In the Digital Domain column of today's NY Times, Randall Stross gets pretty pessimistic about Howard Stringer's chances of hauling Sony out of the 1980s and into the present day. As has often been noted here, Sony's seemingly perfect opportunity for synergy between its content (music label) and hardware (portable consumer devices) divisions, the company has remained mired in the past, refusing to accept MP3 until a years-too-late capitulation, and misunderstanding Apple's success. Stross sarcastically calls Sony the "Sony Graphaphone and Wax Record Company," and notes that even recent hardware releases (blessedly capable of playing MP3s) seem driven by the same old-world DNA as ever. He concedes that Stringer, with a background in the content side of the business, probably appreciates how far behind Sony is. In my view, Sony could demonstrate a new sense of reality by dismantling the abhorrent Connect service and abandoning the ATRAC3 file format. Cutting those losses would seem to put Sony on a solid footing of non-denial from which it could innovate again as it did in the 1980s. However: One must remember that Sony was first with the Walkman, just as Apple was first to establish a synergy of device and content service.