I must be missing something... doesn't the iPod do all the things he lists as being killer features for a "podcast player"?

What's so horrible about using an iPod for podcasts that there is or could possibly be a need for a dedicated podcast player?

I've no idea if it's true that the iPod is bad at playing podcasts, but in any case it would be a terrible idea for Microsoft to base its strategy around a weakness of their competitor, that their competitor could fix with a few days of development and a free software update.

What's wrong with creating new products -- ones that don't already exist?

Nothing at all. I didn't say there was anything wrong with it.

I've listened to podcasts on my iPod and iTunes for years, through successive generations of hardware and software on both ends, and cannot think of how it could be construed as an Apple weakness. It's a pretty flawless system.

I want to be able to stop a podcast, listen to something else and resume the podcast at the point I stopped it. How do I do this on an iPod?

On an iPod Touch/iPhone:

1. Tap Pause 2. Tap Songs, choose something 3. Listen, get bored 4. Tap Podcasts (if you pulled it down to your iPod dock, or More.. Podcasts if you didn't) 5. Tap Play.

Dave seems to want full file management on the device, which could make sense - there's no technical problem with it.

I think what he's keying on but not saying is that the Zune was ahead of it's time because they all came with Wifi built in. You could sync over Wifi - I have a friend who has one in the car and it just stays there, syncing with his computer when he gets home for music/podcasts/etc. You could easily see this extended to "Anywhere I can get WiFi, I can download podcasts" which is what I think Dave was getting at.

Also, the "pay a flat fee to access a huge library" was and still is an innovative pricing model.

The hardware was actually quite good, and I'm generally biased towards Apple.

Microsoft did quite a few things right with the Zune, but they were at price parity with the iPod which had a large ecosystem around it, and they had just burned all their previous PlaysForSure partners, so the "anything but iPod" crowd was somewhat annoyed at them. Android tablet makers should use this as an example of how not to do things...

I know this probably marks me a cl00l355 n00b (as if the pseudo-733t spelling didn't), but is there some reason that page wants to pull in a script from 127.0.0.1, port 5337?

Possibly amusing note: I checked Google for references to this port, and got a link to another HN thread, which turns out to be another item from scripting.com: How to blow up a server in one mouse click (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1763840), which also involved this port number.

So, now I'm really curious. Why is it trying to hit this port on MY machine??

Read the code ... The source attribute is set to "http://127.0.0.1:5337/scripting2/editor/controls?username=da....

I'm no expert, but could it be some kind of "edit this post"-functionality, that only works on the proper machine?

Correct.

It's got something to do with Radio Userland. If you're bored you can read the details here: http://radio.userland.com/developer/intro

I think the best point he makes is at the end: Ballmer is not a product strategist. He is in fact a fantastic salesperson, he closed amazing deals for Microsoft when I worked there.

But he has no business defining product strategy, creating or killing product lines or trying to imagine what the public will want or what's attractive to customers. That stuff should all be left to Bill Buxton.

This reads like a parody of armchair-CEO articles. "Microsoft should finally let go all those Windows coders"? WTF?