The comments do a good job of pointing out the fallacies in the article. If Microsoft wins, it’s because they have a bundling advantage (I like to point out that this is a clear case on monopoly maintenance as Microsoft is a convicted monopolist). It is simply not okay for Microsoft to come out with something okay or almost as good—it has to be fundamentally better, which it obviously isn’t.

Fortunately, I think that Microsoft’s leverage advantages are not very strong in this case. Their products (in this case the operating system) rev too slowly. Windows Media is teh suck. I mean another JPEG standard when JPEG2000 kicks its ass already? What are they smoking?

Apple replaced the iPod and iPod photo with the video model and sales have been very strong.

Microsoft has a deal with MTV as their music store. I’m not too sure how that one worked out, but if I had to hazard a guess they are making MTV do the deals with the music industry and be the fall guy for that fiasco.

When a multi-billion dollar paranoid company like Microsoft won’t touch a music deal, then it kind of makes you wonder about the sanity of MTV execs.

I’m betting the nano sells but this doesn’t.

I have been wrong before. I didn’t think the mini would have such amazing sales. (Though I was certain about the original iPod, iPod Shuffle, and nano.)

I’m sure the Slashdot crowd is going to have a field day with this one.

I like the quote: “The industry doesn’t want to repeat a history of undervaluing itself.” It really is a nice rationalization even if it fails as a frame. Fun stuff though.

Yahoo! doing a rev share off of streaming dollars: that’ll give the music industry some cojones to pull out of iTMS. Looks like soccer moms aren’t the only people who need to worry. (Still, to do that without losing another racketeering lawsuit is going to be hard.)

I don’t understand how a Video iPod would work either. A lot of people forget that after the Sony Walkman in the late 70’s, Sony introduced the failed Watchman in the 80’s before striking gold again with the Discman in the 90’s.

Right now, iTunes has the ability to play back video (due to the QuickTime thing) which has been restricted to including music video liner notes with iTunes albums (sans DRM) and Vodcasts. The interface seems very kludgy to me as well as I am uncertain how that would work into a daily routine. For instance, I can see people listening to podcasts on a long commute, but can’t say the same for video.

The reason people clamor for it is because they blindly follow ideas such as “digital convergence” or chant “disruptive technology” without really intuiting what benefit a person gets for such a “convergence” or what is so disruptive about the idea (besides making things inferior).

Thanks for your comments.

You’re right - I don’t like to “rent” my music - but I do like to rent my movies (from Netflix).

And the Video iPod - I don’t understand how that would work… If it’s for downloaded video’s - where can you download movies? Or will that be part of iTunes?