The Vergecast - Version History: Sony Watchman

Episode Date: October 19, 2025

1982's coolest gadget was the Sony Watchman portable TV. Decades before everyone was glued to YouTube on their smartphones, the Watchman popularized the concept of video on the go. In the early days of the personal-tech revolution, you’d find the Watchman antennas up everywhere from the church pew to the baseball bleacher. Victoria Song and Allison Johnson join David Pierce to dive into the engineering feat that made the first Watchman possible. If you like the show, ⁠subscribe to the Version History feed⁠ to make sure you get every new episode. Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast. I'm your friend David Pierce, and you're about to hear another episode of our new show, version history. Before we get into it, one reminder, send us all of your feedback about the show, everything you like, everything you don't like, everything we should do differently,

and most importantly, go subscribe to version history, wherever you get podcasts, because it will not be on this feed forever. Let's get into it. In the early 1980s, two things were probably true about your TV. One, it was enormous.

And two, it was at your house. They were in family rooms, in TV rooms. a place that you went to watch TV. But what if you're at church and you'd rather be watching the baseball game? Or what if you're at your kid's baseball game and you'd rather watch, frankly, anything else at all? Well, Sony, maker of the walkman, changeer of the way that we all listen to music, has something for you. It's called The Watchman, and it brings your TV absolutely anywhere.

From the Virgin Vox Media, this is version history, a show about the best and worst and strangest and most important products in tech history. Today, we are talking about the watchman, the biggest portable TV you've maybe ever seen, but also kind of the future of TV. Stay tuned. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need.

Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for sure. nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom.

And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. All right, we're back. Let's talk Watchman. Allison's here. Hi, Allison. Hello.

Fiesong. Hello. Hello. Okay, we just need to do this right at the beginning. Is it Watchman, Watchman, or something else? Watchman. Yeah, I've been saying Watchman. I agree.

Yeah. Watchmen is an Alan Moore comic starring a blue guy. Okay. And Roershack. I don't remember any of the other people characters named. Blue guy and Droshaq. Yeah. Okay.

I agree. I will say every other person we are going to hear from in the course of this episode will disagree with that assessment. But I'm going to call it the watchman because it's the walkman. And it's like, if somebody was like, oh, do you want to listen to my walkman? be like what? Excuse me? I don't like that. I wouldn't trust that person.

It's only Walkmen if you have two of them because then it's a plural because I don't think Walkmans. Walkmans works. So if you have two Sony watchmen, it has to be two of them. Watchmans. Because like the watchmans just sounds wrong. It's funnier though. I got my two watchmen's. I like it.

It's funny. But you can say like I have both my watchmen in my purse. I like that. Okay. I'm good at that. This works for me. So we should just say this thing is sitting on the table in front of us, and we've made a bunch of shows about a bunch of gadgets. Nothing has inspired anything like the excitement of this 1982 black and white television.

I'm obsessed with this thing. Like it's so, so, so cool. It's this giant rectangle that weighs, I don't know, 400 pounds. And I just, I don't know. Do you guys, like, I'm obsessed with this thing. Just the way that it feels. It's so tactile. It's so, like, I feel like when I hold it, I'm in some sort of 80s movie and I'm, like, it's a TV, but I'm going to be yelling in it.

Like, it's a walkie-talkie. I do want to yell into it. It, like, it begs to be held to your ear and you go, like, fire him or something like that. I don't know. It just has that feeling or that you're in stranger things or whatnot and you're about to go fight a demi-corgon or something like that. It just has that tactile feel. And it kind of looks like a Walkman. Like I feel like I should be able to put a,

because it's got that little window where the TV part is. And it also feels like a radio because it has that tuning bit. It's just very, it's perfect. And even the typography is perfect because it's got that 80s typography feel. I haven't been able to stop playing with a little strap on the back. Like this is 100% the kickstand. It's whatever you want it to be. It's a kickstand.

Wait, is it more than a kickstand? It's a strap. It's a strap. You can just hold it as like a strap like this. Wait, that's, this is like the OG pop socket. Yes. That's amazing. I mean, look at it.

It's just like a giant piece of plastic that peels off the back. This looks like the most breakable thing I've ever seen in my life. I do feel like scared when you're turning it into the kickstand mode. Like if I'm holding it like the switch, you know, you're just holding it by the weakest part. Do I feel confident that it's not going to crash into my laptop and destroy it? No. It's pretty heavy. It's quite heavy.

And like when you're pressing the kickstand into place, you're like, is it going to, it feels flimsy. But it's surprisingly strong. Which is very funny because that's the only thing you would describe as flimsy on this entire device, which is otherwise like a, yeah, a monster slab of metal. It's like we see a lot of things that I feel like are all sort of out of time now. Everything is just like a slab of glass. This is like from the 80s. It's just like screams when it was from, and I really appreciate that. Yeah.

There's like a VHS player, tape deck radio vibe going on. Like I can immediately identify it. Totally. So to this point, actually, one of the things I was thinking about doing this research is my childhood TV. I'm too young to have like really experienced the heyday of the watchman. But I did spend a lot of time thinking about my childhood TV. Do you all remember yours? Like when you picture like...

The big box. The big C-R-T, big box that we... Was it like in a wooden cabinet? Yes. Also, like my family was crazy. We had five TVs. Everyone had to have their own personal TV. What?

Yeah. Oh, you were fancy. We were not. We were not fancy. We were just crazy about certain things. Everyone had to have their own things because, God forbid, we have to be subjected to each other's content.

So, like, I had my own tiny little CRT TV in my little room. My mom had hers and my dad had his and there was a big one in the basement and then there was one in the living room. Like, again, God forbid, we all, like, come together as a family. We had her. So we're like family movie nights in the house, like not a thing? They were not a thing. You just all watched your own movies.

We watched our own stuff mainly because my dad insisted family time was watching MSNBC at dinner. No. And looking at stock tickets. We were a weird family. Yeah, I can see why you needed your own television. Yeah, yeah. Like, how else was I going to literally have any joy?

But you had one in your room? Yeah, I had one in my room. I didn't have a TV in my room until I was like 25. Yeah, I wasn't. It was very small. Like, it was, it wasn't watchman small, but it wasn't like big. It was like maybe a 10 inch. Did it have the antenna too?

It did have the antenna. Okay, because my mom had one that fits that description. It's like, same design. aesthetic. It had a little kickstand on the bottom. You could run it off of an outlet or it had like, it would run on like 8D batteries. It would cost like 60 bucks to let it up with batteries. It had the antenna and she would watch Days of Our Lives while she was ironing clothes. And I can like distinctly hear the Days of Our Lives theme when I think about that piece of technology. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, my childhood TV was like, we had a big TV, or at least I remember it being big, but it was, I mean, the thing must have weighed 100 pounds.

And we carried that thing around for forever. Yeah. My parents' whole thing is like they like to buy the nice one, especially with stuff like that, and then keep it for like an unreasonably long amount of time. So like, I remember this was much later, obviously, but my parents bought a 32-inch Polaroid TV. back when a 32-inch polaroid TV cost $1,000. So this is like a nice flat-screen TV a million years ago. And then they kept it for 20 years maybe past the point where our house had been struck by lightning while the TV was on. So it would just randomly turn off all the time.

And they were just like, what do you mean? We don't need a new television. It's not. It was the same way. So her personal CRT TV that she kept separate from my father when they split up, she brought it with her. And until she died over 20 years later, she. she was still using that as her main TV. She, like, I still have it in, like, her, her house's basement.

Like, we still have it. And I'm just, like, partly because I don't know what to do with it. It's just a giant CRT. Like, what do we do? Old video games. Feels like the only answer. Oh, yeah. And it's on, like, a lazy Susan because she was like, I need to turn it around more easily.

Oh, my gosh. She was, she loved that. Very inventive family. She used it exclusively to watch Frasier. That's it. That's the only. thing she did was watch Frazier and the Phantom of the Opera movie starring Jared Butler. Those are the two things she watched on it.

Just exclusively. Incredible. I respect both of those things. That's very good. Do you remember, did either of you ever have anything like The Watchman? I mean. Any like on the go? Did you have one of those like flip up portable DVD players?

Any of that stuff? DVD, no. I mean, I had a Walkman and have a memory of like. the freedom that it allowed me, you know? I was like, oh my God, I can take my music with me and listen to whatever the hell I want, like wherever I am. And that was, I feel like, like, I also missed the watchman era, but I can relate, like, the feeling of like, I can take this and it's mine and nobody can take it from me. I definitely had a walkman. The rich kid at school had one of these and it was just like, ooh, staring at it and like coveting it.

But, like, my parents going, like, you don't need that. You watch enough TV in your own TV and your own little room. Did people, like, huddle around them to watch? Yeah. Yeah. People huddle. People would huddle around. But then, you know, as I got older and I was living in Japan, the feature phones in Japan were, like, TVs.

They had, like, little antennas that came out that you could actually watch TV from. That's so incredible. Except, you know, I didn't have enough money for that model. That model was too fancy for poor college, Victoria. She had the basic entry level. It was blue. Oh. But it didn't have TV watching capabilities.

I remember when I first started covering phones, that being the thing I was like most jealous of was that a lot of phones. And I remember it lingered a really long time in Korea in particular. Yes. That they would have the broadcast antenna on the phones. And I remember being like, God, I want that so bad. And then being like, why? Yeah. I don't think that accomplishes anything in my life.

I want it so bad. I mean, you can use it on the subway. It might go in and out a little bit. it, but you could use it. And, like, my family members had the smartphones with the antenna in Korea. My uncle would be like, oh, you don't have this in America? And it's like, no. God, thanks, uncle. He burned you good. They were always, like, making fun of our American technology. They were like, oh, you don't

have this amazing feature? I thought America was the land of the free and the rich. And I was like, Jesus Christ, Uncle, like, Christ Almighty. I love it. So, all right, so let me, let's go back in history a little bit. And I just want to walk you through like a little bit of the watchman history, which to your point really kind of starts with the Walkman, which came out in 1979, which is substantially earlier than I would have guessed. It comes out in Japan, like instant phenomenon, and Sony starts kind of like feeling itself as gadget maker. Meanwhile, at the time, the idea of Pocket TV had been around for like 20 years at this point, which is nuts. They were all the first Pocket TV.

and I'm using pocket with just the air quotiest air quotes of all time, came in like the 60s and weighed like 15 pounds. Oh, wow. And these were portable televisions. Yeah, seriously. And the problem was it was the CRTs, right? Like this was the way that they did TVs at the time required these things to be big and have lots of space to fire electrons.

Like, it's just big physical technology. And we had not yet solved that yet. there is a research thing happening for this new technology called LCD that becomes very important very soon. But we're not quite there yet. And so all of this is happening, right? And there's the Walkman, the Game Boy is coming out around this time. And the idea is like how do we bring more stuff with us? We weren't quite like Gordon Gecko using the phone, which is what you hold the watchman up to your ear and you feel like Gordon Gecko using the phone on the beach.

We're not quite there yet, but we are like well on our way to it. And at this point, Cassio is actually the leader in large pocket televisions. They had a thing called the TV10, which was a very early LCD. And CBS reviewed the Cassio TV 10, which was basically like, if you imagine sort of the layout of a digital camera, it's sort of in the, it's horizontal, it has the screen, and then some stuff off to the side. That's what all of these looked like, that you had to turn them all sideways because they needed that, like, depth in order to make it work. you would carry it around and then you would like flip it sideways and put it on a kickstand and that's how you would use it. And I found from CBS Labs test in a thing called equipment reviews, which sure, it basically just goes through and it's like this thing is so cool, it's so small, it looks like garbage. Which is the story of all of these for like 20 years. It's like everybody's so amazed that these things exist at all. Like, oh my God, I can watch TV away from my house. Never mind. that as soon as it's sunny, everything falls apart and I can't see anything, and the device catches on fire. There's also this company Sinclair, which is making pocket TVs that people like.

And both of these companies, all the others picked, like, the same reason for all of these things to exist, which I find really fascinating. It's like, watch important things in the news as they're happening. And there's like, this is one of the things that really took me back, because there's like, this is the era of, like, everyone watched the evening news. Like every, this was, it was like a family event to like sit around the TV and watch the evening news. And that was like a crucial moment. But this is also the moment that like cable is starting to happen, round the clock news is starting to happen.

So we're at the moment of like, okay, you can actually see things in real time if you have some way to see them other than just sitting in your living room waiting for something interesting to happen on television. All these devices are also like vastly. more expensive than regular people can have. So you have these huge, big monster televisions, but everybody is like, there's something to this portable TV idea. Little did they know. Many, many, many years later, we would all have brainworms. And long for the time where we just watch the news once a day.

Oh, my gosh. But they weren't to something. I mean, yeah, that sounds kind of nice. When the news was just 30 minutes once a day, like that's a world I can handle. Just a little dose of news. Yeah. So Sony starts making this thing. And it's, you can sort of.

see, right, you go from the press man to the walkman to the watchman. Like, it's a pretty easy move for them to get here. And the big, there's one big innovation inside of this thing that I'm going to describe to you in one second. But first I want to tell you what it was almost called. It was almost called the Sony Flat TV.

No. Oh no Japanese. I don't know what. So I don't know if you've ever looked up like what the Japanese Pokemon names are for the Pokemon's know. They're horrible. They're absolute garbage. Craby is just called crab. And, like, you know, Charamander, very cute, very great, right?

The Japanese name is also cute. It's Hitokage, which is, like, little shadow or flame or whatnot. Charmilian and Charzard are lizard and lizard on. Oh, my gosh. And so to call it the Sony flat TV is the most Japanese thing. It's like, oh. It's like, that's what it is. It's flat and it TV.

I am so glad they went home. Oh, this is one of the few times I'm glad that they were just like, oh, we have existing branding. Let's go. Yeah, this is a world in which the Walkman exists. Like, this is like the best, coolest gadget brand anywhere. Yeah. And they're like, flat TV. Whichever person inside Sony's marketing department was like, way, way, way, way, well, why don't we have branding synergy?

This is the only time where I'm like, yes. I will allow synergy in branding this one time. One time. Yeah. This is the first and last good naming decision Sony ever made. Now it's just alphabet soup. Uh-huh. So the first watchman, this one right here in front of us, is called the FD-2-10 because Sony couldn't help itself.

You would think this would just be called the Watchman because there wasn't another one, so why do you need model numbers? But alas. They were thinking big. This is the Watchman F-D-2-10. Yeah. F-D stands for, I don't know what it stands for. Flat display. Oh, my God, it probably does.

It's flat display. I'm telling you, so only they do that with their alphabet soup, the WH whatever thing, it's wireless headphone. Yeah. Just flat display. I'm going to bet my money. It's flat display too too. I was going to say Franklin Delano. I think flat display.

They're like, we're coming for America with this one. I love it. So, okay, and so there was one big technical innovation that made this thing possible. And they called it the flat display. You're right. It is FD. I hate that. They called it the flat display picture tube.

And basically what it did is it took a CRT, which is I'm going to just absolutely bastardize this explanation. So bear with me. Basically, it's the way a CRT works is you have an electron gun that just shoots electrons at something. And that's how it actually takes and shows you a picture. Normally in a TV, that thing sits behind the screen that you see. Right. And so that's the reason for the depth is like the bigger the screen, the more depth you need in order for the electron gun to hit all the areas.

What Sony did was take that and turn it downwards. So instead of being right behind the screen, it's actually below it. And you can see on the thing, the screen in there is actually curved. And so it's shooting up onto this curved display that is then sort of pointing the light back at you. And that's how it should see the picture. This was a super big deal because it's the sort of thing that like this thing is, I don't know, an inch thick. and you just flat out couldn't do that before. And it is like you can sort of see, if you look at it, both it's at an angle and the screen itself is sort of concave in a way that you don't really notice until you notice it.

And then it's there. That's why my mom's TV was like very long. It's like the old computers like those over there. Yeah, yeah. Big boys. Yeah, you just like you literally need the like spray gun behind it shooting electrons out. So Sony makes that thing, makes this possible, and you can actually, ironically, you can still find one of those, like on Alibaba.

If you just want to buy one, knock yourself out. Not really sure why, but there you go. But the thing that's happening is all this is happening, right, is, again, the villain of this story is LCD, which shows up and eventually just ruins everything. But so this watchman comes out, it first comes out in Japan, but then like six months later ends up in the U.S. Do either of you know how much it costs? And if not, would you like to guess? I will accept either $2025 or $1982.

Oh, boy. In 2025, I feel like this is all skewed, though. I'm going to say $11982. Okay. I'm going to go with $300. There was $350, 1988, $192. Jesus Christ. If you look, is a little over $1,100 today.

Oh, boy. So this thing was expensive. It had a two-inch CRT display. It did black and white. It was an inch and a half thick. And again, like the fact that it was only an inch and a half thick was like a huge part of the appeal. It weighed a pound and change, which, again, is both a lot and kind of not a lot. comparatively. Like, truly, like, Alison, there's a TV behind you and, like, the technological gap between that and this is not that different and kind of game-changing.

Right. So all of this comes into this thing. It takes double-A batteries, which throwback more gadgets to take double-A batteries. And it had both a screen and a radio tuner and was designed to be sort of equally both of those things. A little tuning dial over here. It's so satisfying. Every single hardware detail of this is lovely. It's so satisfying. It has this gigantic 17-inch-long antenna.

It has two tuning dials that both feel so good. They really do. They have that slightly sharp edge as you turn on the. It feels so good. It has the kickstand, which we love. It has a strap. Future models had a strap that was also an antenna, which is a thing that completely blew my mind.

It used your body to amplify the signals. Oh, my God. Don't like that. But so, and yeah, it had a speaker. It had a place for headphones. Like, it just, they just kind of got this thing right. It's very impressive. It's just fat-free, you know?

There's not, like, we just shove as many features into everything. And, like, if you made this today, it would be, like, full of Alexa things and, you know, like, stuff you didn't need. This just. No bloatware. There's no blower. Just does the thing. It's so perfect. And to the, it just does the thing point.

Like, one of the things that I think is easy to forget now is the beauty of broadcast TV was that it just, it was just there. Like, you just put up this giant ass antenna and shows appeared. Truly is gigantic. Oh, it really is. Yeah. Like, this is actually a safety hazard if you're not careful, depending on where you're walking. Yeah. It is a deadly weapon.

Oh, yeah. It bends. The way it swiveles. It swivels. Yeah. So this was back at the time where, like, most of the things people wanted to watch were on broadcast TV. And you could just have it. And V is going to absolutely destroy this antenna while we're sitting here.

You're not going to destroy the antenna. It's, it's. And now we are back to it being out like a little guy amount, not a 17 inch poke your eye out or nostril out amount. This is for the best. Yeah, you could also add an external antenna. if you wanted, I guess, even more coverage. That was like, you could just do it all. Can I read you some things that happened on television in 1982

that you could have watched on your Sony Watchman? I don't know if this is going to make you feel old or young, and I'm still trying to decide how it makes me feel, but we're just going to dive in. Late Night with David Letterman debuts. The Weather Channel goes on the air for the first time. What? 1984.

Here are several shows that had their first episode in 1982. Cheers, family ties, Night Rider, and the CBS Morning News, all 1982. Big year in television, 1982. It's like cable is like really starting to happen, so stuff is coming up, but it is still like, the three main channels are still like ruling the universe. Vanna White got her job as the co-host of Wheel of Fortune in 1982. Legend. There was someone else whose name I don't remember who was the co-host before, and they don't matter because Van Nukeye got the job. And in 1982, Drew Barrymore hosted SNL.

How old do you think Drew Barrymore was when she hosted SNL in 1982? Seven. The answer is seven. Good job. Oh, wow. I'm just on a role today. So, big year of television. And this is the kind of stuff that, like, all of a sudden becomes available to you. There was an iconic sports moment.

The anybody who watches football knows about the catch. That was in 1982. That was the thing you could watch on your watchman. Yeah. I didn't think that was going to really work for V. No. But all my Dwight. Clark fans out there know who they are.

But so this is the point, right? Like, this thing didn't require anything else. You just took it out of the box and turned it on, put in $40,000 worth of double-A batteries, and you're off and running. And, like, I don't know, going back and looking at this thing as just like a sort of perfectly contained experience was pretty great. Now you'd buy one of these, and it would be like, log into 17 apps, download a bunch of stuff. It's all going to get really complicated. Have 40 subscriptions. Yeah, just to watch.

one thing. Yeah. This one was just like, have some television. Here you go. Yeah. Have some TV. What a simple time. Exactly.

Why did we, can we go back? We strayed from the light. We went too close to the sun. That's true. So this thing launches, like I said, in Japan first, super popular, takes off. It was so popular in Japan, in fact, that they couldn't make enough of them to have it be readily available in the U.S. So it becomes a big deal in the U.S.

And people start to freak out because they can't get one. Like there are stories about people going to Bloomingdale's to try to buy one. And then they couldn't get one. So they, like, ran down to the Sony headquarters to yell at Sony employees about the fact that they couldn't get a watchman. I mean, wild. But the thing that I found so interesting about this is overwhelmingly people who used it and reviewed it, like loved it, but also thought it was bad. And it's like it's the same thing we were talking about with the older ones, right? Like, you can sort of see it looking at it.

Like, yeah, the screen sucks. And it's huge and it's heavy, but it's awesome. Yeah. I love it. I'm just thinking of like the complaints I have with heavy phones, like a galaxy ultra. You know, like I feel justified being like, this is heavy and chunky, you know, like imagining making that. complaint when around something like this. It's just totally ridiculous.

I just imagine having like if you're serious about watching your TV on the go, just like the 40 AA batteries you must have in your bag along with it, just weighing things down. Oh my God, like the Game Boy days. Like that was the scourge of the Game Boy experience. And like plugging it in whenever I could, like we got to my grandparents' house. I was like, I could have plug in my Game Boy because it's dying. I don't want you through the batteries.

So I just want to show you, as this thing is launching in the U.S., Sony made some truly spectacular slash alarming commercials about this thing. Oh, I love an alarming commercial. So here is an ad with a very famous person who was not yet famous at the time of making this ad. See if you can figure out who it is. You're about to see the Me TV, the Sony Watchman. It's the She TV, the Luigi TV, the first movie personal... So this is the whole pitch, right?

People have it in their book. They're reading it under the covers. The world's first flat screen television. Just over an instig. Or is it thin? And one even has an AMFM radio. The referee TV, the Sony Watchman TV, the one and only TV for the one and only you. Did you catch the celebrity?

I did not. It was a little grainy. That is none other than Jason Alexander. Our good friend George Costanza. He has hair. Oh, my gosh. That's why I didn't get it. Yeah.

He has hair. That's, yeah, this is, this is pre-fame and hair loss. But the thing I've, I think I love about this ad, it is so, it's like a very 20-25 ad. Yeah. It's like, just take that thing out of being a watchman and put smartphones in their hands, and it's the same damn thing. It's just like, oh, don't go to bed. Don't, like, hang out with your family. Don't referee the game you're being paid to referee.

Look at this instead. Yeah. If you just replace the watchman with AI, and that's like 20, 25. Oh, no. Decree. This is like a Gemini ad or something. Before we move on too far, I just want to. We're all product reviewers. We've all written product reviews.

I would like to read you a few lines from the greatest product view I've ever read in my entire life, which is by Tom Shales in a newspaper called the Record Journal from December 2nd of 1982. It says, watchman, show us the night and the day and the NFL and the new $25,000 pyramid. Actually, the $25,000 pyramid looks like a $25 cent pyramid on the new Sony Watchman. but who cares? That's very good. That's a good line. Oh my gosh. Genuine,

kudos to them for that. The watchman is as cute as E.T. And you don't have to wait in the woodshed for one to come and visit you. I don't know what that means. Whoa. I don't think that's anything. That's so intense. On a TV this small, any series is a mini-series.

That was my favorite one. I thought that was pretty good. I liked that a lot. Yeah. That was well played by him. The set runs for two and a half hours on four little batteries or can be operated from a wall plug or a larger batteries for longer playing time. And I'm like, Tom, what are I supposed to make of this?

Do more batteries, bigger batteries. Who cares? Have some batteries. What do you want? Oh, no. He did an editor there. Yeah. Tom Shales.

He said the whole screen could be hidden by a single commemorative postage stamp, which I suppose is... How big were postage stamps back then? Yeah. That's a little harsh. Yeah. But even our buddy Tom Shales, the greatest product of you all time, he said at the end of this,

he said the same thing everybody says, which is this thing is awesome. I love it to pieces. It's not the thing. And he, along with everybody else, was already talking about, oh, LCD is going to make this stuff work. Because LCD, it was a science project.

It was really complicated. It was really expensive. But it made the whole display stack, like so, so much smaller. And it was very clear to everybody that, like, this thing is a good idea, but it won't have to be this big for very long. Mm-hmm.

And so this is just such an interesting example of the kind of gadget that is like doomed from the day it starts. Yeah. But that kind of doesn't kill its appeal at all. Like Sony did everything right. And this thing always had like a teeny tiny shelf life. Yeah. There's sort of a unique moment in time. There's not like a thing that could come before it really.

And there's not a direct thing to replace it. It feels like just so of its moment. Totally. I love it. Totally. All right, so we need to take a break, and then we're going to talk a little bit about the legacy of the Watchman and how it changed us all forever. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for each. e-commerce. They offer a host of helpful tools you can take advantage of, from payment processing to analytics to website design. Their design studio includes hundreds of templates to help you create the exact website you've been envisioning for your business. If you're wondering,

what if I need help, then no worries, because you're never left to fend for yourself. Shopify's award-winning customer support is available 24-7. It's time to turn those what-ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com slash vergecast. Support for the show comes from Grammarly. You don't need reminding that the world moves fast.

But work today requires clear communication, and when every message counts, sounding rushed or generic, can be getting lost in the world. the shuffle. Grammally gives you one place to think, write, and finish your work where you already write, while giving you access to agents that help you sound natural and engaging. No matter what kind of writing you're doing, Gramerly helps you get ideas done faster and move from draft to done with less friction. You can use Gramerley's AI chat to brainstorm ideas, outline a solid draft, then refine it with context-aware suggestions that fit what you're working on. See why 90% a professional say Grammarly has saved them time writing and editing their work.

In a world of generic AI, you don't have to sound like everyone else. With Gramerly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com. That's Grammarly.com. All right, we're back. So a thing that I discovered about The Watchman is that it became like a weirdly great giveaway. This is like, so I was just searching around thinking, seeing like, okay, where was this thing sort of coming up in pop culture?

And over and over it was like, oh, I got one from the company raffle. Or like if you sign up for, there was one that was like sign up for a mortgage on this Florida Beach House and you'll get a free watchman from the real estate company. And I think to me it like really speaks to what this thing actually was, which is like no one needed this. But it's awesome. And if you have one, kick ass. And like, let me just play you a few of the things that this became thrown into because they're very fine. A free Sony Watchman TV with every new Superior Ford car, truck, or van. But you've got to buy now because this offer is good only during the celebration and only as Superior Ford in Zachary.

Welcome to the General Mills Watch and play game. In the next 60 seconds, we're parked inside these big new cereals. Or get free by running to Watchman TV giveaway box 9602 Clinton, Iowa. We'll include a list of winning pictures. Millions won or a thousand can win. I honestly think submitting things to PO boxes to try and win contests is the single most nostalgic thing I can think of. Oh, my gosh. Millions will enter.

Thousands will win. Right. That's their government mandated disclaimer. I won a Sprite logo basketball. Yeah. What did you? From like the bottle top of a Sprite bottle. Did you have to mail it in?

I did. That's awesome. And I got basketball. See, that was the first step. Yeah. Actually mailing it in. I never got that far. You didn't get your basketball?

No. They were counting on you not doing that. I was so excited that I won. Allison was vigilant. I mean, maybe I would have done it for a Sony Watchman. Yeah. I mean, like, that's like a perfect giveaway thing because it's not going to cost too much to have for, like, a corporation. But it's just expensive enough for, like, a normal person that you're like, I'd love it as a gift.

I don't want to pay my own money for it. Yeah. Like, it's perfect. You're already buying a car. Why not get a watchman with it? Yeah, or buying a house. That's a safety hazard. You're buying, because, like, ostensibly, like the referee, not paying attention to the game,

you're going to be driving and not paying attention to the rules of the road in your Bronco. Just watching your tiny little screen. I mean, yes, but no. I'm good with it personally. I mean, and the thing I have enjoyed the most about this, was going back and seeing all of the stories about how people were using theirs. Like, over and over and over, there are, like, people who are complaining or writing about or, you know, submitting questions to newspapers being like, my husband won't stop watching

the football game on his watchman in church. And he's just, like, bent over in the pew with presumably headphones on. And he had 17-inch antenna. Oh, my gosh. And just sticking up and just watching TV. And this is the sort of thing that, again, like, it's kind of commonplace now. Like, everybody's on their phone everywhere all the time. But this thing is enormous and new.

And so it was like, it was, you were not inconspicuous when you were doing something like this. And people just didn't care. They just did it anyway. So our newswriter, Andrew Lusheski, told me he had one, he had a Sony watchman, and he was addicted to it. And he whipped it out at a funeral. Wow. As a kid. So I'm shaming, Andrew.

But, like, that's amazing. Just whipping out, though, the Sony watchman at a funeral in the 80s or, like, whenever he had his, that's pretty amazing. He also said that he would use, like, the sound-only function so that when he was at a baseball game, he could actually hear the commentary. So, like, that's kind of cool. Another classic dad move. That's a classic, classic sport ball dad move. Was he keeping score, too, with all the little? I don't know.

I didn't care about sports. it's enough to dive deeper into that. But I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I guess you can't listen to the pundits say the thing about the ball sport. Yep. Yeah. That's what it's called. Yeah, the ball sport.

Yeah. People say that. Yep. But no, and I think what's wild about that to me is like everybody just started doing it. Do you know what I mean? It's not like, there wasn't like a slow period of figuring out where these things are and are not socially acceptable. People were just like, oh, I have a TV.

Sick. I'm going to watch this TV. And they're like, where are you? And they're like, I don't know, it doesn't matter. I'm going to watch this TV. And it just, it just like happened. And one of the things I thought was really interesting about all of this is there had been, from the beginning of the Walkman, there were a lot of people who were like really up in arms about the existence of this thing. They're like, it's isolating people.

They're wearing headphones. They're not interacting in the real world. How am I supposed to know who's here? You know, stuff that we're very familiar with now. But it was this, all these questions about like sort of individualism versus isolation is this big, messy. spectrum. And the watchman just took that to a whole other level. Because at least with the Walkman, you're like, dancing down the street in flowy clothing, but you at least like have your head up probably. The Watchman is just like you just immediately are subsumed into your own world.

Yeah. Like we've seen these ads. The whole point is to take you completely away from whatever you're doing and just immerse you in this space. And it's like it's just very funny to think 43 years later we have not solved any of that. I feel like there's kind of a moment with new technologies like that, especially like the mobile technologies and of varying degrees of like, is this okay? Everybody's watching their Sony Watchman at funerals or whatever. It is a choice to sit in a public place and just be like, let me just put this 17 inch. We can't emphasize enough at 17 inches. Yeah.

That's, it's a whole ruler. And then just. And it's so small. My eyes are so bad. If I was watching this, I'd have to be like two inches in front of me just to see what it's on there. Can you imagine trying to watch a telenovel or anything with like a subtitle? No, it's not happening. No. No. I still love it. Again, like so much of this I think was just that it was novel. And it was like it was just so cool that you could do it. Like, I don't know. Do you guys ever go back and watch like TV from this era? And you're like, oh, this all looks like crap. How did anyone see anything on television? Imagine that, but at two inches. Yeah, right. Might have made things better. Like fuzz it a little bit. That's kind of true.

So, but anyway, so this thing, like, both sort of sets off this, like, weird cultural firestorm that we're still dealing with now, but also continues to become a huge hit. One of the things I was reading suggested that, so Sony, after the Walkman had become really popular, might have been one of the reasons that it bought CBS records for $2 billion, in part to just, like, have stuff to put on the Walkman. Man. Oh, Sony. And there's, there's also a real argument to be made that Sony bought Columbia pictures just to have stuff to put on the watchman. That there was like, honest to God, like, there was a future in which this thing was like the iPod.

Like Sony Watchman 50 is like the video iPod was like sort of how they were thinking about this, which I think is super fascinating. That's so Sony. And then the one after this, the FD20, because what would come after the FD20? because what would come after the FD-210, but the FD-20, thank you, Sony, added video input to this. So you could just use it as a screen, but put something else into it. And so this thing that just starts to become more and more successful over time.

A few models later, it got color. A few models after that, I think, was when it got a whole new design, and it kind of looked like a, I don't know, radar gun that I was not into. it. But then eventually it becomes full-on LCD, much smaller, much simpler, like, the thing you would sort of expect it to be. But then everything conspires to kill the watchman. And sort of two things happen simultaneously. One is that a bunch of other devices start to exist. So by now it's like the late 90s. And basically Sony spends like 15 years. I think they made 65 different watchmen. That's a lot of watchmen. It's a lot of watchmen. There was an army of watchmen.

Watchmen's. The watchmans. No, no, no. It's watch's men. And so they eventually, like, it becomes, for a bunch of reasons, sort of price and availability on this stuff, it becomes like not quite walkman level mainstream, but like lots of people have them. But then again, immediately LCD makes that turn, and Sony is actually late to the turn to LCD because it had the CRT. thing that it was really excited about. So it was slow to make that change. Others

came along. But then again, by the end of the, by like the late 90s we're starting to get to like portable DVD players and we're starting to get to all kinds of other ways to consume stuff in a mobile way. But then the thing that truly killed it was that in the U.S., in particular, we switched from

analog TV signals to digital TV signals, which literally all at once destroyed the watchman. It just had nothing to watch. anymore, which is very sad. That's true. That process took a long time, and it was super messy, and there are a lot of people who still have a lot of feelings about it.

I mean, if you turn it on now, it just plays static, and that just feels so emblematic and sad at the same time, just like, it still works. It would still work. I know. And so what's wild is that was the end. Like, very rarely do you get a moment where something just instantly ceases to be a thing that anyone needs or cares about. But it's like, as soon as they switch the signal,

Yeah. It's dead. It was gone. It's like you can boot up an old family computer or something and there's still remnants of like whatever was on there and some software that is, you know, outdated and a security risk. But like, yeah, it's just blank. Like the content stream does not exist in any way anymore. Yeah. All right. We need to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to do the eight version of history questions. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in.

It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process, from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week. With hiring pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focused shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward.

Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns. Because let's be honest, you didn't get into tech to babysit a broken database. you got into it to actually build something.

MongoDB lets you do that. It's flexible, developer first, acid-compliant, enterprise-ready, and built for the AI era. Say goodbye to bottlenecks and legacy code. Start innovating with MongoDB. There's a reason it's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500. And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB, it's a great freaking database. start building at MongoDB.com

slash build. All right, we're back. So on every episode, we answer the same eight questions about whatever product we're talking about. Question number one, what was the very best thing about the Watchman?

Clearly the 17-inch antenna. Yeah? Clearly that. No, I think that's so hard. Like, the problem, like the thing about these version history questions is I can list, like a whole thing about what the worst thing is.

But trying to figure and like distill the best thing. So what I had as my best thing is now after a conversation, what I think might be the worst thing is that it made TV portable. You know? It's like I don't know what it is about making your music private and portable. That just feels immensely positive that you would think would apply to the TV portion of it. And it's like, yeah, cool, awesome. very handy for dads at baseball games.

But now I'm just like, is that the best thing? Is that the best thing? I think maybe now my revised best thing is just how much of like a tactile gadget it is. That's kind of mine too. The dials. Like it just really brings me back. And you see the like little indicator move up and down the window when you're tuning it. Yeah.

Everything just takes me back to using a gadget of this era. And it's all like within reach of your thumb, kind of. Like you're watching your walking. Yeah, you could. It's like. Yeah. I mean, there you go. It's peat.

I actually didn't expect that to work, but you can hold it in your right hand and turn all the wheels. I'm going to have wrist pain. It is one pound. It is well considered, I think. I think my answer is just the all in one. of it, I think is really awesome. Like, if you look at something like this now, I see at least two things on here that would be separate accessories, right?

There's the kickstand, which definitely would not come as part of it. The antenna would probably be something separate. It would have, you know, it would not be double A batteries, which I love double A batteries. But there's just something about, like, you could take this thing out of the box, put in the batteries, and turn it on, and it would be instantly feature complete. I think it's, like, very cool. Oh, man. We just got a PS5 because we're on the cutting edge of technology.

Sure. But like the hoops you have to jump through to start up a new console was a whole evening. You're like set aside a whole evening before you plan on playing any of your games. Yeah. This is just like it's ready to go. Yeah, totally. All right. Question number two.

What was the worst thing about it? Clearly the 17-inch antenna. You know, I think. the fact that it would probably just not be very practical, it's eating through the battery life. Like, on the one hand, double A batteries. On the other hand, double A batteries. Yeah.

And then also, I think a thing that doesn't get talked about is just how finicky tuning can be. Yeah. Because, like, it's so satisfying now, but if we were trying to, like, do you remember trying to tune into the right station on, like, your radios? And especially, this is on the go.

This is, like, a thing you are, like, actively out in the world moving around with. That's the whole point of its existence. Yeah. Trying to dial that in all the time, I think, would probably drive me insane. There's a, I listen to the radio in my car a lot, and there's kind of a dead zone on my route to pick up my kid at daycare. And it's at a stoplight, and I'm always listening to, like, K-E-X-P, and I'll, like, inch the car forward. To try and get in the right spot where I'm picking it where there's not static anymore.

Yeah, with that plus a visual would be very frustrating. Yeah, agreed. I think for me it's got to be the screen. Like, legit kudos for your technological accomplishments, Sony, but the screen sucked. Yeah. And it is kind of, it's like a little bit of a you had one job situation. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, oh, we made a walkman.

It's so neat, but the sound is awful. It's like, well, is it that good a walkman? Yeah, I just, I'm so, like, so universally the reviews were like, I love this thing so much. It's so terrible. And that's genuinely how I feel about it. Yeah. Question number three, would it have been a bigger hit if Apple made it? Nah. At least not at the time, I think.

Like, are we talking 1980s Apple? Yes. 1982 Apple is like Apple 2-era Apple. And I don't think it had the chops to do this. Like Apple wasn't even thinking mobile back then. Yeah. Yeah. And then if you think about just how many competitors there were in this space because you're like what mentioning Cassio is in the game, Panasonic, I think is in the game. Sinclair is in the game.

And then if you really think about it, Sony in the 80s, peak bubble era Japan, Sony was like, this is the height of my power. I have not yet sonied myself into oblivion. This is a good point. Like, we probably should have made more of this at the beginning. Like, Sony truly is like crushing it in the early 80s. It's like everything it's doing is working. it is like at the center of culture, I think especially in Japan, obviously it is like the biggest thing going.

But even as it comes state side, like Sony, people saw Sony then the way people see Apple now. So like if you were to ask this question in the 80s, it would be like, is it a bigger hit if Sony made it? Like that's how meaningful a thing Sony was then. All right. Question number four, if you could go back and make this thing yourself, what would you do differently? You're in charge of the watchman division in 1982. Are you changing the name back to Flat TV? Is that the move?

I feel like that the environmentally sound thing would be to make it, like, encourage you to run it off of the, off of wall power and not eat a bunch of double A batteries. I don't know. Split the difference. Swappable battery packs. Yeah, yeah. So then like when you're at home, you charge the battery packs. Right. And then you just have the swappable battery packs.

I think I would just try to make it cheaper. Like even like a little bit cheaper. And I think you can kind of corner the market in a pretty big way. Because if you think about it, like the Walkman lasted so long. Yeah. And I think the Watchman was on this sort of death march towards LCDs from the very beginning. But I think if you if you like really invest and you're like, we're going to make. make it as culturally big and cool and exciting so that like a generation of people who never

used one has like attachments to it, I think you could have done it. And I think you just try to drive the price down a little. If I'm Sony, I go into crime and I make sure that everyone stays on analog. And then I make a digital tuning adapter. There you go. There we go. Okay. So we're going to corrupt governments around the world.

Corrupt government. For my own ends. Yeah. I mean, they bought Columbia pictures probably for the Watchmen, right? So why? See, they went too big. They were like, we're going to get into the money guzzler that is Hollywood. We should have just made it so that everyone stayed on analog forever.

Yeah. I don't know why they got that accent all of a sudden. But yeah. Yeah, they're doing a very, like, mid-Atlantic accent on that one. I like it. All right. All right. Question number five.

What feature of this thing should ever. every current version have. And I'm going to tweak this slightly because there are no current watchman. You have to take something from this device in front of us and put it on smartphones. What is it? That's what I was going to say to.

Yes, that's why I said it fast. I wanted to get it in there. As a person who will never stop having a pop socket on the back of my phone, I look at that kickstand and I'm like, same. Sony gets it. You guys are doing it right.

So kickstand is the appropriate answer. The one in my heart is the 17 inch and 10. Oh my gosh. I love it. Just as like a carrying mechanism, just sort of dangling it at your side. You know, you put the 17-inch antenna, fight off people on the street who are bothering you, poke out your eye, instant get out of work-free card. Oh, sorry, guys, poked my nose out. No.

Taser situation. Like, when I have to point to my husband at the thing he didn't actually put away, just tap it with the antenna, go tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. You've just suggested the possibility of a whole new app store just for the antenna on your iPhone. And I'm now very intrigued by this idea. Yeah, this is a free idea. I will consult someone in the third-party accessories market. V gets 30%. You heard of your first.

Yeah, 30%. I'll live with 30%. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do love an antenna. I just like, phones need more things to fiddle with. I don't think it needs an antenna. But, like, my other option, if it wasn't the kickstand, was going to be the tuners.

Just because I'm like, there's just something about, like, stop it with the volume buttons that suck to press and give me a thing I can spin with my finger. Yeah. Just give it to me. As Johnny, I've said, the digital crown is the input of the... Honestly, if Johnny I've had gotten up at the intro of the Apple Watch and been like, this does nothing but it's fun as hell to fiddle with, I would have been like, yes, Johnny.

Yeah. You get it, Johnny. To be fair, scroll knobs on mechanical keyboards, digital crown, and bring back scrolly thingies. Yeah. I don't know. More scrolly thingies. I'm into that. Question number six.

Is there an alternate timeline in which this thing was more or even more successful? I think the answer to this one is clearly yes. Do you think if there's the cheaper one? I think if Sony waited a few years and did this first, made a huge splash with the LCD Sony Walkman and tried to be early to that instead of very late to this. I think it could have worked. Because the thing is, there's something like this, you just can't make that bet at the time because you just don't know how long it's going to take to commercialize.

You don't know when it's going to happen. And like, I get why you ship this thing when you do. But knowing what we know now, if I'm Sony, I just, like, ride the Walkman out for a while, adds more features to it. It keeps being a thing. And then it's like, late 80s, watchman. What's up, losers? And I, like, I feel like it wins. And then it dies immediately when the—

I don't know if it dies. I know there's that. But, like, conceptually, they were so spot on because everything that they pitched as an idea we are currently doing now. Yeah. So, like, I do think, you know— I've been watching sports the whole time we've been doing this. I mean, honestly, my fictional alternate timeline where Sony gets a mid-Atlantic accent and goes, hey, see, folks here, we're going to get the analog. We're going to own the analog and nothing goes digital ever.

Then they win. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. This is the smartphone of that, of that era. I mean, you're honestly kind of right. Yeah. Which brings us to question number seven.

Could you reboot it now? Oh, I don't know. I mean, do we have to assume you can do some kind of digital antenna situation with it? I mean... You can reboot it however you want. Okay, I would like to make the case that not only could you reboot this now, Netflix should be working on this already. I would agree with you on that for sure because I think in Korea they still have phones that do TV like this. I still think that they actually, they definitely do because when the coup d'et ta...

was happening back in December. People were taking their old galaxy phones that could do this. Oh, wow. And they were using it because what happened, YouTube wasn't working. Streaming wasn't working. Cell phones weren't working. So all the TV signals were working. They just needed to update.

Like, they have like this different standard there. I think it's called like DBM, DM, DMB or something like that. So, you know, as soon as December 2024, people were actually having a need for this. So also if we're in some sort of apocalyptic zombie Last of Us era, I think this comes back. I think this comes back. I think a lot of things come back in that era. But I think, so to me, the idea of a dedicated shows and movie device is actually very compelling. Like, I have found myself over and over recently, like, sitting down to watch a show that I want to watch.

And I'm like, I'm so excited to watch this. I've been waiting all week to watch it. and then I just screw around on my phone the whole time. And I'm like, this is, this is dumb. Like, why am I doing this? And then now when I open up my phone, there is the simplest place to go is like social media or Reddit or something like that. And so for me, it's like the idea of actually having something that is just like a, essentially an iPod video again actually makes a lot of sense to me. Like a Kindle, but for TV.

Yeah, but I want it to come from a streaming service. And it probably has to be Netflix because I just want the whole damn library. just either locally on the device or just always they're available for me. And it's just like, maybe it's, the answer to this probably ends up being like the foldable iPhone that turns into like a larger phone

or any foldable gadget now. But like there is something to a dedicated portable television that I like honestly think I want back in my life. Yeah. I want it. I don't want notifications while I'm watching TV. No, I know. I don't.

But I want to go even farther down that road and I want it to play only PBS and not just PBS. I want the like cozy PBS shows like America's Test Kitchen, Bob Ross, the like sewing shows or whatever, Rick Steves. I think that would, I would carry that around. Okay, wait, we figured this out. Yeah. So you buy it. And when you buy it, you pick a handful of what amount to like fast channels. Yeah. So it's just like always on playing whatever you want. So for me, it's like one of mine is going to be like a 24-7 stream of the office. Yeah. That's just like on the tuner.

I can just tune to the office. And you pick like, I don't know, there are like 12 stations on here. So you pick 12 channels and that's what you have. And it's just like you're never-ending TV machine. Yeah. And you can never change it. Right. No, but that's great also because, you know, it's the problem with TikTok is that you constantly have to scroll.

You have to interact with it. if it's just like a thing where you're tuning in and you don't have to do that. Oh, that's great. And this solves the you turn it on and it immediately starts playing problem. Right. Which I like very much.

All right, we solved it. We did it. Okay. And we're going to call it the flat TV. Yes. It's going to be sick. FD. 210.

We're going to call it the FD 110 because Sony's could right past that for some reason. We'll undercut them. Yeah. All right. Question number eight. Does this belong in the version history Hall of Fame? I think yes, it's a perfect gadget.

It doesn't matter that it's big and bulky and it chewed through AA batteries and it doesn't work anymore. It's perfect. I also think yes, just because conceptually, like, just this whole time we've been talking about how everything it does was like a precursor to our current health state and reality.

So, like, if you're talking about like version history, we have a lot of RIP gadgets that never made it. But like if you're talking about impact and thoughts and, like, concepts, I actually think, this is pretty like holy quacamole. This is, this is, this is just my phone, but like make it retro and analog and steampunk. This is a steampunk smartphone. So, okay, let me make the case against, which is that I think what you both said is true, but I don't think this device did it. Do you know what I mean? Like I think it was right about a lot

of things, but I don't think it caused those things, if that makes sense. Like I don't, I actually don't think you can draw a sort of straight cultural line from there to here, but I don't think this sort of begets the smartphone in any sort of straight way. I will allow it if you, at a future date and time, put the Walkman in, because I think the walkman may be the actual, like, precursor to this is my point. Or we go all the way back, and it's the Pressman. Pressman. And or we go back to the Pressman. Sony's tape recorder division gets the one that deserves. Like, if we think about what Sony did with the press man and then the walkman and then the watchman, like that line of thinking and just like the cultural impact of having personal devices where we isolate ourselves into a constant content streaming hell and don't remember to look up and talk to other people, then yeah, this is definitely like an evolution in there.

But if you're talking about like the iconic thing in that timeline, then I think it would be the walkman. That's fair. So I tend to agree. I will say the watchman did end up on Times list of the all-time 100 gadgets. Yeah? Which I thought was kind of wild. What year? This was in 2010.

Okay. And I mean, again, with a black and white screen smaller than most current cell phone displays, the watchman isn't much by today's standards, but when it was released in 1982, it was a marvel. Again, I love it and it sucks. Like, over and over and over. That's just what they say. I think it's no.

I think you're right that if you're going to point to a thing that changed everything, it has to be the Walkman. Yeah. Because this comes only because of the Walkman. That and like the one thing I'll put in its favor is that it's kind of popularizing. It may not be the number one thing that did it, but it is just like pushing this idea of screens everywhere. Yeah.

Because honestly, maybe you stay out of the version Hall of Fame because you created a dystopian hell. Yeah, right? We're not rewarding that behavior. Like, I love it. It's the perfect gadget. There's just so much about its boxiness and 80sness that, like, brings so much joy. But then I think about my life right now and how TikTok is my hell and I doomscroll and we have the word doom scroll. No, you don't deserve to be in the version of Hall of Fame.

You can think about that. That is a lot to put on the watchman. The watchman is just here doing its best. Okay, I'm sorry. You have a 17 inch antenna. Don't put that on the flat TV. Yeah. Yeah, you know what?

Poor flat TV. We'll put it on Sony. You can't choose who your parents are. That's true. Yeah. But for now, I think it stays out. But it's like an honorable mention. Okay.

Honorable mention. It like got votes during the ceremony. But it didn't quite make it in. You know, maybe if there's like a conceptual Hall of Fame or almost, almost famous. The almost Hall of Fame is pretty good. The almost famous. The almost Hall of Fame. I'm just inventing new wings for your Hall of Fame.

The version history. Hall of Fame is going to be a very complicated compound. It's going to be a huge compound with different wings. This will be in the Southwest wing. I've decided. Okay. Yeah. There it is.

Done and done. All right, that is it for the show. Thank you both for doing it. Thank you, as always, for being here with us. As ever, you can watch all of our episodes on YouTube. You can listen to them wherever you get podcasts. And the best way to support all of us and all of this is to subscribe to verge.com. Thank you again.

See you next time. Version History is produced by Victoria Barrios, River Branson, Owen Grove, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, Eric Gomez, Andrew Marino, and Alex Parkin. Studio support from Chris Shirtleff. Our theme music is composed by Brandon McFarland. Be sure to subscribe to the new version history podcast feed to get all of our new episodes as soon as they arrive.