Apple today unveiled the video iPod. With its 2.5 inch screen you can watch music videos for $1.99 each or you can download TV programs from last night. I can do this today with my Creative Zen Personal Media Center, but the PMC is a brick. It looks like a brick, it feels like a brick. It is nothing like the video iPod. Also, over the past year I was lucky enough to be one of the first people to get access to the MSN Music site. It was okay in the fact that it was far too similar to all the other Windows Media based download services, but it could have been so much more. MSN has music videos, why can’t I download them and put them on my PMC? MSN TV had the promise of being able to download TV shows, but as of now all I can download are clips of shows, and I’m not about to pay for something that isn’t complete. MSN has promise, but it never fleshes out those promises. Microsoft recently reorganized and put MSN in its main Windows group. They think that this will allow the group to innovate faster. Why don’t they just listen to the customers that are telling them they suck and learn how to improve their products? Now that MSN and Windows Media Center are in the same group maybe we’ll get an application that will perform at the level that we need it to. I doubt it will though. I’ve had two releases of Windows Vista and neither one have a stable Windows Media Center. Neither one can even connect to online music stores. In fact neither one recognized my sound card and that bug was closed as not going to fix. This is where Microsoft is headed. I am very disappointed. Microsoft has the resources and the capability to build a product that would blow iTunes out of the water, but why haven’t they? Maybe my impression of Microsoft’s programmers is unfounded and they are every much as a hack as they make me think I am.