That said, i think there was a version of the original MD format sold as a data drive in Japan. I think Sony had a model or two of their Vaio laptops with it built in.
That said, what basically sunk the format was slow write speed and that the Sony Music tail was basically wagging the Sony Electronics dog. The MD was from day one laden with DRM, and the HiMD took it even further (want to put those MP3s on there? Had to format convert to Atrac via some crazy program. And the only way to get them back out was via the analog hole).
This just at the time as large capacity flash was coming to market, and you could dump any random MP3 onto them with a drag and drop operation.
Just SCMS
> Had to format convert to Atrac via some crazy program
The HiMD machines did not make nice mp3 players because they really weren't meant to be that. Only the final HiMD decks had mp3 codec.
I never converted from mp3 to atrac because atrac was a better codec. I didn't like feeling like I was listening to computer files anyway, and usually dubbed from a cd player.
> the only way to get them back out was via the analog hole
The last SonicStage update lets you download audio. This is important because these devices were used to record original content.
As for what was better or worse i will not get into. MP3 was already turning into the de-facto standard, and thus Sony did themselves no favors by having people go the long way round.
I guess i missed the news about the last Sonicstage release, as by that time i had given up on how Sony was handing tings.