Sony sells off VAIO PC business amid prolonged industry slump
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Whether it was because of Apple reasons ("we are too focused on a small number of sure winners...oh and a G4 cube") or HP/Dell reasons ("we are really into playing it safe"), there were just few companies that could do things like Sony could.
I think it takes a certain amount (if not an outright surplus) of engineering hands and manufacturing capacity to be able to do experiments like Sony's VAIO division did. Think of the truly bizarre and occasionally beautiful devices coming out of Nokia in their mid-2000s peak, or IBM in the era of their "butterfly" keyboard..
If you look at those key ingredients for what it takes to "get weird with it" (those surpluses of capability and capacity), I'd say the next ones to get weird with it would be Samsung (need I remind you Samsung has in recent memory tried a Galaxy with a curved screen, a Galaxy with a mini projector...), LG, and a whoooole bunch of Chinese companies we probably haven't even heard of yet.
But today, we take Sony off that list.
I hope the VAIO machines stay around, under the rule of someone that knows how to transform their high-end products into high-end products that people really want.
With no one with either authority or guts to take a stance for and against features, a bunch of average shit gets shipped in hopes of somewhat satisfying everyone instead of really satisfying a core group of customers.
Of course, founders have a way of either dying (Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard, and Steve Jobs again) or "losing their touch" (Mike Lazaridis of RIM).
I would be curious of any examples in which there was such an undisputed leader at a company who was neither its founder nor its savior.
But buildings evolved to have arches and open domes, no central column needed. Why can't the same be done with people-based control/oversight/management systems? Building a beautiful structure dependent on all/many the members around, not just a central support/dictator.
The way Gates describes his process resonates with me:
In terms of deciding what programs are going to do, a fairly large group makes suggestions. Then there’s a filtering process. Eventually I’ll decide which of the ideas makes sense, and I’ll make sure we have champions who are personally involved in making that product succeed.
The NetMD.
Back in the day flash memory was expensive, the RioDimond was for geeks who had far too much money and far too little music.
The NetMD was brilliant, Transfer music via USB from your PC, long battery life, cheap enough MDs, you could have days of music with you. I loved the device, I loved the concept.
The software. Oh my. The software. Ergh.
Apparently it had the code name symphony. A quick history lesson, it's the late 70s, moustaches were plentiful and Sony released BetaMax. They blamed the failure on a lack of content. So when they and phillips championed the audio CD, they knew that they should do something, they bought a bunch of companies and created (eventually) Sony Records. That worked well. Really well, the profits were huge and by the late 90s sony records eclipsed sony electronics.
We now jump forward to the NetMD project coming online, the records division apparently were un-happy. So a bunch of restrictions were brought in, you could only transfer a song to the NetMD 3 times. That was your limit. The software and interface where buggy, so this became a problem if it crashed during the transfer.
A brilliant device was nobbled by the internal politics. I still say it wasn't until 8gb+ capacities became cheap, that any mp3 player surpassed it.
I would love to be able to provide some sources for this, I was told it by someone who contacted me after I'd stopped work on my util NetMDCalls [1] which was for helping people provide a FOSS alternative to sonic stage. I had a nice person explain that I was breaking the licensing of their software and to stop development on it, but because I was a minor they wouldn't do anything to me, sadly, my parents did not share my libertarian views and development stopped as my NetMD was confiscated.
This is when Sony fucked themselves, they went from an amazing electronics company, to a content producing company with a shitty electronics side. All the decisions were made by the content side. This is when they started their slide.
It is awful to think about, when you read about the origins of Sony, and how much they were revered for producing top of the line stuff in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Sony will get so close at times, and then just... miss the mark. My super expensive ultraportable Vaio had some great ideas but a flimsy screen, bright aggressive LEDs, giant VAIO lettering all over, an awful out-of-box Crapware-Inside accept-these-license-terms experience, tragic speakers, a roaring-hot battery-draining graphics card, and a host of other little problems.
I've seen many companies where everyone is following process, and doing their job, yet nothing gets done, or worse, there is no quality improvement.
Their tablet->laptop convertible machines especially are really good pieces of tech. I know the one complaint about the flip13 is that the battery life isn't super great, but the concept and design are truly cool. I've also worked with/used the Duo13 and while the flip function is a bit weird, the whole kit is really great.
Oh well, hopefully the new owners do something great (I know Sony is not without issue).
now to me sony laptops are a bit ovepriced. my last two PC notebooks were from Asus and I am happy with them. They were at least 25% cheaper than similar sony models.
Sony Fit E15 was a good machine at a good price. But by the time Sony began making these lower cost machines, they already solidified the "too expensive" mindset.
People probably didn't even realize that Sony had a ~$500 line of laptops (which, when upgraded to "reasonable" specs, would be closer to $750 or $800 of course... but that is a reasonably priced laptop)
Apple right now makes some of the best hardware you can buy, and they are pretty profitable doing it. The problem is I can't upgrade it. I would spend a fair bit of money for a good quality (materials, and parts) laptop. No one seems to be doing that any more. Most laptops have these huge clunky plastic cases, with cheap parts, and terrible support.
-Beautiful
-User upgradeable/serviceable
-Affordable
It's a wonderful design, however Apple has since decided to solder the SSD and memory to the mainboard, making them non-serviceable. This is not a choice made to make the device more beautiful or more affordable. They did it to be greedy.
We as consumers can have all three if we demanded it, but there's money to be made cutting corners and most people don't understand how to vote with their dollars.
How do you define "upgrade it."
Lenovo sells the Yoga ultrabook, it's thin, affordable $800-$1,000, has a great (in my opinion) build quality using soft touch plastic, includes a Haswell processor, and you can manually upgrade the SSD and RAM. It has a cheap wifi chip (no 5ghz? really?), but otherwise fits the bill you described.
Is the storage and ram enough? Or do you want more than that. Because I imagine it gets really tricky to build a thin, light, sturdy and reliable laptop that still lets you upgrade every single part.
In my city they also had Vaio stores just like Apple and most of their products were much better than Dell and Hp at that time. I enjoyed checking them out from time to time.