Gibson's point is that the wmf feature has been in Windows since the beginning. But at some point, and he suspects Windows 2000, it was changed. The idea of setting an abort function for a printer routine is perfectly legit. But what is it doing there NOW?
"WMV on Mac is better than QuickTime on Mac."
My mama had a term for this. When I said something really stupid, she would look at me and say,
"Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?"
Aside from its necessity if you want to watch video on the web, it's a huge annoyance.
I now use Flip4Mac, so I can open almost all Windows Media files in Quicktime.
Except that this false publicity about iPods dying, and the batteries wimping out after a week or two, is sheer nonsense. I bought an original iPod. It worked every day. Eventually, after about two years, the playing time got down to about three hours, and I'd have to charge it every day. So I did this: I went to a website, bought a battery for $40, and then installed the new one in about 15 minutes when it arrived. Back to 12 hours or more. Then I sold that, 6 months later, to buy a 4th Gen. That worked flawlessly, and continued to do so until I sold it when I bought the video iPod. Battery's just fine, thanks. And now there's a couple of companies that will replace and install the battery (after a couple of years, I bet) for $50. Some people just can't see what's good about Apple. You don't have to be a fanboy, but really--
Just wait. The OSx86 boards are abuzz. As soon as one of them gets an Intel iMac, I'd predict XP will be up and running in that baby in a day or so, unless Apple/Intel have locked it up somehow, in which case -- two days or so.
I know in this era of Guantanamo, warrantless wiretaps, Echelon and the like, people have a right to be paranoid, but can somebody tell me why this should concern me? Are they leaking my credit-card info and my password to Eastern Europe? Are they reporting me to George Bush? Geez. I noticed it, but didn't focus on what it is doing until I saw the hysteria. So I gave it a shot. Listen to what I did: I recently downloaded a free track from Salon by Betty Karnette (?sp?) which was a knockout. I clicked it in iTunes 6.02, and it showed me the horrible fact that the tracks are in iTunes! (shudder) I mean, at most, this is an annoyance which you can turn off. If there's security hole here that allows bad people to do something to my computer, tell me about it and fix it. But if it's just so you can find other stuff, I'll give you a hint: when you sign into Amazon, it says, Hi, (insert name here), here's your recent purchases, and would you be interested in this? OHMIGOD! HOW DID IT KNOW MY NAME????
I pray to God that Apple won't share my preferences with anybody else. If it did, people might offer to sell me other music. Oh, the horror!
If I want a computer, I use a laptop or a tower. If I call somebody, a cell phone's a handy thing. I keep my phone book there. If I want a place to keep notes, I use a notepad. If I want to read something longer than an op-ed or a blog post, I get one of those handy little things made of paper and cardboard, all glued together real nice. They cost between about $10 or $20 new, and even less if you get it at a yard sale. Free in a library. The batteries never run out, the screen doesn't crack, and if you lose it you don't panic over the $400 thing you just lost. You go to Amazon and order another copy. Sometimes technology is just stupid and worthless. May the "e-book" rot in hell.
This is one area where I wish our congress critters would enforce standards so that the consumer can use this technology, not limited by platform or brand. I've had it with all the competing text messengers, and that's why I use them very little. You can never tell if Joe is online or on another messenger service. They're not interoperable. Without making any corrupt bargains with any specific players, why can't the government do as they did during the railroad buildout: we specified an American gauge. (Interesting story behind the gauges internationally, which left European railroads incompatible for commercial and military reasons, but one of the U.S.'s economic advantages was the vast distances we could go on the same gauge of tracks, no change of trains necessary.)
Messenger programs should be forced to provide open APIs, and then they could compete on cost, or on the quality of their voice or video codecs, routing tricks and the like. Phone wires have standard voltages, etc., so that any phone can plug into the switches and communicate anywhere. The new VoIP communication should be the same.
If the US continues this business of "letting the market decide," we will fall progressively further behind technologically. We must make standards for progess. What we have instead is crony capitalism, where the big companies do as they wish, and they're protected from real competition.
There's an interesting item at the end of the year: CD sales are off seven or eight percent again in the U.S. But they're holding steady in Britain, where the rate of broadband adoption is higher than the US. How could that be, if the "piracy" excuse is true? It's not true. The difference is, Britain did not pass the idiotic Telecommunications Act, which has centralized our radio delivery of music so much that it is only unlistenable payola-driven junk. They're losing the ability to make hits on the radio! This is what happens under monopoly.
You're right. I was totally appalled to learn that one of my favorite Congressmen, John Conyers, and one of my least favorites, Sensenbrenner, have teamed up to cosponsor a law that plugs the "analog hole," making any copy, anywhere, illegal. You can't make a digital copy now, and you can't make an analog one if this bill is passed. I sent Conyers a "Say it ain't so, John" message, and Sensenbrenner a polite cease-and-desist.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117934938?catego ryid=1009&cs=1
Over-marketed, over-hyped acts. The collapse of radio as a hit-making machine. Bloated prices, which seem to result from the thought, "Hmm, sales are down -- time to raise the profit margin, so we won't have to sell so many to make a buck." What's next, Kenny Loggins CDs in the discount bin for $20?
Oh, and then there's the Sony rootkit, which just about ruined that proud company's reputation, and the RIAA suing its best customers. (Yes, pirate music is the new Top 40, dummies. And you don't even have to spend payola bucks to get up the charts!)
Now all they have to do is ENHANCE the CD -- not cripple it -- and their sales will improve.
Oh, and they could ask Apple and MS to undo their copy protection and lower their prices for that crappy-sounding 128 kbps music to about 25 cents.
Let's see: I buy some obscure jazz-novelty tracks from the '40s, and I get them for a quarter, because, well, who buys it? The next sale, it would be 26 cents to the heirs of the estate, most likely some conglomerate that bought up the tiny label that first brought out "Flat-Foot Floogie with the Floy-Floy"? Would people be more liable to find my gem? No. They'd be less likely to buy it, though not much. Now, I think it might be a good idea for some bands to cost $2.50 a track, so that fewer people could buy that pop crap.
Would people be more likely to buy Beethoven if the price was based on Ludwig's sales? Gee, I don't think so. "Hey, Brenda, this Britney track is selling for $2.95, but if we bought Thelonius Monk, it would be 33 cents. What's bop?" Once again, the phony reliance on a "market" where one isn't appropriate. Market fluctuation is a terrible substitute for music education.
I personally would like to see Apple put its price down to a nickel a track and watch the sales explode. Remove the copy protection, too. But that's not gonna happen, and this sure shouldn't.
The Mac community started learning the code names. Apple Marketing figured out it was a better way to market an OS than "10.2, 10.3, 10.4", which are colorless. They're now carefully researched and vetted.
Think Longhorn will come out as Vista, or another name still?
Endless ideological warfare, but listen: does anybody know, for sure, that those "Enhanced" CDs won't play on the Mac, won't install the kexts without your permission, and best yet -- what do the kexts actually do? Do they limit the number of rips? Burns? Do they block the transfer to the iPod? Do they interact with the rest of the OS somehow?
I cannot believe that my used-to-be-favorite electronics company is stooping this low. Power to the engineers!
On the Mac, though, any change of the system, any installation, has to be with Adminstrative passwords. Not just clicking "OK." With Windows, you've given your permission when you sign in, and all you get is an ok or cancel. It's easy to swat away a dialogue without thinking. Not so easy to type in your password before you say, "Wait a minute."
If you don't run as admin, it's even more tight.
"For work stuff, I use mostly Windows applications like firefox, openoffice, notepad++, etc"
With the exception of notepad, this is available on the Mac, you know -- we got firefox and openoffice too.
And it was 1999, I think. I downloaded it, but hadn't used it much (and had no problem) when they pulled it and released the fix the next day. Or thereabouts. It was a *doh* error.
There's a lot of independent producers who want to market limited-market videos, but they can't use the store yet. There's a lot of podcasters and the like offering free video. This, however, is a demo for the other studios: See, Sony, Universal, etc.? Watch the cash flow, and get in on the ground floor with Disney.
I think it's a crappy format for all but a few movies. A romantic comedy, maybe. A TV drama shot largely in closeup, okay. But try to watch a spectacular on this screen. Yuck. No, my bet is that shows up to an hour will sell well.
What a wonderful world we live in. A gun dealer can misplace a sales receipt, forget to do the background check, and when the schizo-felon buyer takes out a busload of school kids, no suit for the gun dealer.
But get one scratch on an iPod, man, and you're in trouble.
My bet is, Apple doesn't want bad publicity for its new sales champ, so they'll offer a handsome settlement, and that's what these fakers are after.
In the tradition of Slashdot, I will curse your ancestors, you weinie. Swift2001 -- where'd you get that funny name? Besides, all your Macs belong to us. Only we don't want them! We want the thrilling feeling of using Linux while wearing no pants! No, no, you're wrong, Swift 2001! Windows is now the officially mandated system for all patriots! After all, when you apply for your emergency assistance from FEMA, can you get money using your cool-looking Powerbook? No, you have to get it from a truly boring DELL running Windows 98, 2000, ME (not me!), and/or XP! And if Brownie endorsed it by making it impossible for any other computer users to survive, it must be... good. It's all part of Daddy Bill's intelligent design, don't you see? Weinie.
The whining is getting a little crazy. Eric Alterman, in his book, "What Liberal Media?" calls it "working the ref."
As a Mac user during the plague years, I can tell you the media was full of stories like, "Why Doesn't Apple Just Fold Up and Die?" for years. When there was any mention of the Mac at all. Every new triumph of the boring box with the Start menu-- I dare not say its name -- was heralded as the second coming. Now, of course, we can't believe the generally good stories coming out of the media because it's all commun-- er, evolution boosters-- er, gays-- er, people who use Macs! Ohmigod, did you know that 90% of journalists are communists who hate God, smoke and drink and believe your grandfather was an ape?
Since Jobs came back, the Mac's gotten cool again, both because the box has improved tremendously, gotten UNIX on it, and integrated better with the, uh, box with the Start menu and the viruses and malware. So now, a few reviewers -- shudder -- have grown favorable to the Mac. (Dvorak, too, if you read him at all. In fact, he thinks the Start menu company whose name I don't dare speak -- the bucktooth-and-hornrimmed-glasses crowd-- is in rapid decline.)
It couldn't be that the Mac HAS gotten better, has put together a powerful and easy-to-use box that integrates well with DV cams and iPods and the iTunes Music Store, No, it's a little clique of devil-worshipping, corrupt writers who are biased against God's Operating System!
There are lots here that seem to want to cry, "monopoly" at Apple, to relieve their guilty consciences for living with MS, the monopolistic dragon.
I think, the way things go, Apple is selling its accessory manufacturers a service: some engineering help -- how big or small will the Dock being on the 6G iPod, please, and the benefit of putting an endorsement logo on the case or plug or whatever. I would look for that kind of logo, with the assumption that it would be of higher quality than another accessory. In the past few months, to get my iPod to play well in the car, I have bought 6 or 7 assorted cupholders, chargers, firewire cables, etc. A fair number didn't work right, at least not in my car. One car holder worked great, but fell apart in a month. So, if the Apple Certified brings higher quality, I think I would look for that label, frankly. It's sort of like the kosher labels. Why does Planter's peanuts pay the rabbi x dollars a year to pass an inspection and to be able to put the kosher mark on their peanuts? Because it helps with sales among the Jewish community.
Not to compare the two things, but isn't this a perfectly valid way of collecting money, while making sure that not too many of your customers buy shoddy merchandise?
You can buy non-certified accessories, of course. But watch out, they'll put your eyes out!
Surprise, surprise, you're in it!
Truth is, there's been a lot of positive feedback, some of it over the top and flack-like. But there's a constant thread of people looking to do Apple in. I can't count how many times I've read, "The Cosmos 89 is the iPod killer! This one can get AM radio, and you can listen to the Top 40!" Or, "Steve Jobs is all hat, and no cattle!" Or, like the above, "What's this? Apple didn't invent the computer, the mp3, the theory of general relativity, so what good are they?"
It's not the be-all and end-all. It's the major part of the mp3 player market, for some pretty good reasons, and now it can do video too. I'm not sure that we understand what a little machine like this can do, yet. I know that a lot of vidcasters are very interested in this, not just the majors. We could be at the beginning of a new era in visual media, and the iPod and the iTMS is right there at the beginning.
It's not that it's the only one, or the first. But it's huge in the culture. You can now buy a video, or convert a video and put it on your iPod, and play it on your TV, or whatever. It's the beginning of the infinite channel universe.
Congratulations. You and.3% of the market agree with you.
I don't think there will be a successful "Video iPod" until the rights question is dealt with.
If you're THAT wedded to recording video from a large screen and playing it on a small screen, then I guess you've got the machine you want.
I myself see it like those people who really want to have FM radio on their iPod. When's the last time FM had something decent on it? Don't people get iPods as a way to avoid the mass media? No commercials? YOUR choice, not some lousy label exec spreading payola?
If you want an FM radio, buy an FM radio. If you want a TiVo, buy one.
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Gibson's point is that the wmf feature has been in Windows since the beginning. But at some point, and he suspects Windows 2000, it was changed. The idea of setting an abort function for a printer routine is perfectly legit. But what is it doing there NOW?
Don't trash WM Player. It gets a new icon, but it's still around, and you need it.
"WMV on Mac is better than QuickTime on Mac." My mama had a term for this. When I said something really stupid, she would look at me and say, "Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?" Aside from its necessity if you want to watch video on the web, it's a huge annoyance. I now use Flip4Mac, so I can open almost all Windows Media files in Quicktime.
Except that this false publicity about iPods dying, and the batteries wimping out after a week or two, is sheer nonsense. I bought an original iPod. It worked every day. Eventually, after about two years, the playing time got down to about three hours, and I'd have to charge it every day. So I did this: I went to a website, bought a battery for $40, and then installed the new one in about 15 minutes when it arrived. Back to 12 hours or more. Then I sold that, 6 months later, to buy a 4th Gen. That worked flawlessly, and continued to do so until I sold it when I bought the video iPod. Battery's just fine, thanks. And now there's a couple of companies that will replace and install the battery (after a couple of years, I bet) for $50. Some people just can't see what's good about Apple. You don't have to be a fanboy, but really--
Just wait. The OSx86 boards are abuzz. As soon as one of them gets an Intel iMac, I'd predict XP will be up and running in that baby in a day or so, unless Apple/Intel have locked it up somehow, in which case -- two days or so.
I know in this era of Guantanamo, warrantless wiretaps, Echelon and the like, people have a right to be paranoid, but can somebody tell me why this should concern me? Are they leaking my credit-card info and my password to Eastern Europe? Are they reporting me to George Bush? Geez. I noticed it, but didn't focus on what it is doing until I saw the hysteria. So I gave it a shot. Listen to what I did: I recently downloaded a free track from Salon by Betty Karnette (?sp?) which was a knockout. I clicked it in iTunes 6.02, and it showed me the horrible fact that the tracks are in iTunes! (shudder) I mean, at most, this is an annoyance which you can turn off. If there's security hole here that allows bad people to do something to my computer, tell me about it and fix it. But if it's just so you can find other stuff, I'll give you a hint: when you sign into Amazon, it says, Hi, (insert name here), here's your recent purchases, and would you be interested in this? OHMIGOD! HOW DID IT KNOW MY NAME???? I pray to God that Apple won't share my preferences with anybody else. If it did, people might offer to sell me other music. Oh, the horror!
If I want a computer, I use a laptop or a tower. If I call somebody, a cell phone's a handy thing. I keep my phone book there. If I want a place to keep notes, I use a notepad. If I want to read something longer than an op-ed or a blog post, I get one of those handy little things made of paper and cardboard, all glued together real nice. They cost between about $10 or $20 new, and even less if you get it at a yard sale. Free in a library. The batteries never run out, the screen doesn't crack, and if you lose it you don't panic over the $400 thing you just lost. You go to Amazon and order another copy. Sometimes technology is just stupid and worthless. May the "e-book" rot in hell.
The government IS forcing everybody to use copy protection.
This is one area where I wish our congress critters would enforce standards so that the consumer can use this technology, not limited by platform or brand. I've had it with all the competing text messengers, and that's why I use them very little. You can never tell if Joe is online or on another messenger service. They're not interoperable. Without making any corrupt bargains with any specific players, why can't the government do as they did during the railroad buildout: we specified an American gauge. (Interesting story behind the gauges internationally, which left European railroads incompatible for commercial and military reasons, but one of the U.S.'s economic advantages was the vast distances we could go on the same gauge of tracks, no change of trains necessary.) Messenger programs should be forced to provide open APIs, and then they could compete on cost, or on the quality of their voice or video codecs, routing tricks and the like. Phone wires have standard voltages, etc., so that any phone can plug into the switches and communicate anywhere. The new VoIP communication should be the same. If the US continues this business of "letting the market decide," we will fall progressively further behind technologically. We must make standards for progess. What we have instead is crony capitalism, where the big companies do as they wish, and they're protected from real competition. There's an interesting item at the end of the year: CD sales are off seven or eight percent again in the U.S. But they're holding steady in Britain, where the rate of broadband adoption is higher than the US. How could that be, if the "piracy" excuse is true? It's not true. The difference is, Britain did not pass the idiotic Telecommunications Act, which has centralized our radio delivery of music so much that it is only unlistenable payola-driven junk. They're losing the ability to make hits on the radio! This is what happens under monopoly.
You're right. I was totally appalled to learn that one of my favorite Congressmen, John Conyers, and one of my least favorites, Sensenbrenner, have teamed up to cosponsor a law that plugs the "analog hole," making any copy, anywhere, illegal. You can't make a digital copy now, and you can't make an analog one if this bill is passed. I sent Conyers a "Say it ain't so, John" message, and Sensenbrenner a polite cease-and-desist. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117934938?catego ryid=1009&cs=1
Over-marketed, over-hyped acts. The collapse of radio as a hit-making machine. Bloated prices, which seem to result from the thought, "Hmm, sales are down -- time to raise the profit margin, so we won't have to sell so many to make a buck." What's next, Kenny Loggins CDs in the discount bin for $20? Oh, and then there's the Sony rootkit, which just about ruined that proud company's reputation, and the RIAA suing its best customers. (Yes, pirate music is the new Top 40, dummies. And you don't even have to spend payola bucks to get up the charts!) Now all they have to do is ENHANCE the CD -- not cripple it -- and their sales will improve. Oh, and they could ask Apple and MS to undo their copy protection and lower their prices for that crappy-sounding 128 kbps music to about 25 cents.
Let's see: I buy some obscure jazz-novelty tracks from the '40s, and I get them for a quarter, because, well, who buys it? The next sale, it would be 26 cents to the heirs of the estate, most likely some conglomerate that bought up the tiny label that first brought out "Flat-Foot Floogie with the Floy-Floy"? Would people be more liable to find my gem? No. They'd be less likely to buy it, though not much. Now, I think it might be a good idea for some bands to cost $2.50 a track, so that fewer people could buy that pop crap. Would people be more likely to buy Beethoven if the price was based on Ludwig's sales? Gee, I don't think so. "Hey, Brenda, this Britney track is selling for $2.95, but if we bought Thelonius Monk, it would be 33 cents. What's bop?" Once again, the phony reliance on a "market" where one isn't appropriate. Market fluctuation is a terrible substitute for music education. I personally would like to see Apple put its price down to a nickel a track and watch the sales explode. Remove the copy protection, too. But that's not gonna happen, and this sure shouldn't.
The Mac community started learning the code names. Apple Marketing figured out it was a better way to market an OS than "10.2, 10.3, 10.4", which are colorless. They're now carefully researched and vetted. Think Longhorn will come out as Vista, or another name still?
Endless ideological warfare, but listen: does anybody know, for sure, that those "Enhanced" CDs won't play on the Mac, won't install the kexts without your permission, and best yet -- what do the kexts actually do? Do they limit the number of rips? Burns? Do they block the transfer to the iPod? Do they interact with the rest of the OS somehow? I cannot believe that my used-to-be-favorite electronics company is stooping this low. Power to the engineers!
Last time I did this, everything, including Photoshop, "just worked."
On the Mac, though, any change of the system, any installation, has to be with Adminstrative passwords. Not just clicking "OK." With Windows, you've given your permission when you sign in, and all you get is an ok or cancel. It's easy to swat away a dialogue without thinking. Not so easy to type in your password before you say, "Wait a minute." If you don't run as admin, it's even more tight.
"For work stuff, I use mostly Windows applications like firefox, openoffice, notepad++, etc" With the exception of notepad, this is available on the Mac, you know -- we got firefox and openoffice too.
And it was 1999, I think. I downloaded it, but hadn't used it much (and had no problem) when they pulled it and released the fix the next day. Or thereabouts. It was a *doh* error.
There's a lot of independent producers who want to market limited-market videos, but they can't use the store yet. There's a lot of podcasters and the like offering free video. This, however, is a demo for the other studios: See, Sony, Universal, etc.? Watch the cash flow, and get in on the ground floor with Disney. I think it's a crappy format for all but a few movies. A romantic comedy, maybe. A TV drama shot largely in closeup, okay. But try to watch a spectacular on this screen. Yuck. No, my bet is that shows up to an hour will sell well.
What a wonderful world we live in. A gun dealer can misplace a sales receipt, forget to do the background check, and when the schizo-felon buyer takes out a busload of school kids, no suit for the gun dealer. But get one scratch on an iPod, man, and you're in trouble. My bet is, Apple doesn't want bad publicity for its new sales champ, so they'll offer a handsome settlement, and that's what these fakers are after.
In the tradition of Slashdot, I will curse your ancestors, you weinie. Swift2001 -- where'd you get that funny name? Besides, all your Macs belong to us. Only we don't want them! We want the thrilling feeling of using Linux while wearing no pants! No, no, you're wrong, Swift 2001! Windows is now the officially mandated system for all patriots! After all, when you apply for your emergency assistance from FEMA, can you get money using your cool-looking Powerbook? No, you have to get it from a truly boring DELL running Windows 98, 2000, ME (not me!), and/or XP! And if Brownie endorsed it by making it impossible for any other computer users to survive, it must be... good. It's all part of Daddy Bill's intelligent design, don't you see? Weinie.
The whining is getting a little crazy. Eric Alterman, in his book, "What Liberal Media?" calls it "working the ref." As a Mac user during the plague years, I can tell you the media was full of stories like, "Why Doesn't Apple Just Fold Up and Die?" for years. When there was any mention of the Mac at all. Every new triumph of the boring box with the Start menu-- I dare not say its name -- was heralded as the second coming. Now, of course, we can't believe the generally good stories coming out of the media because it's all commun-- er, evolution boosters-- er, gays-- er, people who use Macs! Ohmigod, did you know that 90% of journalists are communists who hate God, smoke and drink and believe your grandfather was an ape? Since Jobs came back, the Mac's gotten cool again, both because the box has improved tremendously, gotten UNIX on it, and integrated better with the, uh, box with the Start menu and the viruses and malware. So now, a few reviewers -- shudder -- have grown favorable to the Mac. (Dvorak, too, if you read him at all. In fact, he thinks the Start menu company whose name I don't dare speak -- the bucktooth-and-hornrimmed-glasses crowd-- is in rapid decline.) It couldn't be that the Mac HAS gotten better, has put together a powerful and easy-to-use box that integrates well with DV cams and iPods and the iTunes Music Store, No, it's a little clique of devil-worshipping, corrupt writers who are biased against God's Operating System!
There are lots here that seem to want to cry, "monopoly" at Apple, to relieve their guilty consciences for living with MS, the monopolistic dragon. I think, the way things go, Apple is selling its accessory manufacturers a service: some engineering help -- how big or small will the Dock being on the 6G iPod, please, and the benefit of putting an endorsement logo on the case or plug or whatever. I would look for that kind of logo, with the assumption that it would be of higher quality than another accessory. In the past few months, to get my iPod to play well in the car, I have bought 6 or 7 assorted cupholders, chargers, firewire cables, etc. A fair number didn't work right, at least not in my car. One car holder worked great, but fell apart in a month. So, if the Apple Certified brings higher quality, I think I would look for that label, frankly. It's sort of like the kosher labels. Why does Planter's peanuts pay the rabbi x dollars a year to pass an inspection and to be able to put the kosher mark on their peanuts? Because it helps with sales among the Jewish community. Not to compare the two things, but isn't this a perfectly valid way of collecting money, while making sure that not too many of your customers buy shoddy merchandise? You can buy non-certified accessories, of course. But watch out, they'll put your eyes out!
Surprise, surprise, you're in it! Truth is, there's been a lot of positive feedback, some of it over the top and flack-like. But there's a constant thread of people looking to do Apple in. I can't count how many times I've read, "The Cosmos 89 is the iPod killer! This one can get AM radio, and you can listen to the Top 40!" Or, "Steve Jobs is all hat, and no cattle!" Or, like the above, "What's this? Apple didn't invent the computer, the mp3, the theory of general relativity, so what good are they?" It's not the be-all and end-all. It's the major part of the mp3 player market, for some pretty good reasons, and now it can do video too. I'm not sure that we understand what a little machine like this can do, yet. I know that a lot of vidcasters are very interested in this, not just the majors. We could be at the beginning of a new era in visual media, and the iPod and the iTMS is right there at the beginning. It's not that it's the only one, or the first. But it's huge in the culture. You can now buy a video, or convert a video and put it on your iPod, and play it on your TV, or whatever. It's the beginning of the infinite channel universe.
Congratulations. You and .3% of the market agree with you.
I don't think there will be a successful "Video iPod" until the rights question is dealt with.
If you're THAT wedded to recording video from a large screen and playing it on a small screen, then I guess you've got the machine you want.
I myself see it like those people who really want to have FM radio on their iPod. When's the last time FM had something decent on it? Don't people get iPods as a way to avoid the mass media? No commercials? YOUR choice, not some lousy label exec spreading payola?
If you want an FM radio, buy an FM radio. If you want a TiVo, buy one.