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Apple to Rule the Digital Home by 2013?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri May 23, 2008 10:25 PM
from the apple-speculation-america's-new-pastime dept.
from the apple-speculation-america's-new-pastime dept.
Stony Stevenson writes to tell us that a new study from Forrester Research is taking a crack at what seems to have become a hobby for so many, predicting Apple's market strategy. Specifically, Forrester is predicting that Apple will become the 'hub of the digital home by 2013.' "Forrester predicts that Apple will offer eight key products and services to connect PCs and digital content to the TV-stereo infrastructure in consumers' homes. A 're-engineered' Apple Store will expand into in-home installation services to deliver what Forrester describes as a 'fully integrated digital experience.'"
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Quick summary: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Quick summary: (Score:5, Insightful)
Much more in depth than you made it out to be.
Parent
Re:Quick summary: (Score:5, Funny)
In the end it doesn't really matter what technical devices I have in the house 2013. My wife still rules the remote control with an iron grip.
Parent
Re:Quick summary: (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it's total crap. Not every home even has a drier, or a microwave oven (surprise surprise) or even a TV. Heaps of people don't own anything more than a small radio and cheap TV.
Apple is not going to rule the home because it cannot produce products that everybody can afford.
Parent
Re:Quick summary: (Score:4, Insightful)
If you ask me, so far Nintendo's been the most successful.
Parent
Re:Quick summary: (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Yeah (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, think of the marketing! "You have two options of getting your media; via iTMS, or for free via BitTorrent" I'd buy that shit in a heartbeat
Parent
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure why people seem to think it's taboo to talk about how Apple TV didn't make the cut. So not all their products are going to be perfect - big deal. The road to success is not always paved with the detritus of your earlier home runs. Sometimes you have to work harder.
I'm not sure if the premise of the article is valid, but I do believe that if someone can make the media center revolution happen, it's Apple.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see where it is taboo to say AppleTV isn't up to par. I think it's a fine example to keep to show that Apple doesn't always make a hit the first time around. I'd like to see some better competition, the secrets to Apple's successes aren't secret, most of the information is out there, but maybe it's constantly misinterpreted or poorly adapted to an incompatible culture or management style.
I really don't want one company to have all the keys to
bit terrent (Score:3, Insightful)
And I really doubt that any company, even Apple, would really want to or be able to serve up paid media and install BT to link into illegal distribution of copyrighted materials onto their box like that
Bittorrent is quite capable of distributing legal media as well as illegal. I'm not a content provider however if I did make movies and or music I very well may use Bittorrent for distribution. I'd use it to distribute low quality version of whatever then allow a high quality version to be downloaded for
What part of "home market" don't you understand? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bittorrent? What's that? Isn't that something that pirates and terrorists use to exploit poor starving artists?
iTunes and the iPod have been successful because of the public perception that they just work - now, you can debate how true that is if you like, but that's the line. Part of that ease of use is exactly because they force you to use iTunes (the software*) - which annoys slashdotters who want to mount their mp3 player under Debian and copy .ogg files to it, but is a matter of sheer indifference to the mass market, who like the seamlessness that comes from the monolithic approach.
As for the AppleTV: at the moment, whereas the iTunes store is there to sell iPods, the AppleTV is there to sell iTunes video, and to "tick a box" so that people buying video for their iPods know there's an Apple-branded solution to show them on the big screen. Once the online video market has "come of age" (which will also need a bit of a revolution in broadband availability & capacity) Apple might get serious about the AppleTV.
(*Of course, iTunes the software doesn't force you to buy your media from iTunes, the store - it will happily rip audio CDs, accept MP3s and unprotected AACs from any source - legal or otherwise - and a google for "rip DVD to iTunes" produces a heap of solutions: if you know Bittorrent you probably know Google)
Parent
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Informative)
You can laugh now, but a slow introduction of an Apple product does not guarantee eventual failure.
Estimates indicate 1-1.5 million Apple TVs were sold in their first year on the market [wikipedia.org].
In comparison, the iPod sold 376,000 units in their first year on the market [wikipedia.org]. We're not laughing at iPod now, are we?
Parent
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
No they won't (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple doesn't make anything that hooks to a TV that has any critical mass.
Agreed. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:No they won't (Score:5, Insightful)
Nintendo doesn't seem interested in providing the full experience, either. They focus heavily on each individual product.
Microsoft definitely has the strongest ambition. But they do often shoot themselves in the foot.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:No they won't (Score:5, Insightful)
Other than perhaps a less clunky interface, I can't imagine how Apple could trump that.
Parent
Re:No they won't (Score:5, Interesting)
maybe I've had my expectations set too high after using xbox media centre for so long, but after being able to watch pretty much any video format over nearly any protocol the 360's media "integration" just seems like a polished turd
Parent
PS3 or Wii (Score:3, Insightful)
For the PS3, Sony has been helpful in getting Linux to run on it. The most important factor is the blu-ray capability. I know a lot of people who bought a PS3 just for the blu-ray. They own no games 'cept what came in the box.
The Wii is an exceptional game machine. Nintendo hit their target right on and that fact that the Wii is outselling the PS3 and Xbox combined speaks volumes. If the Wii offered up blu-ray, it would dominate even more.
I for one welcome our new over 1 button overloards (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I for one welcome our new over 1 button overloa (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Forrester cracks me up... (Score:5, Interesting)
The 4 new products they predict are:
* AppleSound universal music controller
what, for the times when you are out of earshot of itunes, ipod or apple tv? or so you can sync them? I don't see the market here.
* Network-enabled gadgets
like a chumby? or an ambient orb?
* In-home installation services
apple geek squad? Ok, this may be true, but really... yawn...
* Apple home server product
This is the only one that MAY be interesting, but that's probably just because they don't say much about it. isn't this what the mini is? or mini+drobo?
Re:Forrester cracks me up... (Score:5, Insightful)
So it isn't as though Apple can just waltz in to this arena and amaze people, the products already exist, and they are already easy to use. It also already works with Apple stuff. Put an iPod in your Yamaha receiver (many have iPod docks) and the receiver will control it remotely, and the Harmony will control the receiver.
Sounds to me like this guy is an Apple fan who hasn't really done his homework about what is actually out there, or done any real business analysis of if a market would be good for Apple to get in to. As you noted for home installation services, that's a big yawn. To the extent people buy that, they are going to buy it from the retailer they get the hard drives from, like bigscreen TVs. This isn't the sort of thing someone is going to think "Man, I'd better call Apple and have them pick up my TV from Best Buy and install it." It's hard to sell "cool" in the mark of in home installations and it takes only a minor look at Apple's business to realise that selling cool is what they do. The iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, it wasn't the cheapest, etc. What it was is the one that made MP3 players cool to have, that made them a fashion accessory.
I really wish Slashdot wouldn't post fanboy crap like this. Just because it doesn't come from a blog, doesn't mean it isn't just a fanboy drooling over what they think would be cool. There seems to be no business case for any of this, just wild speculation.
Parent
Not with apple TV, but maybe... (Score:2)
Now the bad : apple has no history of creating amplifiers, TVs , or game systems. Still, looking at the success of the iPhone and their laptops, I would not be surprised if they just came out with a Sony/Nintendo/MS Xbox killer multi function device.
Hey APPLE, please do not make it dependent on damn ITU
Re: (Score:2)
Now the bad : apple has no history of creating amplifiers, TVs , or game systems. Still, looking at the success of the iPhone and their laptops, I would not be surprised if they just came out with a Sony/Nintendo/MS Xbox killer multi function device.
My mind isn't working 100% right now from lack of caffeine, so I'm just going to give you the link for interesting reading to Apple's one and only game system, the Pippin. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not with apple TV, but maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's where they make their money. And making money by locking in users matters to Apple just as much as to Microsoft.
Parent
Apple is as Apple Does (Score:5, Funny)
It's fun and easy to do, and you soon learn that you can do just as good a job as Forrester or Gartner or Cringley, and do a lot better than Metcalf, Michael Dell or Dvorak (not the keyboard layout, as even a keyboard layout can provide better market analysis than that guy).
Bold predictions! You can make bold predictions -
"Steve Jobs will buy Adobe!"
"Steve Wozniak will mary a famous comedienne!"
"iPhone will be the first earth technology bough by alien visitors as it's superior to their own!"
"Apple will shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders!"
- Ok, I admit that it's unlikely Woz will marry a famous comedienne, but other than that, as long as it's outlandish and over-the-top, there's a one-in-a-million chance it might come true, and as Terry Pratchett readers, we know one-in-a-million chances crop up nine times out of ten.
Articles like this are just the encouragement newly fledged Apple pundits need to start rolling their own... and it's a small step from speculation to rumor-mongering! That's where the action's really at.
(And, you didn't hear it from me, but the next rev of iTunes will knock your socks clean off, employing bayesian fuzzy-logic heuristic inference engines to predict with 89% accuracy what you want to hear before you hear it, or so I heard from a little bird who's working on "Project BHA-II")
Apple May Well Rule, But Forrester Misses Why (Score:2, Insightful)
The eight essential pillars on which Apple will deliver this platform, based on four existing offerings and four new product concepts, are expected to be:
* Apple Macintosh home PC
* Apple TV digital media extender
* Apple Store
* iTunes and its successors
* Apple home server product
* AppleSound universal
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Their other big play between now an 2013 could be videogames. There's no reason why Apple can't release its own Xbox - I'm sure Intel would be happy to lend them a lot of engineering help in order to establish a presence in that market. Make the device function with iPhones and serve as a media hub, sell it for $300 or less and watch as it erodes the market for more expensive gaming devices from its rivals. The iPhone is already poised to become a successful portable gaming device in its own right.
Apple cou
The article has a lot of stuff I consider silly (Score:2)
The first is a fancy NAS, aka. "home server" (But not called that, of course. Whoever thought up that moniker was practically begging to have their gadget ignored by the mainstream). The Time Capsule's hardware is probably already sufficient for a lot of tasks (although they'll probably sell a new souped up model with the new features instead), and more software integration with OSX and iPods/iPhones/AppleTVs se
Why wait until then? (Score:3, Informative)
I can also use it to play any streaming video or audio from the net, browse Google Video and Youtube and many others from my couch... and it even has a built-in bittorrent client if I want to download media to the internal hard drive.
All in a little box the size of an external drive enclosure... with a remote. USB inputs, network inputs, HDMI out, etc.
All for a couple of hundred bucks. Which I'm sure is a fraction of what Apple will be charging when theirs comes to market in a few years.
Following the iPod and iPhone trend... (Score:3, Funny)
No one wants integration (Score:5, Insightful)
I like that I can have different components from different manufacturers. It means I can shop around for the best deals. As soon as one company ties it all in you can look forward to the death of standards like HDMI. Anyone remember ADC? The Apple Display Connector? Don't think for a second Apple wont start doing this to lock you in.
It boggles the mind why people get so excited about vendor lock-in like this. Suddenly it's a good thing? Did we learn nothing from the 90's and the Microsoft/Intel/Cisco empire?
Re:No one wants integration (Score:4, Interesting)
Enter Apple.
Integration can help ensure things "just work", if done correctly (Microsoft being the poster child for how not to do it correctly). The downside is, it's either Apple's way or the highway. But that's really already the case for any existing integrated solutions from every other consumer electronics vendor, from Bose to Nokia to, well, Microsoft.
Apple has successfully locked people into the iPod with the iPod's connector. They've leveraged their position as the #1 portable music player to build up a whole ecology of products that'll only work with their devices, a barrier to entry even Microsoft couldn't overcome. If they establish themselves as the lead integrator in the home, as I suspect is likely via the iPhone and future successors to the AppleTV, they're going to become virtually impossible to work around.
Their products aren't perfect, but I'm frankly glad it's gonna be them and not either Microsoft or Sony. Apple is at worst annoying - Sony and MS have already proven dangerous.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
A new study by me says (Score:2)
And I ain't gonna charge you $400 for it.
$5 will do.
Thank you.
In-home installation services? Terrible business (Score:4, Insightful)
Providing in-home installation services would not be forward progress. Eliminating the need for in-home installation services would be.
Cabling for home entertainment systems needs to be simplified drastically. Current large-screen TVs have far too many connectors. The home entertainment industry has been unable to make all the boxes talk to each other and self-configure. The display vendors, the cable box vendors, the media player vendors, and the "amplifier" vendors each want to be in charge. The game console people don't worry about integration much. So we don't have idiot-resistant plug and play, even though that's technically possible. (It is getting better, though; if you're all HDMI, things do interoperate better. Aspect ratio, for example, is handled automatically.)
Apple probably isn't in a position to make that happen, though. Apple may sell a "media center" box, but they won't be the only one.
5 year predictions... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose Apple as we knew it in 1996 is dead, but how many people really miss that Apple? By January 2001 Apple was on the rebound, 3 years after introducing the iMac and about to release Mac OS X 10.0.
I don't think that's what Forrester had in mind, though. I'll take any such company-specific predictions with a grain of salt.
Rule the home? (Score:4, Insightful)
2013? (Score:4, Funny)
It's kind of hard to rule the digital home if there aren't any.
Who knew the Mayan's hated Apple fanboys?
house full of dumb! (Score:4, Funny)
oh, really? (Score:3, Interesting)
More than likely, this is just more nonsense from the standard Apple product cycle [misterbg.org].
One thing they always overlook... (Score:3, Insightful)
This factor can have a huge influence on a person's hard value based upon their ability to put their possessions up as collateral. For example, let's say two people spend an equal amount of money on the same titles of music/movies/games/etc, but one of them buys only the digitally distributed, while the other buys everything on CDs/DVDs/etc. Now, let's say both of these guys suddenly end up in debt and need to make a quick buck. Our first guy probably has to resort to turning tricks in some alley, while our second guy can simply go to ebay with his collection and wait for the money to roll in.
Unfortunately, the second guy is quickly becoming a dying breed, due to demand for instant gratification and personal convenience. Digital distribution screws up the concept of trade we've used for thousands of years. We're handing over our physically-backed valuables in exchange for something that has no actual value outside our own hands.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A consumer that has a TV that's brand A and a stereo receiver that's brand B, and neither one of them work with Apple's latest "digital media center" (or don't work very well) aren't going to run out and buy an Apple TV or receiver, especially when there are other products that will work with his or her existing equip