Crack in the Memory Stick facade

Earlier this month I attended the massive CES 2006 show in Las Vegas. When you meet someone during or after the show, the stock question you get is: "What was the coolest thing you’ve seen at the show?" My answer: the new Sony Reader.

What was impressive about this device was not the electronic ink technology, nor the range of improvements this version 2.0 device shows over its predecessor. No, the most amazing this about this device is that this is a Sony device that accepts SD media cards.

In early 1988 I had the chance in Japan to see a Sony representative demonstrate the Mavica, their first production digital camera. For the past 18 years I’ve watched Sony’s relentless efforts to foist this memory format on a rather uninterested public. In all those years I have experienced exactly one occasion where I found myself needing to transfer files between two devices that turned out to both be Sony devices and where I was hence able to use a Memory Stick to directly transfer the files.

It’s gratifying to see Sony finally concede the inevitable and recognize the standard media formats that consumers actually want to use.