The author of this article is missing the main reason why fixed hard-disk, compressed-audio players are the present, and the future: Information (Audio) Management!
By separating the physical storage from the information, MP3 players allow music to be transferred, backed-up, and cataloged, and leveraged by modern information management methods. Specifically:
File-sharing: obviously old news, but important.
Cataloging: I have 30 GB of MP3s, on both my computer and my HD-upgraded Archos. All of that is indexed in many different ways, using playlists, and Genre filters. I'm happy not to have shuffle around lots of MD disks. I also have hundreds of band-practice recordings of my own bands recorded on the Archos.
Modern "Jukeboxes" such as iTunes enable entirely new services, such as http://beethere.net/ and http://www.last.fm/. As a major music listener and musician, these types of services are what I always dreamed of. For those not familiar with these:
BeeThere.net: Shows you the concerts in your area by all of the artists in your iTunes.
Last.fm: Makes a custom radio station using the music you listen to in your library as a seed for making recommendations. It is similar to Pandora, but uses collaboritive filtering to determine relatedness of songs. (and a bunch of social networking stuff)
There is really no comparison between MD and MP3 based audio management, they are in completely different leages.
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By separating the physical storage from the information, MP3 players allow music to be transferred, backed-up, and cataloged, and leveraged by modern information management methods. Specifically:
There is really no comparison between MD and MP3 based audio management, they are in completely different leages.