K. you should be ashamed for not understanding that this article is not a plug for Apple, Thales nor Panasonic. If anything the article underlines the larger play of Jobs' altruism to promote free flow of both art and science.
Not everything is advertising ffs. Read his bio, watch some docos, peel yourself away from the screen and look at the bigger picture.
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MOD: This was leaked five months ago in trade pubs as B2B news, December last year. Mobile Information, Communications and Entertainment (www.mice.tv).
It seems they have figured out a clever way of bridging the 'last meter' between iTunes and the iPod inflight, which I expect is backed by Apple, part of a wider TICE strategy emanating beyond the radar of the old school IFE providers. Now they're freaking.
Once consumers hold the reigns to decide IFE, all bets for old-school closed-channel thinking are off.
According to industry insiders it's a robust solution with no hardware retrofit, no broadband wifi bottlenecks, no satellite dish strapped on top, so could become ubiquitous almost instantly.
It seems the end-goal for IFE is not PC-anywhere thinking but world-leading content on-tap for the consumer, in-home, in-car, in-lounge as well as in-flight.
Thales and Panasonic would do well to explore M&A opportunities in the wider TICE market because there's more to IFE than connectivity (and Connexion).