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Microsoft Launches Portable Music Player
prostoalex writes "Microsoft announced Portable Media Center, a digital music player, to be available in the second half of 2004. The announcement follows Dell's foray into portable digital music. Microsoft plans to license their software for the Media Center to third-party manufacturers as well. Samsung Electronics, Sanyo, ViewSonic, and iRiver are already on the list. The actual Microsoft-branded devices are promised to start at $350."
So why should I care again? By then another revision or two of the iPod will come out and it will only get better. Dell will have improved their product, so will Creative, and everyone else in the industry.
MS may make nice hardware (their mice, keyboards, and joysticks are all great), but why should I care? Tell me next summer and I might listen, but is there ANYONE who is even thinking of buying an MP3 player that won't because of this announcement? I doubt it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I've always had a saying, for every loss there is an opportunity. Digital music up, CD's down? Think what you can do to help Digital music along? Is there a problem there that needs solving? Is there some worthy contribution you can make? Business is chess and business is war at the same time. Or better still, time to consider a new industry to open a store in? Yes it hurts but in the end you may not only keep your house, but upgrade the house as well :-)
...in bed
No, it only works with mp3 and their own proprietary secure format that nobody else uses. Their version for the other major platform screws up some computers so badly they won't boot and can't even be repaired. The earlier version of the management software erased some people's entire hard drives (on their own platform!) and their shoddy QA department missed this. You're probably better off with one of the other players that work with multiple portables and multiple media jukebox progr.....
:)
Hey, wait a second, I thought we were talking about Apple here. Never mind.
I was thinking that myself, anyone else but me think the market is just a little saturated right now? What does MS offer that nobody else does in the digital music market? Better rights control for the artist? Better for them I presume but won't help sales much...somehow this digital music player will have to find a niche that helps people.
Either that or maybe, as usual, the MS brand will make the music player sell like hotcakes (though at the same time MS isn't without it's failures aka MS Bob...*shiver*).
...in bed
maybe... but you might lose too. if ms can manage to leverage their desktop os monopoly to favour their music player to the exclusion of others your much-vaunted consumer-choice will actually be decreased.
name two web browsers with a market share greater than 1%.
2 1337 4 u!
In fact to elaborate on that point a little...
Nightmare scenario:
1. Can't get music of CDs because they have DRM-enforced copyright protection.
2. Can't record music off the radio because it has DRM-enforced copyright protection (thank you, FCC).
3. Can't e-mail or send media files over to someone else because they have DRM-enforced 'licenses' that integrate with your e-mail client and your DRM-enabled networking stack.
4. Can't get media off the p2p networks because of the RIAA. Even when you do, they might be malware from the RIAA in the form of watermarked tracks that will be deleted by the DRM-enabled operating system after sending a courteous request for 911.
I don't personally live in America and I don't use Windows, but it's quite possible this Nightmare Scenario or at least elements of it could be in place by 2006-2007, just in time for Longhorn's debut. I for one will be sticking with Linux.
Too bad we aren't talking about hardware. From the article (there's an article!?!?!):
MICROSOFT is jumping into the portable media market, launching software for a new line of mobile devices designed to free digital content from a computer and play music, videos and photos on the go.
Sure, they may do good hardware, but knowing it's software they are producing here, one's first thoughts should be towards whether the software will be infected with DRM, and to what extent.
Care to back that up?
From what I have seen, WMV9 is a decent codec, but it is far from "innovative". It' sjust another hash of MPEG4, and has huge attributes in common with DivX 4/5, XViD, and other MPEG4 codecs.
Headline: Microsoft Launches Portable Music Player
Definition: Launch: To actually start selling something, as in "Apple launched Mac OS 10.3 Panther last Friday."
Article: Microsoft Announces....to be available in the second half of 2004.
Definition: Announce: To promise that someday you will develop something.
This is great. Microsoft to users: "Don't buy an iPod...we'll have a poor substitute that sucks and has support for crippled DRM WMAs from places like 'Napster' 2.0 and the rest of the lame new download services. And you only have to wait a year!"
Thanks to using off the shelf parts it's as cheap as a PS2 that doesn't have a NIC or hard drive. Not to mention HDTV and real DD5.1 support. Not bad for "thrown together".
I know you are just trolling but....
First off: either you have a problem understanding teenage sarcasm or you are surrounded by idiots.
I'm about to go off on a rant, but there is a very shot thing you should take away from this. If you hold onto a sinking ship, it's your choice. Just remember that your family will go down with you. If you really cared about saving your business, you would study your demographic and location, and you would revise your business plan. If all you can do is whine about unseen forces acting against you and spout some neo-McCarthyistic bullshit and think it's a solution, well, I guess you deserve what you bring on yourself.
For someone so interested in good Christian morals and [your idea of] good family values in your music you have an awfully dirty mouth. You refuse to sell recodes that feature artists using profanity to stir an emotional response for some socioeconomic plight, but have no qualm throwing it in some teenagers face. For you outburst, I'm sure you have converted them to another recording industry lap dog. Assume they don't. There are a couple of likely outcomes. First: these kids never bought anything form your store, and probably never will. Second: They have bought something from your store, but won't again. As far as how either is going to help you immediately, I'm not sure.
Then there is the issue of your demographic. You state that you are proud of your achievement of running a store devoid of profanity and non-Christian values. The thing I find amazing is that there are actually people out there who model their lifestyles off of the Cleaver's yet still swap songs. Do you think that stocking your shelves with albums that are stamped with the explicit lyric label (such as Frank Zappa's lyric-less albums) might increase or decrease the piracy rate? I can't blame you for your praise of satin's children who call themselves Metallica. It's obvious you both enjoy smacking people around instead of taking their money.
I'm no business student; I'm an informatics student, so my sense of logic hasn't been warped yet. As far as I know, a business model is a complex thing that needs to be adapted over time to conform to market change. Sales projections are much the same. They use multiple variables that must be taken studied and individually accounted for. Your sales equation sounds like it uses constants, not variables, so the only explanation for a drop in sales is piracy. Do you take into account the changing tastes of your demographic, stiffer competition (including legal internet distribution), a stale economy and reduced disposable incomes, or the quality of and demand for your product?
It's easy to assign blame to something that can't or won't defend itself. After all, man has been using scapegoats since the creation of religion, and probably before. The RIAA is successful in blaming pirates because they have billions of dollars over decades of time to influence laws, people's tastes, and technology. I find it odd that you use the phrase "powerful pirate lobby" when I have not heard of such a delusion. If there is a music related lobby with bottomless pockets and laws to bend, it would be the RIAA. Who else could so powerfully convince law makers that EVERY blank CD and tape will be used to pirate music, and the sole way to solve it is to tax each blank and give it to the industry.
And for the record, Wal-Mart puts more locally owned and operated (mom and pop) stores out of business than any amount of piracy could ever hope to accomplish.
Wow... good luck at catching up to Apple by 2004.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
You mean like the X-Box?
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Man, it's nice to see Microsoft coming up with some more new innovative items. Next thing they'll come out with is the first ever digital camera!
Maybe that's why there's always so much excitement when something new comes out from Apple and when Microsoft releases something, it's no big deal.
DivX has WMV beat in terms of quality, but WMV is FREE and it is more widely deployable, assuming you don't care about the non-Windows world.
Yes, that wonderful Microsoft definition of "free", which means "bundled into the price you paid for the OS, or the price the OEM paid and passed along to you." When Microsoft released the WMV code & player for Linux (even if it is binary-only), then we can talk about free beer.
There is a player for Mac, but it's out of date and not compatible with the latest WMV9 files.
DivX also has WMV beat in terms of availability to run on other systems. Heaven forbid people would actually have to find & install software!
However where Microsoft really scored is their controllers. I know that sounds dead wrong, but bear with me for just a moment. The Controller S/Japanese Controller is one of the favored controllers. And the larger Xbox controller is fantastic for those of us with large hands. In addition it has two expansion ports, but still manages not to be excessively heavy. I consider Microsoft's controllers to be about the second and third best ever made, after the Dual Shock 2. The analog triggers are a nice touch, as well. (Sometimes, I get the feeling that sony gave their controller four shoulder buttons in order to discourage emulation. If your game needs that many buttons, it's just going to be awkward on a console unless you have a special controller.)
Microsoft also seems to have been quite successful with their mice and keyboards, as well as their gaming devices. I had a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Steering Wheel which I gave to my father recently, and it was a great gaming peripheral. (I only replaced it because I got the Logitech Driving Force wheel for $30 used at Software Etc., and it's USB and works on PS2, PC, Mac, Linux, etc.) I bought some Microsoft Digital Sound System 80 speakers (actually made by Philips) which were pretty ugly but which sounded really nice and had a good set of controls on them.
In summation; Microsoft is decent with hardware. Anything they don't understand, they can commission and stick their name on. Their software tends to be sketchy but the Xbox is pretty reliable, so I don't see why a handheld media player wouldn't be. They will be pissy about supporting open formats, but most other companies are too. Besides, they do what makes them the most money, and the more complex the software gets the more likely it is to contain errors. They are doing their market a favor when they support only the features which are most desired.
That said, I don't plan to buy one. I want a device that does everything but suck my dick (I would prefer a separate device for that, with no other purpose, and no network connectivity.) I want a normal-sized cellphone which folds out to reveal a sizable back or side-lit color screen and a miniature qwerty keyboard. I want it to have firewire (IEEE1394B will do), act as a USB device or host, and have that laser drawn-and-rangefinding virtual desktop keyboard. Oh yes, and s-video output. It should have a tolerably fast CPU (enough to play a small MPEG4, anyway, and be a phone at the same time) and be a world phone. It can be moderately large, but not excessively. The size of a largish PDA would be okay, like perhaps the size of a Zoomer, only narrower.
In this internet-connected age, this would let me do pretty much anything I need to do with a mobile device. I just need to be able to run ssh on it, and maybe vnc, besides the media playing and phone calling applications. Ideally it would all be able to run at once, and I could flip between them. Something like this with enough power would be worth as much as a laptop. You're going to need CF support though, because the storage demands of such a device will be significant. On the other hand, firewire and USB can fill that need as well, so maybe it would be enough to have something other than CF that would be smaller.
Of course, by the time anyone puts all this in one credible device, MRAM will be out. And Duke Nukem Forever will be announced for the following Christmas...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
All that is AFTER the Pepsi promotion - 100 million songs (and thus millions of new users) from iTunes.
Apple did say they always thought the online music world would boil down to them and Microsoft - I think they were correct.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yay. A souped up WMA player coming in the 2nd half of 2004. Seems a little early to be getting excited about that.
well considering that microsoft writes some software for the mac, it's not really that big of a fucking deal, now is it?
Salesman: So do you use MS Windows on your PC? Yes? Then you'll want this MS MP3 player. You see, they work better together. Why, I once heard this problem with a non-MS MP3 player from my cousin's friend's coworker's son's maths teacher's....
Considering in the very next sentence it says "Please note AustralianIT always refers to Australian dollars, except where another currency is specified.", yea, I would think it was Australian dollars.