Sony Admits MP3 Error

inflex writes "In a rare show admission of taking a wrong turn, Sony's officials have admitted that their stance on MP3 players was wrong." While this was pretty obvious to anyone who has ever shopped for a portable MP3 player, it is nice to see Sony admit their shortcoming. Ken Kutaragi puts it best when he says, "We're growing up," and with any luck future devices won't be crippled with silly formats no one uses.

Comments

Re:it's about time....

[GreatDrok]

Sony is about one of those companies seriously capable of making a real iPod killer.

How many times must this be said......?

The iPod is not the killer product, iTunes is. All these people hoping for an iPod killer to come along need to remember that the software you use to interface to the thing is far more important than any other factor. Previously I had a NetMD and quite apart from the fact that it didn't play MP3, the software was ghastly. Sure I could import stuff from other formats and the likes but it was so clumsy compared with iTunes. When I got my Mac I tried to use my NetMD with it but of course Sony didn't provide any software support. What little open source software existed for it was restricted to seeing the tracks and starting and stopping it. You couldn't actually record onto the thing with it. Typical Sony. So I sold it on Ebay and put the money towards an iPod. End result, much happier but also I realised just how great iTunes is, it completes the iPod.

I think for a true iPod competitor to come along it is either going to have to have some seriously nice software backed up by a great music store, or it should just work with iTunes.