Apple will take over the world

I can't believe I missed the gravity of what happened last week. People have been asking as long as there have been rumors about a video iPod (which is at least for the last couple years) whether anyone would buy one. It's not the same as music, after all - people can't walk or do work while watching a tiny screen, at least not safely. Plus, very few people have video on their hard drives relative to the huge population of mp3-owners post Napster 1.0. Who would the market for such a device be? Wouldn't Apple be pulling another Newton if they released a video iPod before there was content to fill it with?

No.

Instead of waiting, the Steve has pulled another media coup - by releasing the iPod video as the standard iPod, he's assured Apple a controlling share of the video player market. Everyone getting an iPod this christmas season will basically be getting the video playback functions for free. Yes, free - there was no change in the price, and every other aspect got better, from weight to battery life to thinness. This is the equivalent of Microsoft giving Explorer away with windows, and judging by the traffic on this site, that worked pretty well for them. So by the time anyone else gets to market with another video download service, there will be a million iPod owners out there who won't switch to it.

Jobs, by the way, has said that this is the plan.

“There is no market today for portable video,” he says. “We’re going to sell millions of these to people who want to play their music, and video is going to come along for the ride. Anyone who wants to put out video content will put it out for this. And we’ll find out what happens.”

Genius.