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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."
Are we going to see a blog photo of 50-odd iPods being delivered to Redmond in the next few weeks?
That's about as likely as it running a Linux kernel.
It supports mp3, wma, and 0E formats. It also can play video and show pictures. I hear the visualization for IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL is quite soothing.
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.
What will happen to people using these things when Microsoft deprecates the WMA format, just like they did with the AVI format?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Sounds like Windows CE all over again. Sure, it won't be any good until 2008, but after that, better throw those damned IPods away!
I also find it slightly unbelievable that it plays MP3, a DRM-less media. I thought Microsoft assumed all customers wanted DRM (which is why it's going to feature so much in Longhorn!). Don't tell me they've actually come to their senses and realised that no-one is going to buy a device that only plays licensed music!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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
Including the author? This is not a piece of Microsoft hardware...
and Treble are belong to us
"I am Heisenborg. You will probably be assimilated"
Every god damn story on /. has at least fifty "OMG who cares" posts: "Quit posting about SCO" "Quit posting about MSFT" "Quit posting about solar flares" "Quit posting about the 2.6 kernel" "Quit posting about Apple." So I went ahead and fixed the problem for all you whiny bitches out there who can't be bothered to figure out how to filter stories.
Here's the new Slashdot, made especially for those of you who "care less and less".
My first thought was that they were holding off on releasing it until the release of the X-box 2.
My second thought, and the one I finally settled on, is that this supposed portable music player will BE the x-box 2.
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"So we were sitting around at meeting, and someone said, hey, you know, that handheld gaming market is really heating up, what with the GBA2 and the Sony PCP coming out next year. We really ought to throw something in so that we've got a presence in that market too. So we were sitting there trying to figure out what the hypothetical R&D costs would be, but then Rob, you remember Rob, he designed the X-Box controller, he says, "hey, we're doing prototyping, and the X-Box 2 only weighs 6 pounds. that's less than a two-year-old child. Why don't we just do some rebranding, slap some buttons on the side, and release the X-box 2 as a portable game system?" And we got to thinking about it, and we realized, hey, that's a really great idea. Because look at all the things the X-Box 2 can do that the other handhelds can't. You can watch DVDs on it. You can record TV shows on it. You can do LAN play against other X-Box 2s. You can use it as a wireless way to browse the net and use MSN messenger with your friends [aslongasyouareatthemoment pluggedintoabroadbandconnection byanethernetcable]. But the kicker was when we realized, hey, you can use it as a WMA player. That's a broadside RIGHT AT the iPod. I tell you, when we release this baby, Apple's going to be running scared."
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts