AFSCME 3357-HOF'S BLOG

Reality distorted in Photo iPod roll-out?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is known for the "reality distortion field" that he can cast over an audience when he is making a presentation. Yesterday's Photo iPod rollout appears to be no exception.

My first impression when I read about the Photo iPod was to gush about it. Hey, in a device the size of the original iPod, you have up to 60 gigabytes of storage, as much as 10 DVD's. You get a color display and video output. You can play your photos on a television. What can you not play on the television - video. Although it has a video output, it has no motion video capabilities - nada. Steve Jobs says that's an asset. I say it's reality distortion. First, Here's what Jobs has to say: (Quoting Jonathan Seff of Macworld.com)

He showed a picture of Creative?s Zen Portable Media Center as an example of what other companies are adding to digital music players?video. He then showed a clip from the film Raiders of the Lost Ark?you know, the scene where Harrison Ford and John Rhys-Davies are excited to find that the Nazis are ?digging in the wrong place? for the Ark of the Covenant. Jobs? point was that, like the sinister-if-bumbling villains in Raiders, these other companies are making a mistake, mostly because there isn?t any content available for video players (unlike music for the iPod and competing devices). Apple concluded that photos were the way to go?everyone has plenty of those, and there are no problem with rights and ownership (also unlike music).

No content? how about homemade video?

My $200 Kodak digital camera, like most these days can record low resolution MPEG files with sound, and can play them back on a television. I have already used it as a quick, dirty and light camcorder. Most camcorders can take stills, some up to 2 mp. In the coming year, there will be more of a convergence between digital cameras & camcorders. With a gigabyte sd memory card around $100 and falling about 50% a year, in about 2 years, you can have a camcorder the size of deck of cards with no disk drive at all that can record an hour of video with DVD quality. Instead, you might decide to get one with a hard disk so that lots of videos can be archived. While you are at it, you might as well put in a picture viewer and digital music player - essentially, an ipod.

In the alternative, you could separate the camera module from the data storage module and have them communicate over wi-fi or bluetooth, kind of like a wireless version of the old camera and tapedecks that made up home video rigs of the early 1980s, only a lot smaller.

Actually, there is no technical reason why the photo iPod couldn't play back video. It is transparent that Apple did not implement MPEG playback capability because of digital rights management issues. It's only a matter of time before these issues get worked out. In the meantime, Apple decided that it couldn't wait for someone else to take over the market for color digital music (and photo) players. So the Photo iPod is a stopgap. Perhaps motion video can be added as a software upgrade later, but unless you need a photo player now, I say, wait six months or a year. Son of Photo iPod will be a lot more flexible and a lot more powerful.

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