Glorious is the Apple, who lead us to salvation, who did fight the evil that would doom us all to technological sin. Did they defeat the old spirits and cast them out? And now, with the strength of our will, they do call upon us to prevail against the corruption of all unbelievers. Ours is not to question, but to rejoice in their service, for they are perfection. Fear not the Apple, fear the darkness that would conceal the knowledge of the universe. Believe in the truth of all things, and you too may find the path to enlightenment. Those who reject the path to enlightenment must be destroyed. The hatred of those who strayed from the true path festered and bloomed in the dark corners of the Microsoft/Linux to which they have been cast! And those who are prideful and refuse to bow down shall be laid low and made into dust.

Hallowed are the Apple.

PS: Bonus points to the person who knows where this came from. hahaha!
PPS: For a recent Apple owner Tom, you sure don't like Apple. Shall I summon a Prior?

oh, I like Apple fine. I just don't like DRM, regardless of whether it's being sold to me by a guy in a black turtleneck or not.

So... why does Sony keep doing this? Is there a success story you're not telling us about, or are they really that dense?

On a serious note, Sony's Memory Stick formats have been a relatively huge success. Sure, they typically can only be used in Sony devices and aren't as pervasive as cheaper flash media. But they helped Sony move a lot of products. As for MiniDisc, it was a good effort. Remember the Sony "blue alien" commercials? Sony sold a ton of those units (Asia and Europe, mostly) before iPods and hard disk based players became affordable. As for Blu-Ray, the issues stem from the BDA and not Sony. BDs are being treated like CD and DVD formats... industry supported. So far, the parters aligned with BD are stronger than HD-DVD.

If you really want a Sony stinker, I know SACD, ATRAC-3 and UMD are ripe for a thrashing.

ATRAC-3 is just a small part of the MD legacy of failure. The format had already failed in North America before the alien commercials -- that was more of a last gasp than anything else. It's true that they sold a lot of MD crap in Japan, but that doesn't mean anything other than that Sony dominated that market. To their credit, it *was* a lot better than cassettes. But once recordable CDs arrived, they were idiots to keep pushing MD.

I really disagree that memory stick has helped them move anything. They've sold their products despite MS, not because of it.

As for why Sony keeps trying it -- I think it's just because they think they can get away with it. Lots of companies do this, but generally the cheaper, less onerous format wins out.

Part of the fundamental problem is that Sony doesn't only make devices to play music, but also they're a record company that produces music that will be played on said devices. They continuously get themselves in trouble as a result. The company would be a lot more profitable (and more positively seen) if they would put a wall of separation between these two parts of the organization.

As for MiniDisc, I don't see it as a failure. Thanks to its portable recording capability, it's popular with specific market niches: musicians who want a quick and easy way to record themselves anywhere; NPR and other radio journalists who need high-quality, portable recording systems; and, strangely, Latinos (though I haven't figured out why they're so into it).

Finally, on the memory card issues, Sony's MS doesn't look as much like the typical Sony-being-too-proprietary situation, since the rest of the marketplace is also self-segmented: SD, XD, CompactFlash... There's no clear favorite, as far as I know. They all work reasonably well enough for most people and can thus stay afloat, much like the cameras they go in. I don't foresee a change anytime soon.

Hmm, I donno. There's no longer any compelling reason for reporters to favor MD over a flash-based solution anymore (although I realize that a lot of them do use it). Certainly niche users adopted it to some extent, but the same could be said for DAT. You'd be hard-pressed to say that either make up a meaningful segment consumer market, though. Certainly, MD didn't achieve the penetration that Sony envisioned.

As for the flash formats -- I don't think anyone besides Sony makes MS, whereas there are tons of SD and CF manufacturers. So far as I can tell, SD is quickly becoming the most-used standard for digital devices. CF's definitely falling off, and xD's only real advantage seems to be its size... But that's just my experience.

I'm surprised, too, that reporters and musicians continue to use MD over something smaller, more easily transferrable---not to mention not having to track down blank discs.

As for SD, I certainly enjoy it, so that would be nice if that became the angelic standard (to Sony's evil, persistent hanger-on). It looks like even Sony might be intimidated: they're trying to give the CompactFlash business a boost.

Also, Sony was just in for a training and they were bragging about their upcoming 8GB Memory Stick Duo cards, and their ultra-small (one-third the size of Duo) Memory Stick Mini cards for digital cameras.

Sony simply will not go gentle into that good night...