Portal Player

Q - If Apple's iPod is the PC for my kid's generation (and it may be), then who is the Intel in this story?

A - Portal Player.

As Om Malik explains, Portal Player created the reference design for the incredibly sucessful iPod and makes much of the guts of it.

I remember when Portal Player was an idea hatched by John Mallard. It's been a great venture investment. It almost crashed and burned a couple times. But its survived and now its doing great. I hope Apple and Portal Player find a way to live together as well as Microsoft and Intel have.

Comments

[Charlie Sierra]

Interesting that you posting this story.

I thought about posting about these guys to refute the platitudes from the Friedman piece in the NYT.

The only thing holding back innovation in India is time.

I know you lean to the left, but what do you expect will happen when the hard-working lunchbox american finally figures out that the Democrats' 'nanny-state' plans have priced them out of the job market.

re:Music
Frankly I'm looking to see a punk music revival in the coming years, but it will be genuine middle-class blues.

[Kevin]

I think apples next step should be into the handset market, and the ipod success could act as a steppingstone. People generally want to carry one device and a wireless connection would open the door for m-commerce.

Also don’t forget about Microsofts Portable Media Center platform. This is based in the CE.Net platform, and can easily leverage the 7 million windows developers to start offering interesting third-party services.