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Steve Jobs on Portable Video Players

This David Pogue interview with Steve Jobs includes direct questions to Jobs about possible video iPods and Steve's three-pronged response for why they're not putting much energy into it.

His reasons are pretty flimsy, especially the assumption that people want to watch their favorite movie on a personal device. Sales of these devices have done well (I hear) in Tokyo for many of the same reasons iPods sell big in major cities here -- many people like to listen to recorded news such as NPR. If I still rode a subway everyday to work, I'd love to carry last night's Daily Show with me, and having it play on a 4" screen wouldn't hinder the experience as much as Jobs thinks. When he makes assumptions that people don't want to carry movies around with him he ignores that people might want to use them for video-out to a large TV and/or take advantage of the thousands of hours of weekly TV programming worth saving and watching at your leisure.

"Now, I'm not saying we’re not working on something like that," Mr. Jobs added. "Who knows what we’ve got in our labs?""

But from his comments, he made it clear that he and Mr. Gates were miles apart on their assessment of a technology's future. It wouldn’t be the first time

by Matt Haughey January 8, 2004 in News

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