while another exclaimed 'I'm not going to give up, I'm a survivor,' as she determinedly tried to figure out how it worked.

Due to the fierce competition among the music players, Sony will retire its once-popular Walkman tape player in Japan, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Monday. "Those of us who grew up in the Reagan Decade know: By six years after its 1979 debut, the Walkman had become the iPod of its day," Rob Pegoraro of The Washington Post wrote in a blog post on Monday. "Much like Apple's music player, Sony's gadget was near-ubiquitous, got a little smaller over subsequent revisions, and had cheaper competitors that Weren't Quite The Same Thing."

The iconic Walkman has come to the end of its run. Sony has pulled the plug on the original portable cassette-tape player, Japanese media report. The company made its last shipment of the cassette Walkmans to the Japanese market earlier this year -- and when they're gone from stores, they'll be finished. Sony is outsourcing some manufacturing to a Chinese company for sales to people who still use obsolete cassette tapes.

We've yet to see a trade show where Sony left its Rhode Island-sized booth at home, and CEATEC is no exception. Aside from pushing its 1080p 3D installations with an epic amount of force, the company also had a smattering of swank new concepts on display that caught our eyes. A 0.2 millimeter-thin flexible OLED display was alive and displaying content, while an ultrathin Reader mock-up looked more like a MID and less like a Kindle. Without question, the two items that took our breath away were the all-panel laptop (which tossed the traditional keyboard in favor of a...

When the Sony Walkman was launched, 30 years ago this week, it started a revolution in portable music. But how does it compare with its digital successors? The Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell to swap his iPod for a Walkman for a week.My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day. He had told me it was big, but I hadn't realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book. When I saw it for the first time, its colour also struck me. Nowadays gadgets come in a rainbow of colours but this...

Sony is moving to make its music management software compatible with Apple Computer's audio file format in acknowledging Apple's dominance in the digital music playing market. Sony's new management system will allow iPod users to swap some of their music to a Sony Walkman, but only songs they ripped from CDs.

VATICAN CITY — A Vatican (search) cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason. Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture (search), made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States. The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century...