I thought steve didnt like video

it's a novelty feature on this ipod. this is a music player that has the ability to play video. it's not supposed to be a video ipod.

the video feature makes a reason to put video content on itunes, and after a while, it will expand to higher resolutions and eventually movies.

the video ipod will come out once legal downloadable movies are marketable

maybe because he could not predict what consumers were going to demand.

Steve also said he doesnt like flash players, now thats 2/3 of the lineup.

He will sell what the public will buy.

He said that he didn't think people would want to watch video on a portable device. Their strategy is actually quite brilliant though. Essentially they are creating their own market for video.

By getting rid of the music only iPods and introducing the video iPod at the same price, people who didn't really care about video will buy the iPod and become hooked on this feature.

Essentially, it's selling people something that that they didn't know they wanted until they have it. By the time they introduce movies into the equation, we'll alll be portable video addicts.

Come now. Steve likes anything he can sell.

...sT

in the rumors leading up to this week, i was getting excited to see what apple was going to come up with today. we knew there would be an update, and we knew that the new hard drives were going to be smaller and lighter, so it essentially gave Apple a lot of room to innovate. After seeing the final product, i have to say i'm very disappointed, for several reasons.

first: 2.5" is too big for just basic music info from ip3 tags and too small to watch video clips.

second: 2 hour battery life is just plain rediculous for video. the ipod is meant to be portable, if it was intended to play videos or even tv shows (as job intends with Lost/DH), then you can only theoretically watch 2 eps at a time before recharging? thats unbelievably pathetic.

third: no universal compatibility of video formats. like it or not there is a huge underground scene in which video files with all sorts of content is traded, and the de facto format is xvid.

as far as i understand it, there is a conversion required to be able to play on the ipod, which is time consuming to say the least... its not like importing album covers.

Now, one could make the argument that you're only supposed to watch legal content, as you're supposed to listen only to legal music, but in 2001, before itunes... Jobs basically rescued his company on the foundation of building a player that basically played stolen music. for him to now create a player thats excessively prohibitive in allowing such files, regardless of their legality, of being played makes it all the more disappointing, to say the least.

also, there are quite a few people, like me, who thought about storing tv shows as xvid files that i havent yet watched but am too poor to own a tivo, a good solution would have been to have an 8 hour video capable ipod that could play a few shows... this obviously isnt it

finally, I think the expectations were too high for this. As Billy Bob Thorton said in Bad Santa, "they all cant be winners, now can they?"

Jobs and Ive pulled a literal impossibility with the nano, and to top that... a month later, with some revolutionary video ipod that would have the world salivating, was a bit too much to ask, i guess.

i am willing to bet the next ipod, the 6g, will get it right.

Simple, its hype and also to make him and Apple look good. Ever tell your boss that a task will take 4 hours even though you know it will only take you 1 hour, then gets all happy when you deliver the task early? Ever tell a client something they want is impossible, then suddenly surprise them with it, making you look good? Steve Jobs used this same concept.

he's in the business to make money...

I second what SimonTemplar said:
>>Steve likes anything he can sell.