Fast Company asserts that the iPod is doomed due to Apple’s failure to support an economic ecosystem around it. While it’s debatable that this mentality did originally result in the market defeat of the Mac OS by Windows, I think Belkin, Griffin, Bose, Harmon-Kardon, and the dozens of other companies making iPod products would all cry “Horsefeathers!” And the author’s initial assertion that the iPod shuffle has met with “limited success” is just ignorant and wrong, according to American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu, who believes that Apple may be moving one million iPod shuffles a month.
I like Fast Company, but someone needs to do a little more research.
Oh, and my theory for how to make the next iPod just as revolutionary? Video iPod with an easy setup to rip existing DVDs into a copy-protected iPod-friendly format. I’d like to watch videos on my pocket device too, but I’m not about to go repurchase my entire media collection in some proprietary format (*cough* *cough* SonyUMD *cough*). And the rumors of an iTunes video store? Awesome. Not sure how to satisfy the instant-gratification element there, exactly (download times at today’s bandwidth restrictions still suggest that a high-def file would take hours to download; the high-res V for Vendetta trailer alone was 137MB and took over ten minutes), but it’s still awesome.
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
