Apple’s video iPod comes nearer… at least online
Interesting stuff from the Business 2.0 blog which says it has a Scoop: Disney Considering Teaming Up with Apple on Video iPod:
Today’s a scoop bonanza on Apple’s rumored upcoming video iPods. No sooner did I post an item earlier today on Apple’s plans to make music videos available through iTunes than my fellow B2.0 editor-at-large Paul Sloan shoots me an e-mail saying that he’s confirmed exactly the same thing. But my man Sloan, who wrote our April cover story predicting the video iPod and other upcoming Apple products, says that the content for the video iPod could be more than just music videos. According to him:
Steve Jobs has spoken with Disney President and soon-to-be CEO Bob Iger about ways to license various Disney content for a video iPod, according to an internal Disney email I have obtained. That could include anything from clips from ESPN and ABC News to short cartoons.
There’s then a pointer to an LA Times article about how Microsoft, guess what, wants to get into film downloads too. The B2.0 seems to think that a video iPod would be an absolute competitor to such an idea. I don’t see it that way, actually. What’s pretty clear from the LA Times article is that Microsoft is thinking much bigger, about downloading whole films to ..objects in your living room; Microsoft will control the software controlling the objects. Not really the same as the video iPod at all.
Good stuff by B2.0 to do the proper journalism to back up what everyone figured out - that iTunes’s readiness for music video downloads presages an iPod that can play them too. (Though looking back, I seem to have reckoned that Apple might do a deal with Sony to play music videos from iTunes on the PSP. Hmm, I think I’ll recant that. Apple wants all the money. And I don’t think Sony would want to do the deal.)
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- At Netimperative: Apple's plans for music videos (19 May 2005; score: 63.35%)
- Handheld video players: survey shows people aren't interested (3 November 2004; score: 50.9%)
- Why the "photo iPod" won't do video: it's all about battery life (14 October 2004; score: 50.48%)
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July 23rd, 2005 at 1:30 pm
OK, I know that iPod has made these things easier or at least, I presume it has but I’ve had a 20Gb portable with a 2in screen that can play video (and I have actually used this functionality) for two years *at least*. Archos, which makes my gadget, has equally portable variants with bigger screens that do the job very well.
So why the excitement?
wg< ! spaminator saw this >
July 23rd, 2005 at 10:49 pm
Because, Wendy, you’re not like most people (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). You know how to transfer the video and what it means when it doesn’t work and why.
Don’t forget that there was hard drive MP3 players long before the iPod (and flash based MP3 players before that). What Apple brings to the game and this is the lesson across the board, actually, with Apple’s stuff is not necessarily to be cutting edge, but to make what it offers easily accessible and usable.
Simple example: 20GB? How much video is that? How many songs? The iPod’s marketing lesson of “1,000 songs” (or whatever the 5GB original was) is a perfect example of that difference.< ! spaminator saw this >
July 25th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
I suppose, she says grumpily.
The real thing that needs to be cracked, though, is a model for classical music: existing tags and the “songs” concept really doesn’t work for it.
wg< ! spaminator saw this >
July 26th, 2005 at 10:09 am
Wendy, have you checked out this one:
http://demo.mspace.fm/
It is from a bunch of academics at Southampton University. One of the heavyweights in the IT sector.
It says:
“mSpace is an interaction model to help explore relationships in information.
“mSpace helps people build knowledge from exploring those relationships. mSpace does this by offering several powerful tools for organizing an information space to suit a person’s interest: slicing, sorting, swapping, infoViews and preview cues.”
< ! spaminator saw this >
July 26th, 2005 at 10:41 am
Well, Mike, mSpace crashed my browser (Camino, with which it claims compatibility, on a broadband link) along with three days’ collected pages for research. It simply kept saying “Transferring data…” Either it was downloading the whole web, or the site is slow, or it’s not working.
I guess the clue was there in the tagline on the page: “Exploring the semantic web”. Curse you, semantic web!
Perhaps more work to do there.< ! spaminator saw this >