Being nasty to Sony is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but it won't stop me doing it.
I saw a Sony iPod dock in the shops the other day. Gosh, how the mighty have fallen. Sony admitting the existence of another company? I had to check that the dock wasn't only compatible with a special Sony iPod-alike.
The combination of seeing this Sony stuff and having played with my ickle iPhone for a few weeks made me really think about the differences between Sony and Apple. They both produce beautiful looking products. I'm generally a fan of Sony hardware. The firmware is mediocre at best. Their software is awful (Remember when they tried to install rootkits on customers? Pretty par for the course, really). Their networks have been hacked and millions of customers' details lost.
Fundamentally, Sony can't do abstraction - the more high-level something is, the worse it is. The WalkMan worked because it was largely mechanical, and lacked any embedded CPUs. I suggest Sony move into brick-making.
Posted 2011-11-17.