"given
the digital era, for all practical purposes, tape is dead."

Canon doesn't think so.

"For practical purposes
though, random selection and accessibility of media playback, digital
is far superior"

Most people agree. But some people prefer tape, or at least would like to use it occasionally, for the reasons mentioned in my quote.

"try to keep that magnetic media around for a couple of decades and then lets review the quality"

It's not ideal if it is the only copy--but it would make a good backup copy--as a protection against loss. (Assuming the user copies the tape to his computer, edits out the portions he doesn't want, and saves the highlights to disk and/or DVD.) With tapeless models, the original gets overwritten--and storing the entire original on disk becomes expensiv if there is lots of videotaping done. (As you acknowledge, "For archival
purposes, there might be some practical utility.")

The purpose of my quote wasn't to prove that tape is thriving, or deserves to thrive, but only that it's hanging on, and may well keep hanging on, as evidenced by the recent release of a top-quality HD camcorder by a major mfgr. This disproves overstatements that tape has no future, "IS dead," etc.

RogerKni wrote:

I suppose it all depends on context and what you mean by 'no future'. I agree that tape is still used extensively at the pro and even prosumer level, just as Betamax was used as a professional format for many years after it was effectively dead at the consumer level. But that doesn't mean anything when you're out shopping for a camcorder for a Christmas present (well, unless you're giving one to a pro and have very deep pockets). I think most people here are talking about that consumer marketplace, what you can find when you walk into a Best Buy or a MicroCenter (or even a Fry's, J&R, or a Nebraska Furniture Mart).

So, looking at it from the consumer context... well, when camcorders first came down to the consumer level, they were almost all VHS. (I still have the JVC deck my father got back in the 80's, where the tape mechanism and tuner were two separate equal-sized boxes, so you didn't have to sling the entire thing over your shoulder while trying to hold a separate camera in your hand.) Then VHC-C came in, and standard VHS camcorders disappeared. VHS-C was replaced by Hi-8/Digital8, which was supplanted by MiniDV. Now in the consumer electronics stores, as I said earlier in the thread, I'm seeing the exact same pattern with tapeless camcorders and MiniDV as I saw with MiniDV and Hi-8/Digital8: first a couple of models, then a whole generation of models taking up a significant chunk of market share, until now the majority of camcorders are tapeless. Sure, you can still get tape-based camcorders, but they're now a minority. (And FireWire based models are a small subset of that minority.)

That's our data. What conclusions can we draw from it? If it follows the pattern of other camcorder formats, which it seems to be doing so far, that would certainly suggest that tape-based models are on their way out; new models may continue to be released, but fewer and fewer as time goes on. Does that mean that tape 'has no future' or 'is dead'? You can make a reasonable argument that tape isn't strictly 'dead' as long as new models are being produced - but if they become expensive and/or hard to find at ordinary consumer outlets, what's the practical difference? Likewise, if a few consumer models continue to be produced for 'tape-o-philes', you could argue that tape technically has a future... but is that going to matter to the average consumer who just wants to walk into Best Buy and grab something that will be quick and simple for them to pick up?

This is not a good article. It's all positive. What about the fact that the Macbooks LCD is horrible? Hello?

The question is, when is Apple going to realize that some of us out here want a 13" or 14" Macbook Pro?! 15" is massive! We can plug into a monitor if we need more room!

No new notebook for me until Apple the Glossy Display, the chiclet keys, and adds USB-3... if I live that long.