Charles on… anything that comes along

A grump by Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg asks Is Portable Media Center a Dumb Idea? Nope, but Bad Reporting is, and takes issue with an ExtremeTech review of these iPods-with-video. Make that expensive-iPods-with-video.

Came here via a link from Robert Scoble’s blog. Scoble’s interesting, in that he’s been arguing for ages that iPods shouldn’t be so popular, because there are lots more products that use Microsoft’s products. Scoble, of course, works there.

Well, let’s turn it over to a third party who’s not partisan: Peter Cochrane, formerly BT’s head of research. His new book, Uncommon Sense, is based on the short columns he wrote for silicon.com. In one he simply swats portable video devices away: “I am intrigued to see if people will stream movies and watch them while travelling.. but I suspect they will not. The reason… an existence theorem that says pocket TV sets are less than $100 and have even bigger screens [than are proposed], and fail to sell in large numbers.”

This is the crux, surely: how many people do you see with portable TVs? OK, and now how many with iPods? Or with portable radios vs portable TVs? That’s the key difference: when we’re doing portable things, we like to occupy our ears with one thing, and our eyes with another.

That’s why Michael Gartenberg’s criticism of the ExtremeTech article might (only might) be right in particular, but it’s completely off in general. Video “iPods” are a solution desperately searching for a problem - one that doesn’t exist.

Still, nice to find a Jupiter blog. I must subscribe. I realised the other day that blogs are fast becoming as useful as some websites. The only problem is keeping the sub lists coordinated between different machines.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Fiorina's curse lives on after HP kills Apple deal to resell iPod (1 August 2005; score: 67.11%)
• Well, that about wraps it up for the Portable Media Center (or Centre) (12 July 2004; score: 60.05%)
• On Ballmer and Media Centres, BT's Broadband Voice and how sight kicked off evolution's Big Bang (12 October 2004; score: 43.92%)