Oh. And this kind of sums up Sony’s strategy. Nicely designed premium hardware, but off in their own software and service planet, which is not well executed. I’ve tried to give Sony the benefit of the doubt — I owned the first Sony Reader back in 2007 — but they have failed to act on the big picture here. A big part of the Kindle’s awesomeness is the great store backend, the seamless download experience with the store, and the availability of Kindle software on every device on the planet so that I can read my purchases on my PC, my Mac, my phone, my Kindle, my iPad, on the web, pretty much anywhere. Sony totally whiffs on this total experience. It is kind of sad because I would love to see a first rate competitor to the Kindle, and Sony has some great assets to bring to bear — retail stores, solid hardware design skills.

In the long run, Amazon wants to sell digital goods, Sony wants to make great devices — I have to wonder why Sony doesn’t abase themselves, drop their own store, let Amazon run the backend for the Sony device, and make the Reader the best Kindle-compatible device in the world. Any other strategy just seems pointless.

Spend 5 minutes wandering through obtuse PS3 menus to find the system update choice, “Oh your network connection isn’t working”.

Spend more time figuring out where and how to config the PS3 wireless connection.

Download the update, reboot the PS3, and bam all my bluetooth PS3 controllers quit working. Go find the right USB cable and remember how to plug in a PS3 controller.

Complete the update. Thankfully bluetooth controllers come back to life and disc now plays.

20 minutes, incredibly obtuse messages, just to play a movie. What do regular humans do? Obviously they don’t play Blu-Ray discs in PS3s.