This thread reminded me of Blaise Pascal's quip "I would have written a shorter letter, but did not have the time."

It's often easier to just throw in everything that's easy to do with little thought about cohesiveness or user experience. Leaving the record feature out of the walkman was likely a more difficult idea to push than including it and I think they were right.

Exactly this. You wouldn’t make a dictaphone and then be like, shall we just tout good speakers in it just in case someone wants to also listen to their music on it. So why the other way around.