Still not convinced that Apple didn't just shoot itself in the foot with the iPod Photo release last week? After all, when you step back, shake off the Reality Distortion Field for a second, and take a good, long stare at the thing, it's not necessarily an earth-shattering development. Basically it's a slightly thicker iPod with a better battery life (but still not as good as that of many of its competitors), a color screen (which several other players offer as well), and the ability to store and show photos, both on the iPod's screen and out to a TV (which plenty of competing portable music players have also been able to do for ages). One thing it doesn't do is show video, a capability that's been cropping up in competing products for a while, now. So is the iPod Photo just Apple playing catch-up to the Portable Media Centers, and not very well?

Well, duh-- of course not. Geez, where did you think you were, one of Paul Thurrott's self-congratulatory windbag Microsoft-apologist sites? This is our self-congratulatory windbag Apple-apologist site, make no mistake (although, come to think of it, that might have made a nice Halloween costume for our little show, here, if we'd had the stomach for it). And when Steve says that people don't want to watch video on their iPods, we smile a tight little smile and bow to his inestimable powers of market telepathy, even though we personally would consider an iPod Movie with iMovie integration to be a parent's ultimate weapon for the impromptu assault of unsuspecting passersby with offspring-related media.

But we're not quite big-headed enough yet to think that what we want is what the market at large is yearning for-- and we're more inclined than ever to accept Apple's market research now that there's some evidence that Steve's anti-portable-video stance is spot-on. According to The Register, a new Jupiter Research poll confirms that "a mere 13 percent of people expressed any interest in a portable movie machine" at all, and only "a lowly five per cent of people would like a music player which could also play films." Compare that to the more than one-in-three people surveyed who are interested in portable music players like the iPod, and you might see where Steve's coming from.

Of course, since the thrust of the report is that most customers don't want additional non-music features in their music players if they'll adversely affect size, price, or battery life, that actually implies that iPod Photo is heading in the wrong direction. True, its battery life is better, but the iPod Photo is a tad thicker and heavier and at least a hundred clams more expensive-- so will it flop in the marketplace? Well, Jupiter, at least, doesn't necessarily seem to think so, citing "Apple's decision to include album art" as an improvement that "brings more to the music without damaging battery life or sound quality." That sounds like a thumbs-up for the color screen and bigger battery, at least, and if Apple were going to include those anyway, building in photo slideshows could be considered a no-cost, might-as-well bonus feature.

Then again, you could say the same thing about video. Hmm.

Anyway, Jupiter's research is based entirely on a study of the European market, but we doubt that the numbers would be startlingly different worldwide; for most people, it sounds like video on a tiny screen just isn't going to be a compelling enough feature for them to accept either shorter battery life or appreciably more bulk for the music players they carry everywhere. Some people are going to want it, sure, and if they want it enough, Apple might lose a few potential iPod customers to makers of video-capable devices, but for now it seems that the right mix of music, size, and quality-- in other words, the iPod-- rules the roost. Whether enough people will shell out at least $100 extra for the iPod Photo remains to be seen, but the one thing we can say with reasonable confidence is that almost nobody would have paid at least $200 more for a model that could play video, too.