kickingVegas

Add to that an API for their hardware, be it MD, digital camera, memstick, hard drive player, etc.

Just a thought, but Sony should release a SDK to the general public for handling ATRAC files. IMHO, Sony has no competitive advantage with SonicStage, so letting third parties develop apps that work with ATRAC as opposed to Sony keeping monopoly control over it (yeah I know about RealPlayer, but seriously, get real ...) could address a lot of disatisfaction about using ATRAC as a digital file format, with all of the flexibility that being digital provides. Then again, maybe it is out there, just hiding in plain sight, but I doubt it. Going back to my crack pipe, sadly ...

Ugh. This product so nails down why Sony doesn't get designing digital products. Why should you buy a $77 custom device that only connects to two HiMD products? They should be thinking about network effects - if Sony designed all their digital devices to be able to exchange data sensibly with other, then it becomes more compelling to keep getting their products; in other words if they had a sensible product roadmap I would buy more of their stuff not less. Here it looks like Sony is making me buy a one-shot device that I will likely have to throw away when the next latest and greatest gadget comes out - Who wants to do that?

First off a caveat: my criticisms of Sony here is not to bash but to illustrate yet another way how Sony could make MD a more compelling product. I own both a Sony digital camera and a Sony NetMD player. In looking at HiMD, I wish I could offload pictures and video off the digital camera to a HiMD device, with no need for a PC in between. Not holding my breath on this one ...

Not clear if Sony will do this but as a NF610 user, I find myself wishing I could record a radio program using the tuner that comes with it - you can't, and it was likely that this was a deliberate design decision. Adding a clock and letting one program a record time seems so obvious with MiniDiscs, in spite of the anxiety of music execs. Are there other MiniDisc players with radio tuners that support direct radio recording?