OxBlog

Sunday, November 06, 2005

# Posted 11:55 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

HAS OXBLOG BEEN SEDUCED BY THE VIDEO iPOD? In Thursday's Slate, Jack Shafer thrashes the MSM for lavishing praise on every mediocre gadget coughed up by Apple.

Taken in by Apple's clever presentation of itself as the anti-Microsoft and by clever advertising that shamelessly exploits the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, journalists provide Apple with an extraordinary amount of free publicity. In exchange, Apple has often given the consumer little more than forgettable gewgaws such as the Newton.

Now, there's no question that press coverage of the video iPod has been pretty shameless. But I have to take issue with Shafer's suggestion that those, like myself, who buy the new iPod are just as naive as the cheerleader journalists. According to Shafer, the video iPod is a
Deliberately crippled by copy protection, low-res, underpowered video appliance that is merely Apple's first try in the emerging market of video players.
Perhaps my standards are too low, but I think the picture on my iPod is superb, and so do most of the people I show it too. Whether the iPod is crippled by copy protection, I don't know. In the next few days, I hope to play around with Videora, which may dramatically expand the range of visual content for my iPod. And I concede that the battery life could be better, although 2-3 hours is more than enough for my daily commute. (NB: If you only use the videoPod for sound, the batterly life is 15-20 hours.)

Regardless, it's never a bad thing to take media hype with a grain of salt. And if you want to laugh while you're at it, check out this parody of all things iPod.
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