alt Hacker News> The only downside of CDs was that you couldn’t record from the radio and Napster eventually solved that better than radio ever did.
This was far from the only drawback with CDs especially early on, at least in mobile applications: the media (and thus player) is bulky, cases are fragile (in part through increased leverage), it has low resilience to physical damage, and before memory prices hit low enough for significant buffering the slightest g forces would lead to skips.
MDs were real progress on that front. Shame it was quite expensive and the digital models were hobbled by horrendous software. And obviously flash-based pmps then smartphones are their lunch entirely.
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MDs are just another example of Sony screwing it up by making things proprietary and keeping it to themselves instead of creating an ecosystem (memory sticks were another example, although they didn't offer quite the same advantages). It's really a shame, I think if Sony would have gone about this differently they likely would have put off the emergence of MP3 players for a long time.
> has low resilience to physical damage
No it doesn't. As a child, one time I tried to make a CD unplayable and literally couldn't do it. (Sandpaper didn't do the trick.)
The real issue was the skipping when you tried to use a portable CD player.
I remember my first “portable” was so bulky it came with its own carry case like a hand bag.
You had to step very lightly when using it as it was just itching to skip.
It would also eat through batteries like no one’s business.