Spat asks ‘what about the SmartPhone?’

October 23, 2005 By

Spat asks why Microsoft doesn’t make a bigger deal about the SmartPhones when it comes to the iPod. I love my SmartPhone as much as the next guy, but you can’t compare that to the iPod. Here’s why: my son will not consider buying one. A cell phone has a monthly service charge. An iPod doesn’t. Also, an iPod is “cool” but a SmartPhone isn’t. There’s a variety of reasons for that.

By the way, I really dislike it when Microsoft employees post blogs but don’t put their names on their blogs (or their email aliases). Why? Cause I wanted to email Splat something internally, and I can’t. Please, please, please use your real name on your blogs and put your email address out there. Or don’t blog.

To make things even worse, I used the contact link on Spat’s blog, but my email was rejected by Microsoft’s spam filters. Sigh.

Back to the iPod. I brought home one of the older Portable Media Centers for my son to try out. He has been playing with it all day. Says “why didn’t you make a bigger deal about this, if you had, I would have considered one of these instead of an iPod.” What turned him on? He burned a CD onto both his 20GB iPod and the Windows Media Center. The Windows Media Center sounds noticeably better. Tomorrow we’re going to try some experiments to figure out whether it’s the headphones that come with both units, the format/compression, or the unit itself, but he’s right, his new iPod doesn’t sound as good.

I think we should do a podcast together tomorrow too, since he’s become quite the podcasting expert (he even told Woz about various podcasts that Woz didn’t know about).

Update: thanks to Jojjo, who pointed out that Spat is Steve Patrick. I still wish he would have that on his home page somewhere. Blogging is a very powerful relationship-building tool. How can anyone build a relationship with Steve if they have to dig through old posts to find his email and name?

Filed Under: Blog Tips, sms
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  • dave

    No-one else finds it amusing that the iPod (not the Video iPod, no such thing. It’s just the “iPod”) a device that:

    a) only plays video as an afterthought
    b) is produced by a company whose CEO thinks TV is stupid
    c) is produced by a company whose CEO thinks mobile video is stupid
    d) only plays video in a tiny selection of formats, sizes and bitrates

    is absolutely killing the competition?

    What a bunch of maroons they must be, to be accidentally trampled by a 2-bit operation like Apple, that doesn’t even *want* your target market.

  • dave

    No-one else finds it amusing that the iPod (not the Video iPod, no such thing. It’s just the “iPod”) a device that:

    a) only plays video as an afterthought
    b) is produced by a company whose CEO thinks TV is stupid
    c) is produced by a company whose CEO thinks mobile video is stupid
    d) only plays video in a tiny selection of formats, sizes and bitrates

    is absolutely killing the competition?

    What a bunch of maroons they must be, to be accidentally trampled by a 2-bit operation like Apple, that doesn’t even *want* your target market.

  • Christopher Coulter

    Irony abounds. :) The iPod phenom I still don’t quite get in full totality, leave it to the ‘we hate mp3′ bumbling clueless Sony, the clunky not-very Creative, the dead Rio, the deathly boring Dells and Toshiba’s, the $ and no-name Archos and the forever-incompetent Microsoft. CE dropped ball, Apple and Microsoft saw an in. Microsoft crashed and burnt. Apple didn’t.

    It’s a cultural trendy chiq thing, something Apple can nail with the style over substance hits. But that CEO, only hates everyone ELSES mobile video. Don’t take him too literally. Tiny selection of formats? Meaning .wmv? Hah. But then H.264 and MPEG-4 pretty much all you need, really. The PMC is more a pure video player, the video iPod is an audio player FIRST, with video as a mere add-on, and yet that will win the market.

    Buncha maroooons? You betcha life. Apple should not be here at all.

    (last post I promise, already sick of said topic).

  • Christopher Coulter

    Irony abounds. :) The iPod phenom I still don’t quite get in full totality, leave it to the ‘we hate mp3′ bumbling clueless Sony, the clunky not-very Creative, the dead Rio, the deathly boring Dells and Toshiba’s, the $ and no-name Archos and the forever-incompetent Microsoft. CE dropped ball, Apple and Microsoft saw an in. Microsoft crashed and burnt. Apple didn’t.

    It’s a cultural trendy chiq thing, something Apple can nail with the style over substance hits. But that CEO, only hates everyone ELSES mobile video. Don’t take him too literally. Tiny selection of formats? Meaning .wmv? Hah. But then H.264 and MPEG-4 pretty much all you need, really. The PMC is more a pure video player, the video iPod is an audio player FIRST, with video as a mere add-on, and yet that will win the market.

    Buncha maroooons? You betcha life. Apple should not be here at all.

    (last post I promise, already sick of said topic).

  • Goebbels

    “Microsoft doesn’t really make a big deal about a lot of things. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Portable Media Center ad on tv.”

    Umm, Microsoft doesn’t make them, and Microsoft wants its partners to advertise them but they don’t do the reverse.

    And they made a HUGE deal of it!! They pimped them at two CES shows as the next big thing before they were available. They claimed they’d kill the iPod within the year (back in 2001-2002)!! There couldn’t have been more hype!

    “Second of all, Microsoft has years more experience in portable video than Apple.”

    Apple was developing QT and was playing video in the eighties! Microsoft only got into video after it started buying some crappy products in the late 90s!

    “File sizes are better, the streaming experience is better in WMV vs QuickTime.”

    No, file sizes aren’t better and no, the streaming experience is not better. Maybe you have an older version of QT and download files poorly sourced, but I can certainly show you better, smaller files that play better in QT than WMP is capable of.

    “He has been playing with it all day. Says “why didn’t you make a bigger deal about this, if you had, I would have considered one of these instead of an iPod.”

    That’s just hilarious!!! You pimped the iRiver U10 on him at the time (it didn’t exist until just recently; see below). You pimped several other devices on him too! (Unfortunately, your comments crash so frequently there’s no evidence to point to…)

    http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/06/20.html#a10433

    “iRiver announces new music players
    I4U News: Three new iRiver Players. Heh, I was in the Apple San Francisco store just yesterday. My son really wants an iPod. I told him to start looking around cause there’s a slew of new devices coming out that he should at least consider. It mostly fell on deaf ears due mostly to Apple’s marketing and momentum. “All the cool kids at school have iPods,” he told me.”

    And let’s note: you didn’t let your son buy the iPod for two more months!!! That’s a whole lot of you going: “Look at this, I swear it’s better than the iPod! Please don’t buy the iPod! Please don’t! Look at Creative, look at iRiver, look at ANYTHING but the iPod!”

    So either your son’s had a brain injury, you are completely nonpersuasive (in fact, not even memorable), or these products really just aren’t compelling and can’t be sold by a key marketer employed by Apple’s main competitor!

    Ha, ha, ha!!

  • Goebbels

    “Microsoft doesn’t really make a big deal about a lot of things. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Portable Media Center ad on tv.”

    Umm, Microsoft doesn’t make them, and Microsoft wants its partners to advertise them but they don’t do the reverse.

    And they made a HUGE deal of it!! They pimped them at two CES shows as the next big thing before they were available. They claimed they’d kill the iPod within the year (back in 2001-2002)!! There couldn’t have been more hype!

    “Second of all, Microsoft has years more experience in portable video than Apple.”

    Apple was developing QT and was playing video in the eighties! Microsoft only got into video after it started buying some crappy products in the late 90s!

    “File sizes are better, the streaming experience is better in WMV vs QuickTime.”

    No, file sizes aren’t better and no, the streaming experience is not better. Maybe you have an older version of QT and download files poorly sourced, but I can certainly show you better, smaller files that play better in QT than WMP is capable of.

    “He has been playing with it all day. Says “why didn’t you make a bigger deal about this, if you had, I would have considered one of these instead of an iPod.”

    That’s just hilarious!!! You pimped the iRiver U10 on him at the time (it didn’t exist until just recently; see below). You pimped several other devices on him too! (Unfortunately, your comments crash so frequently there’s no evidence to point to…)

    http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/06/20.html#a10433

    “iRiver announces new music players
    I4U News: Three new iRiver Players. Heh, I was in the Apple San Francisco store just yesterday. My son really wants an iPod. I told him to start looking around cause there’s a slew of new devices coming out that he should at least consider. It mostly fell on deaf ears due mostly to Apple’s marketing and momentum. “All the cool kids at school have iPods,” he told me.”

    And let’s note: you didn’t let your son buy the iPod for two more months!!! That’s a whole lot of you going: “Look at this, I swear it’s better than the iPod! Please don’t buy the iPod! Please don’t! Look at Creative, look at iRiver, look at ANYTHING but the iPod!”

    So either your son’s had a brain injury, you are completely nonpersuasive (in fact, not even memorable), or these products really just aren’t compelling and can’t be sold by a key marketer employed by Apple’s main competitor!

    Ha, ha, ha!!

  • http://blogs.msdn.com/spatdsg/ Steve Patrick

    Hey Scoble – just saw this thread on your referral and wanted to say that I updated my Blog with my full name etc.. :)

    Anyway, I suppose for a real hard core music fan, 1 gig of music is not enough to get by on. However, as far as videos and stuff – I can hold 3-4 full lentgh movies on my phone and watch them in with no hiccups whatsoever. This is one of the things I was commenting on… everyone makes such a big deal about the video iPod and its nothing new ( at least to me )

    Music is a different story, I am not one with a huge library, so it works for what I need it for.. 2-5 CD’s at any given time.

    Anyway.. now anyone can contact me via email :)

  • http://blogs.msdn.com/spatdsg/ Steve Patrick

    Hey Scoble – just saw this thread on your referral and wanted to say that I updated my Blog with my full name etc.. :)

    Anyway, I suppose for a real hard core music fan, 1 gig of music is not enough to get by on. However, as far as videos and stuff – I can hold 3-4 full lentgh movies on my phone and watch them in with no hiccups whatsoever. This is one of the things I was commenting on… everyone makes such a big deal about the video iPod and its nothing new ( at least to me )

    Music is a different story, I am not one with a huge library, so it works for what I need it for.. 2-5 CD’s at any given time.

    Anyway.. now anyone can contact me via email :)

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