The year is 1998, almost no one has a digital camera, there’s no such thing as HDTV for the masses, but it was the year that one device, that now almost everyone owns a version of, first came to the market.  Eiger Labs released its MPMan MP3 player with 32MB (or 64MB via mail-in upgrade) of flash memory for the low low price of $199.95.

Sure, that seems ludicrous by today’s standards where that same price will get you an 8GB iPod Nano.  Technology was just too limited back in 1998.  If the MPMan had not come around then the modern portable audio landscape might be a bit different but sitting at my desk in 2008, the MPMan is a laughable joke.

Eiger Labs advertised the following features;

100% Solid State: Never Skips or Wobble
32MB Flash Memory: 30 min to several hours of music
Ultra Compact: Ultra Portable
High Quality Music: CD-Quality
SRP $199.95: with NiMH Rechargeable Batteries!

The 32MB of memory was good for about 30 minutes of high quality music.  I know that back in 1998 there was USB but the MPMan used a slower serial connection for download music.  Serial?  Do they still make that?  Honestly, bury those ports in a graveyard, where they belong.

NiMH batteries?  NiMH, how primitive, what was 1998, the dark ages?  Give me at least a Lithium-Polymer or Lithium-Ion battery.

In 2008 people like to carry their entire music collection on a portable player and while the MPMan may have sparked the begging, the players didn’t really come of age until Apple released the first iPod in 2001.  That’s where it starts for me.  Anything before that is just a joke.

I realize I’m being hard on older technology; most people like to take a look at where things came from; I like to take a look at where we are and make comparisons based on today’s technology.  Maybe it’s not fair but it sure is funny.

The question that really gives me a headache is, what if the MPMan didn’t exist?  Would Apple have still invented the iPod?  Probably, because someone would invented a digital audio player eventually and it wouldn’t have been hard to be less primitive either.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 1:41 pm under Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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