Nothing New Under The Sun, part IV

Nothing New Under The Sun, part IV

Here are some drawings of a portable music player that stores music, as digital data on solid-state memory. So what I hear you ask? The point is these drawings were made in 1979, by British Inventor Kane Kramer; that’s 19 years before the first commercial digital audio player (DAP) and 21 years before the first iPod. (Contrary to popular belief Apple did not invent the modern DAP, that honour goes to the SIS MPMan, launched in 1998). But back to Kane Kramer’s player, which he called IXI, and bears a striking resemblance to today’s MP3 players, right down to the layout of the screen and buttons and the concept of downloading tracks and software over a telephone line. Although it was patented it never made it into production. Back then digital memory was eye-wateringly expensive and the prototype could only hold 3.5 minutes worth of music. Kramer allowed the patents to lapse, but he did help out Apple, as a consultant and expert witness in 2007 when the company had a run-in with Burst.com over alleged patent infringements.