“Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, will begin selling portable music players for as much as 80 percent less than Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod,” The Denver Post reports. “The Microsoft-branded devices will ‘look and feel’ as good as the iPod for as little as $50, said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of MSN at Microsoft Corp., at the Goldman Sachs fifth annual Internet Conference in Las Vegas. The iPod sells for $249 to $499.”

“Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., will release a number of music players when it launches its online music service later this year, giving customers more choices than Apple, Mehdi said,” The Denver Post reports.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: This from Microsoft, a company that thought Windows 95 had “caught up to the Mac” and currently thinks Windows XP “looks and feels” as good as Mac OS X. Microsoft, a company that’s working on Longhorn, trying to debut it in 2007, that’ll attempt to “be as good as or close enough” to Apple’s Mac OS X that debuted six years earlier in 2001. Thanks for the good laugh, Yusuf! FYI: We’re happy to have the most choices in online legit music, with iTunes Music Store’s 700,000+ online tracks available and growing, that work perfectly with the market-dominating, best-in-class devices, Apple’s iPod and iPod mini. Microsoft is going to offer more choices (as long as it’s Microsoft) how exactly?

When has one company copied so much so poorly and gotten so many suckers to pay them so handsomely for the privilege of suffering with second and third-rate knock-off products?

Related MacDailyNews article:
Mac users should not buy Microsoft software – May 16, 2003