Under the wire: Eye pods

OPINION: Pssssst. You want to get in on the ground floor of a fantastic business opportunity? OK, maybe not the ground floor, but maybe the middle level of an industry that’s about to boom like you’ve never heard nothing go boom before? Take my advice. I’m gonna whisper this, so you’ll have to lean in a little closer.

Closer. OK, here it is:

Spectacles.

Now, I know what you’re saying: that’s no ground floor! Eyeglasses of one sort or another have been around since Marco Polo spotted them in China in the 13th century, and they were probably around in China for a century or more before that! This is supposed to be a technology journal with all the latest and greatest whizzo widgets and you’re telling me about ground glass?!?!

I hear you. No need to shout.

Here’s the thing: the eyeglass industry is about to explode. People the world over are about to begin ruining their eyes and paying multinationals for the privilege.

The morning upon which I wrote this, I watched a feature-length film on a fifth-generation iPod (also known as “Video iPod” though that is not its official name). The film was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, for which, naturally, I own the copyright so I can reproduce it in whatever medium I so choose. Ahem.

The film runs a little under two hours and contains sufficient colour and movement that I thought it would make a good trial of the iPod’s 2.5- inch diagonal screen and battery life. Good news is that the battery made it (just) and the film was watchable, even itty-bitty. (Well, it is Butch and Sundance -- if you haven’t seen it go to your nearest legitimate DVD retailer and buy a copy today. Ahem.)
 
The bad news is I’m now having a great deal of trouble focusing on stuff further away than, say, my laptop screen, and my forehead feels as if I’ve got a permanent squint.

OK, fair point: this isn’t what the iPod was designed for. You’re supposed to watch short films, movie trailers and music videos. No more than a few minutes at a time, and then go look at some faraway things for a while to prevent your eyes cramping up (or whatever it is eye muscles do in such circumstances).

My counter-argument is this: the Sony PlayStation portable’s screen is somewhat larger but still pokey, and offers a not-entirely-dissimilar viewing experience. Sony, unlike Apple, promotes the PSP as a device for viewing full-length motion pictures -- and in fact sells same on Universal Media Discs alongside video games. Indeed, now that Sony has acquired MGM, you may well soon be able to buy yourself a legitimate copy of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on UMD -- I can’t recommend it highly enough. Ahem.

Of course, over in the place I like to call “reality”, everyone knows that a significant proportion of Video iPod buyers are going to do exactly what I did and copy their DVDs into a format for the iPod to play. Then they are going to watch these films for hours.

Both devices, PSP and iPod, can be reasonably expected to sell by the very large truckload. Content, both legitimate and not, will be found to populate them. Within six months, the (predominantly male) buyers of these devices will be seen in planes, trains, buses and comfortable seats the world over, squinting for hours on end at the tiny objects clutched in their palms.

What I am talking about here is the greatest threat to young men’s eyesight since 1953, when Hugh Hefner launched Playboy.

Take my word for it: track the sales of 5G iPods and PSPs, and be ready a year or so from now to supply that many pairs of spectacles into an eager market.