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Apple to Rule the Digital Home by 2013?
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.'"
Much more in depth than you made it out to be.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
Developers: We can use your help.
I was thinking the same thing. The way the 360 integrates with an internal computer network to deliver high quality video and audio is pretty darn slick.
Other than perhaps a less clunky interface, I can't imagine how Apple could trump that.
The Internet is generally stupid
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.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Well there may be a market for a universal controller, the problem is that they've been beaten to it. The best example would be the Logitech Harmony remotes. These things control, well, everything. You log on to the website and tell it what gear you have and how it's connected, it sends you the data to program your remote to control it (remotes hook up via USB). Gone are the days of digging through code books, you just tell it what you got, and it does the rest.
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.
Or if they do they're insane. Product tie-in is why people ran to Apple in the first place, to get away from the Microsoft lock-in. Now Apple is doing it. I recently dumped everything I had Apple and moved to FOSS for exactly this reason. It kills competition and locks you into inferior products all for the sack of compatibility.
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?
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.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan