Apple’s latest announcement for video iPods comes at a good time, judging by the spike in their share price today. After getting trashed on Wednesday for missing rev targets, it seems that investors think that their latest product is going to bring Apple back. Personally, I’m not too sure about the video iPod itself. I had ansimilar experience as Michael Parekh – really excited at first, but then it kinda died away when I thought about the practicality of the new iPod. Currently, I use my iPod mini when I’m jogging or in the gym or sometimes when I’m driving (don’t worry, not with the headphones but with external speakers…) – the nature of all these uses, is that I don’t need to be staring at my device to enjoy the content. Video is changes that. Do I really need a portable device for the uses that I would video for? I’ve never bought a portable DVD player, and while do watch movies on my laptop, I only do so when I’m travelling. Neither of those have screen sizes as small as the new iPod (which by the way is defaulted to 320×240).
But this may be where Apple is going to win – the problem I have with my laptop is having enough content to watch. I hate purchasing movie DVDs to watch because they just end up making more clutter in my place, and I’ll almost never buy an entire TV series. Enter Apple’s trojan horse – using iTunes 6, it is possible to purchase TV shows – as Steve Jobs explained at the launch, this has never been done before – being able to purchase individual shows as soon as the day after that they actually air. I wonder how this is going to affect existing distribution deals in countries like the UK, where shows are usually delayed by up to 6 months. At only $2 a pop, I’ll easily spend a truck load each month – I miss shows all the time and hate having to watch an episode before seeing the previous one. If Apple is able to expand their offerings, they could own another market, which they’ve created like the iPod.
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