Mac and XP Media Center

One company from which Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition apparently won't see direct competition is Apple Computer, at least as far as video recording capabilities go, according to this story earlier this week by Ina Fried of CNet News.com. During a meeting with financial analysts, Apple CEO Steve Jobs joked that, rather than mixing elements of the TV and computer, his company was looking into combining elements of the computer and the toaster. He went on to say that he doesn't see computers with video-recording capabilities serving a huge market. Here's the relevant portion of the CNet story:

"We're not going to go that direction," Jobs said. "There is a small audience that likes this."

Jobs said there are several problems with the Media Center concept, in particular the wide divergence in the way people want to watch television as compared with how they use a computer. "Generally what they want to view on television has to do with turning their mind off," he said.

Jobs said that video recording is processor intensive and is best left to a device that is not doing other things such as playing games or running spreadsheets. "When I want to record 'The West Wing,' I want to make damn sure it records 'The West Wing,'" he said.

That doesn't mean personal video recording functions won't be available on the Mac operating system. In fact, they already are, through such products as Eye TV. For its part, Microsoft introduced the latest edition of the Windows Media Center Edition operating system, which comes with a built-in television-recording function, in late September.