What's Next At Apple 368
pinqkandi writes "Business 2.0 is running a fascinating article on what might be coming up in Apple's future. Besides speculation, some interesting statistics are included, such as how the iPod should create equal revenue to the Mac for Apple in 2006, if not surpassing it. A good read for the Apple lover or loather."
Made up percentages? (Score:2, Interesting)
They seem completely overshot. For instance, they have iPhone down as 50%. Personally, I see this more as 5-10%.
WiPod (Score:5, Interesting)
The Wireless iPod is a certainty. I can't wait. Looks like Apple has filed patents for wireless podjacking support; sharing playlists over WiFi.
Tightening the DRM noose (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:PVR is... (Score:2, Interesting)
The Mac Mini would be perfect... They could throw in a beefy 400GB Seagate hard drive... 7200 RPM of course. Maybe 512~1024MB of RAM and it'd be set.
Games? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully and probably, I am not the only person contacted by Apple's HR for job "feeler" ("Do you want to work for Apple?").
Because I only post my resume's on Gamasutra, I'm speculating that Apple is beginning to search for programmers and developers specific to games.
Could Apple be jumping onto the bandwagon towards game softwares?
Re:PVR is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why Apple users are so loyal... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PVR is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Next year - PlayStation 3 and Blue-Ray (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Is piracy a barrier? (Score:4, Interesting)
While I don't know if it'll be next, (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple should have a QtVS (Quicktime Video Store) where you can browse through thousands of films, TV shows, recorded speeches, documentaries, and videos. You could preview them much like you can with the iTMS and its music selections. Then, for a price comparable to a DVD, you could download these videos and burn your own DVDs. And now with H.264 coming in full force during the next few months, these videos could have very high quality with rather small file sizes.
In the next decade, the movie industry is going to find itself in the same position as the music industry was a few years ago, and it will have to change and adapt. Apple should be ready, and be able to offer a viable solution.
Re:apple and sony (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Made up percentages? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple makes some expensive stuff, and often overcharges, but they don't try and screw customers over anywhere near as hard as the cell phone carriers do.
Add in the fact that, in the US at least, almost all cell phone services are subscription or pay per use based. You spend a chunk of change up front for this phone with all these cool features, but then you have to pay a little extra for each one of those features you use every month. That goes totally against Apple's ease-of-use, integrated design philosophy.
the iTMS has some DRM restrictions on how you can use the songs you purchase, but it doesn't hold a candle to the cell phone crap. $1 for a song that you can put on multiple computers/iPods/CDs vs. a $3.50 midi ringtone of the same song that expires in 90 days? Good luck finding a quality compromise there.
Re:PVR is... (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't have the links handy however I found everything through intense googling.
Now for the Mac zealots who will jump at my neck for I had removed MacOSX to install Linux on the Mini I had to reply that, let alone openness issues, I put Debian because the supplied 256M RAM module is barely enough to get the system loaded under OSX but is plenty of space for Linux. Also, both vlc and mplayer in their OSX port are much less mature than the Linux version.
Think Secret (Score:2, Interesting)
Open letter to Steve Jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Last week had two events of significance for me. One was the digitizer on my Palm Tungsten T died and the other was the Sony PSP was released. The problem is that I don't want either of them. There is nothing that I want to replace my TT with and I don't want a PSP.
What I want is the Apple Newton II!
Here is my recipe for the new Newton:
One Tapwave Zodiac (gaming but Palm compatability)
One PSP (screen aspect ratio and quality, build quality, 802.11/USB, and a (soon) real game library)
one Zaurus SL-C3000 (modern CPU hardware, form factor with keyboard and touchscreen (twistable), open source OS (linux or xBSD), hard drive, CF slots), real I/O
Add iPod mini functionality and storage >= 10Gb
Add Newton HWR(inkwell?) and general Newton goodness
Add replacable AA batteries that will last a FULL day so I'm never stuck
Vendor support of an active development community
MS Outlook sync for PDA functions (calendar and contacts) (my job requires it, what can I say....)
Stir to make it all cool and integrated and still be work meeting/date/wife safe
I would pay $699 tomorrow for all of this and even pay $50 a year for a software subscription for the basics.
What do you say Steve, can I have one?
Re:Tightening the DRM noose (Score:0, Interesting)
The various programs that hack Apple's DRM do so by removing it completely. They did that back when iTunes could stream to anyone, and they still do that now iTunes is restricted in whom it can stream to. Therefore, the changes Apple is making to the iTunes DRM do not affect people who use DRM removal programs. Therefore, the changes Apple is making to the iTunes DRM are blatantly not responses to those programs.
If Apple were changing the DRM to combat people removing it, they would have to do so by altering and strengthening the encryption itself, not by making minor cosmetic changes to the restrictions the encryption is supposed to enforce!
Tell me, does your keyboard regularly get clogged up with drool, or are you not actually as stupid as your post makes you sound?
Re:EU? (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe it has something to do with the UK not using the Euro like everyone else.
Maybe it is because of the higher cost of running a different store for each country."
Oh of course. With Apple, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for their behaviour. For Microsoft, it's just further proof that they're evil.
Re:Duplicate! (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a few anti-Apple people that I actually respect, and respect their reasons. For example, Lord Kano has made it clear that his dislike is personal, and that he feels that Apple screwed him over once-upon-a-time. I've teased him about the grudge, but the truth is, it's a perfectly valid grudge.
There is a knee jerk response from some Mac Defenders, you must admit. In a submission yesterday, Hacking Mac OS X [slashdot.org], there was a serious discussion on the shortcomings of the finder. Near as I can tell, most of those engaged in the discussion were Mac users, and those that weren't had at least had some exposure to Mac OS X. Still, there was one outraged Mac fan who accused another poster of never having used OS X. Of course, there was also the usual trolling by Mac bashers, but those really are easily recognizable and just as easy to dismiss.
Re:Personally... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because pocket TV's have typically been limited to over-the-air VHF reception, and anyone who's ever owned a set of tabbit-ear TV antennae can tell you how hard it is to get a good signal even from a stationary device. Nevermind zooming across town on a city bus.
There is a nascent market for portable video players -- witness the marketing campaign for the PSP, the variety of battery-powered DVD players, toys such as VideoNow, etc.
The market will never be as large as the one for portable audio players, but it will be significant. I fully expect an "iPod video" to follow on the heels of the iPod photo in a year or two. It's simply the logical progression. (And obviously, it will use Quicktime's implementation of MPEG-4 over XviD.)
And like the iPod photo, Apple will not force you to buy features you don't want; audio-only iPod models will be around forever.
Re:EU? (Score:4, Interesting)
Once Apple makes a significant marketshare in the European Union, Microsoft won't be a monopoly anymore.
The cheapest PowerBook on the US site it's $1499. On the Dutch version of the same site is €1519. That's living in the past, the dollar is €0.77 or thereabouts now. As long as they don't change that, they'll never become big here (and they're practically non-existant as it is, in the last 10 years I've met exactly 1 person owning a mac, the only time I ever saw one).
In short, fat chance.
Re:Games? (Score:4, Interesting)
There were a couple of recent stories on the rumor sites about Apple looking to hire engineers to improve their OpenGL support, with speculation that this could be in response to Doom 3's relatively poor performance on OS X.
Why Apple will never make a Portable Video Player (Score:4, Interesting)
...because they're too intelligent to do so, and here's why:
As a composer, as much as I hate to admit it: for most people, music is no more than a background to their day to day lives. If you think about it, you could, feasibly, listen to music about 80% of your waking life, and still remain productive in most individual activities (most jobs, driving, walking/exercising). Most humans only need their hearing for communication, but solitary activity--which takes up most people's time--requires little to no communication, meaning the aural senses are free to do other things, like listen to music. However, most tasks, individual or cooperative, require constant usage of the visual senses, making video far less attractive as a background activity while doing other things. Think about your day to day life, how much time, do you think, you could spend, while not at home or at a computer, watching video? It requires a time in which both the visual or auditory senses are free. For a huge majority of people, that period of time is extremely small. The only market for a portable video player is for those that use mass transit, this may seem substantial in some cities, but it's still a very small percentage of the American population. Also consider that the smallest unit of video is 30 minutes, so a video player is only reasonable for a person who can find time on the go for 30 minutes or more of visual distraction. People do not have to change their day to day routines for portable audio, but they would have to "find time" for portable video.
Apple have always seen themselves as a champion of the common people, in a similar fashion to Ford Motor Company when it first began. Their original intention was to create a computer which everyone (at least a large majority of people) could use... their only mistake (as opposed to Henry Ford's success) was that they didn't create a computer which everyone could afford. Apple have never been, and never will be, intentionally a provider of hardware products for niche markets. The iPod built on a mainstream market that was already there: portable audio, something that's been around since Sony's "Walkman" in the early 80s. There is to date, no mainstream market for portable video, and there isn't nearly enough public outcry to create one.
The only mainstream market for portable entertainment devices other than purely auditory hardware is video games. The unit of measurement in playing a video game is one level, usually around 2-4 minutes tops for most portable games, a chunk of time that's much more manageable while on the go. Also, consider that a huge majority of school age children are either driven or take a bus to school every morning, so having a portable video game unit aimed at children has a huge market. Playing games is also, obviously, an offshoot of solitary play, something that children have always done on busses, or when they have free time. Being entertained, however, is not something that children have done on a regular basis while away from a house. Even so, don't expect Apple to get in on the portable video game market any time soon. Nintendo's Gameboy Advance SP is already the iPod of the industry, and arguably does everything that it needs to in a simplistic and portable form which seems uncannily similar to Apple's line of development. This is also the same reason why I believe, without question, that the Sony PSP will fail as a mainstream device, it does far more and is far more complicated than the average child (the bulk of the market) has use for during transit, but that's another topic.
To sum things up, the only way Apple will ever make anything close to a portable video device is that in the next year or two they will undoubtedly add video support to the iPod Photo. Like video confrencing in iChat, it will be a gimmick, and no one will ever use it, but it won't matter anyway because that isn't the reason people buy an iPod in the first place.