“Microsoft unveiled both the MSN Music Service, which caters to the many mobile music devices supporting the Windows Media format, and the Portable Media Center, which adds video capability,” Blane Warrene reports for MacNewsWorld. “Could these new developments — not to mention Bill Gates’ recent mocking of Steve Jobs for his reluctance to pursue mobile video — goad Apple into adding LCD to the iPod?”
“Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media believes Jobs is taking the right course. He doesn’t think portable players for video make much sense unless users have eyeglass screens to wear. He thinks watching video on a small portable screen would be like having music come out of a tiny speaker on the iPod. ‘You listen to music on an iPod thru headphones. Few of us would like the experience if the sound came from a half-dollar-sized speaker in the iPod. That dog won’t hunt,’ Leigh said. In the absence of eyeglass screens, he added, the next best bet is a 12- or 14-inch screen. ‘If you want a laptop computer-sized screen, then you simply use your laptop PC for videos and not some smaller device like a video-enabled iPod,'” Warrene reports. “Michael McGuire, senior analyst with Gartner G2, agrees. He thinks the ‘portable media center’ already exists. He calls it a notebook.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: More information about Apple’s “portable media centers,” commonly known as iBook and PowerBook, can be found here and here.
